Yesterday I told you about a situation at Indiana University tied to a Professor of Computer Science and cryptography named Xiaofeng Wang. According to very sketchy public reports, the FBI and DHS police searched two homes owned by Wang and a Library Systems analyst named Nianli Ma, who I assume is his spouse. Colleagues at other universities noted that Wang’s bio pages had been removed from the University website and no one seemed to know where he was. It was unclear whether he had been arrested or perhaps detained in an immigration action.
I can now report some new and as yet unreported details, which largely go to the timeline of events.
I’m told that on March 14th University colleagues were informed that Wang had been placed on administrative leave and that at that point, well before at least any public law enforcement activity, his web pages were removed from the University website and his IU email was shut down. There was no internal explanation of why any of this was happening. But these are actions would be consistent with a University investigation into some sort of alleged misconduct.
What’s still unclear is whether the University investigation lead to the federal law enforcement actions or whether early stages of a federal law enforcement investigation led the University to place Wang on leave and take these other actions. What’s clear though, according to my information, is that the law enforcement searches two days ago did not lead to Wang being placed on leave. That happened some time ago, as did the changes to the University website and Wang’s email being shut down. It’s just that no one in the wider community seemed to notice until the raid/search.
One additional detail, it’s not clear that Wang has been fired. That was not what colleagues were told in mid-March and there does not appear to have been any update on that front to the contrary to colleagues. If you know more about the situation please contact me on one of my secure channels below.
Ed.Note: This post has been updated to add the date of March 14th.
