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• 18 Mar, 2022
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Several School of Medicine faculty members expressed grievances about the University’s suspension of professor Haifan Lin under a possible China Initiative-related investigation by the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, a member of Lin’s lab reported that the disruption has affected both scientific research and created uncertainty before his students.

In the wake of a prominent School of Medicine professor’s suspension from Yale, faculty members have expressed lingering concerns about due process and damage to the University’s research environment. 

Early Wednesday morning, the News reported that Haifan Lin, a professor of cell biology and director of the Stem Cell Center, was placed on paid administrative leave by Yale officials in January following an ongoing criminal investigation into the professor by the U.S. Department of Justice and a related internal University investigation. Hours earlier, Yale officials had sent a letter with details about Lin’s suspension in response to widespread faculty concerns over the matter.

Now, professors continue to assert that the University took premature action against Lin, and many called for his full reinstatement in a joint statement from the faculty of YSM’s Cell Biology Department and the Stem Cell Center, released on Twitter on Thursday afternoon. Additionally, in separate interviews with the News, two School of Medicine professors, both of whom requested anonymity for fear of professional retaliation, described an environment of fear for members of Yale’s research community. 

“Haifan is a super careful person who follows all rules,” one professor said. “A lot of us junior Asian American scientists basically see, how could we do better than Haifan? Basically, this is what’s going to happen to us next, right? If Haifan can be disappeared, we can be disappeared, easily.” 

The joint statement noted that in the case of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Gang Chen, a professor who was arrested by the DOJ under the China Initiative, school officials did not suspend Chen during his investigation, but only after his arrest. The University’s earlier response described the two sets of circumstances “different” and reiterated that the internal investigation is ongoing.

“We have complete confidence in [Lin],” the joint statement reads. “We are equally confident that the Department of Justice investigation will only reveal that he has been the victim of poorly conceived federal policies. This pre-emptory suspension is on the face of it deeply un-American because it applied a penalty to Haifan before due process could be completed and apparently before affording him the chance to defend himself.”

University Vice President of Communications Nathaniel Nickerson did not immediately return a request for comment on the joint statement.

Nearly 100 faculty signed a Mar. 9 letter claiming that due process had been violated in Lin’s case given the lack of apparent evidence of wrongdoing. Six days later, the University Provost and School of Medicine dean sent a response to those faculty, stating that the University was providing Lin with legal protection amid a National Institute of Health inquiry and a Justice Department investigation that alleged Lin had not sufficiently reported instances of “outside support” for his research. 

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