The Chronicle of Higher Education BY Karin Fisher | October 27, 2021
How investigations play out at different universities reveals a lot about higher education.
Just after the new year, prosecutors charged a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor named Gang Chen with allegedly concealing his ties to China. His arrest was part of the “China Initiative,” a federal investigation into economic and academic espionage.
A little more than a week later, L. Rafael Reif, MIT’s president, released a statement pushing back against a core allegation in the criminal complaint against Chen, that he had personally pocketed nearly $20 million in payments from a Chinese university. No, Reif wrote, MIT had an agreement with Southern University of Science and Technology for joint research and educational activities, and the funds were paid to the institute. The charge was… READ MORE
