Harvard Professor Arrested in International Scandal
Sure, you might not love all of your teachers. But what if one of them turned out to possibly be a spy for the Chinese? It sounds like the plot of a movie, but this scenario is unfolding right now at, of all places, Harvard University. Here, btw takes a closer look at the story.
An Esteemed Professor
Charles Lieber, age 60, is the Chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. He’s also a University Professor, which is a special designation held by only 25 Harvard faculty members. His work focuses on nanoscience, which is the study of matter, particles, and structures on the nanometer scale (the scale of atoms and molecules, or roughly one-millionth of a millimeter). He has worked on a broad range of scientific topics, including developing “cyborg tissue.” But now, the university has placed him on indefinite administrative leave for his role in a possible scandal involving the Chinese government. This means that he is banned from campus and can’t teach or perform research.
So, What Happened?
Last week, Professor Lieber was arrested and charged with misleading investigators for lying about his Chinese connections. First, he is linked with a Chinese program called the Thousand Talents Plan, which seeks to recruit and financially support high-level scientific talent (such as scientists, young Ph.D. students, and science researchers) from the international community, in order to give the Chinese government access to that intelligence. He also signed a three-year contract with China’s Wuhan University of Technology. At WUT, Lieber became a “strategic scientist” and established a research lab. For this, he was paid up to $50,000 per month, plus an additional $150,000 per year for “living expenses”–for a total of at least $1.5 million between 2012 and 2017–by WUT and the Chinese government.
At the same time that all of this was going on, Professor Lieber was also heading up several research projects for the U.S. Defense Department and the National Institutes of Health, for which he was paid a total of $18 million. Harvard University, meanwhile, had no idea that the lab at WUT even existed.
In order to participate in these projects for the U.S. government, Lieber had to reveal if he had any foreign conflict of interest. But he said he didn’t. Moreover, he claimed that he had never worked for the Thousand Talents Plan until the FBI uncovered the three-year employment contract with WUT this week.
Why Does It Matter?
Professor Lieber’s work for WUT included recruiting teachers and Ph.D. students; applying for patents and publishing articles in WUT’s name; and working on international projects. He was paid large amounts of money by the Chinese government for his work. And he did all of this while also working for the U.S. government, which officially considers the Thousand Talents plan to be a threat to national security. The concern is that Lieber was sharing sensitive information with the Chinese, potentially giving them access to American intelligence, research, and technology.