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by oicu812
700 days ago
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Thank you for the background. For those with the knee-jerk reaction without the full story, this case was based on a whistleblower providing allegations to the FBI. The whistleblower provided evidence of a contract between the professor and a Chinese university. The FBI investigation collaborated that evidence, including fifteen trips to China in three years. That is why this case was brought to trial. He was not exonerated on the false statements charge. Instead, the appeals court found it was immaterial by a 2-1 decision. This professor got a doctorate from Princeton and did a postdoc at Berkeley. He knew the rules for working on NSF and DOE grants. He didn't deserve all the happened to him, but he did lie and cover-up his connections with a Chinese university. |
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His "connections" were extremely minimal and not relevant to any of his grant applications, so he wasn't required to disclose them.
> That is why this case was brought to trial.
This case was brought to trial because Tao is Asian, and the Trump administration put out an order to local FBI offices to find Chinese spies in academia. In other words, Tao was swept up in a racist witch hunt. If he were a white European, there is precisely 0% chance that he would have been investigated and prosecuted for these sorts of minimal "connections" to a European university.