An Indiana University biology professor who has condemned the U.S. government’s prosecution of Chinese scientists now finds himself locked out of his lab amid a federal investigation. The closure of the lab and other research space at the Bloomington campus marks the latest step in months of scrutiny of Chinese researchers and, by extension, American colleagues who have come to their defense.
Neither federal authorities nor the university, whose police department closed the labs on Thursday night, have offered a reason for the lockout, the chair of Indiana’s biology department said. But it came weeks after one of the professor’s postdoctoral students was ordered deported to China for allegedly smuggling biological materials into the United States, a move criticized by the professor, Roger W. Innes.
“It seems pretty obvious that this is an attempt by the current administration to silence people that question their activities,” Innes told The Chronicle.
