photo by: University of Kansas

Feng (Franklin) Tao

A former University of Kansas professor who was prosecuted for wire fraud and making false statements has filed a federal lawsuit against KU to get his job back, along with back wages and compensation for damage to his reputation.

Feng (Franklin) Tao, a Chinese-born researcher, was hired in 2014 as a tenured associate professor in chemical engineering. Five years later he was arrested under the Department of Justice’s now defunct “China Initiative,” which had been enacted to combat national security threats, including economic espionage and intellectual property theft.

Tao was accused of concealing his relationship with Fuzhou University in China. Of the nearly dozen crimes he was originally charged with, including wire fraud and making false statements, a jury acquitted him of a handful, and higher courts reversed convictions in the others, using sometimes scathing language about the government’s conduct — for example, that it made assertions that “border on misrepresentation.”

After Tao was arrested, KU put him on administrative leave and ultimately fired him before his legal proceedings had concluded, which Tao said violated the university’s contractual, ethical and legal obligations to him.

“Professor Tao’s life, career, reputation, and finances are in shambles as a result of KU’s egregious conduct,” the lawsuit states. It accuses KU of working closely with the FBI to target Tao after a disgruntled visiting scholar reported him for espionage when he refused to give her $300,000. The suit states that KU did nothing to assess the accuser’s credibility before taking action against Tao.

The lawsuit alleges that KU not only breached its contact with Tao but racially discriminated against him in violation of federal law.

Tao, who was born in China and moved to the U.S. in 2002, is requesting that he be reinstated with back wages and that he be awarded compensatory and punitive damages for reputational harm, emotional distress and other alleged injury.

The China Initiative program began under President Donald Trump in 2018 but was discontinued four years later amid concerns about racial-profiling of Chinese and Chinese American people.

KU has not yet responded to Tao’s lawsuit, which was filed Jan. 3.