During Dr. Xu's appointment at UMBC (2016-2020), Dr. Xu identified multiple unprofessional incidents related with a senior faculty (who held administrative position in the department and later in the Dean's office), including deliberate manipulation of graduate student admission, rotation, student adviser selection and student qualifier exam. This senior faculty also openly spoke that "Chinese students are historically terrible" during graduate committee meeting with faculty members and graduate student representatives. This senior faculty insulted UMBC colleagues verbally and in writing. This faculty used power to delay and sabotage the career success of two Chinese background faculty in the department (both left UMBC in 2020), racial-profiling of Chinese and Iranian students, and manipulated graduate students to attack junior faculty. Dr. Xu expressed strong concerns about these unprofessional behaviors, some colleagues implied that this faculty was a racist. Dr. Xu filed a 27-page racial discrimination allegations against this faculty. This 27-page allegations were submitted to the UMBC human relation office in July 2019 and resubmitted to the UMBC Office of Equity & Inclusion in May 2020.

In Nov. 2017, two graduate students in the Xu lab were apparently manipulated by a senior faculty to allege that Dr. Xu committed "academic misconduct" (inferred from students' and another faculty's testimony). Vice President for Research (VPR) office immediately secured Xu lab notebooks and computers to investigate these allegations. UMBC were basing the accusations on two events: (1) HPLC was not used in one research article to report a data (31.5 mg/L); (2) including graduate students as co-authors who did not contribute much (which A LOT of professors do). Both errors were corrected in Fall 2019 (Correction 1, correction 2). The questionable data (31.5 mg/L) was later reproduced in three follow-on articles authored by two other researchers in the Xu lab. The data (31.5 mg/L) is not "falsified", simply a different method was used: the first author wrote that she used HPLC, but she didn't. To report the titer, Dr. Xu used a technically-equivalent spectrometric method to measure the data (31.5 mg/L). UMBC also intentionally sabotaged Dr. Xu's opportunity to acquire federal grant from NIH (R35GM133620, budget $ 1.44 M) despite that NIH program directors requested multiple times to finalize the R35 award (8 emails from NIH). Both NIH (official letter) and NSF (official letter) concluded that there was no “discernible” concerns related to Dr. Xu's publication and proposal submission.

In March 2019, Dr. Xu's mid-term tenure review was approved and his contract was renewed for another three years (2019-2022) by UMBC President. On 4/29/2019, VPR president asked Dr. Xu to remove the paper containing the "questionable data (31.5 mg/L)" on his biosketch for any future proposal submission. On 5/29/2019, Dr. Xu neutrally commented the hireability of a faculty candidate (who was interviewed for a senior position in the department) and voted "abstain", because faculty members identified inaccurate scholar citations and misrepresented NIH grant information on the candidate's CV. This candidate was strongly supported by the Dean and the VPR's office and was hired as a full professor in Fall 2019. Immediately after the voting, Provost office terminated Dr. Xu's contract for "falsification of scientific data (31.5 mg/L)" and "inappropriate handling of authorship" on June 5, 2019. Provost's letter identified that Dr. Xu had 30 days to submit a request for hearing and appeal, based on faculty handbook. However, within 4 working days, inconsistent document was issued from UMBC President's office. UMBC President preempted the provost's decision and rescinded Dr. Xu's rights of "hearing and appeal" (attached here), stating that Dr. Xu misrepresented his CV or publication history by "falsifying scientific data (31.5 mg/L)" and "including grad students as co-authors" during mid-term tenure review. UMBC's accusation of "falsification of data" contained no factual evidence and is baseless (allegation & facts). Dr. Xu had no idea why UMBC coerced Dr. Xu to accept the “falsification of data” accusation, intentionally sabotaged Dr. Xu's NIH funding application and didn't afford Dr. Xu the due process to appeal. UMBC is obviously targeting Dr. Xu for a specific reason: to protect the senior faculty (associate dean) who is a racist and manipulated graduate student to attack Dr. Xu. [Here is the long story].

Dr. Xu has sought all possible legal venues to complain UMBC's wrongly accused "academic misconduct" and retaliation, including 7 offices: UMBC's Office of Vice President for Research, UMBC's Office of human relation, UMBC's faculty senate (grievance committee), UMBC's Office of Equity & Inclusion (OEI), University Systems of Maryland's Chancellor office, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR). Three offices (OEI, EEOC and OCR) were willing to listen to Dr. Xu's complaints, but none of them could provide support because they did not understand the complicated science relevant to this subject. EEOC has issued the "Notice of Suit Rights" letter. Dr. Xu's attorney has submitted a formal legal complaint to the federal court on 3/30/2021.

The recent Presidential election tells us that civilian rights must be earned with truth, fight and respect. We should work in solidarity to advance social justice and academic freedom for all American scientists, including faculty members, researchers, students and scholars, whose voices are always silenced in front of authority and political power. After four years being an educator, mentor and researcher at UMBC, Dr. Xu increasingly felt that true diversity and inclusion should abstain from pretextual charge and targeting of Asian scientists. Perception is the reality. It would cause a tremendous setback in America's global competitiveness and probably a brain drain in reverse, warns Frank Wu, law professor and President of Queens College at the City University of New York.

Herein, Dr. Xu launches this petition and requests the UMBC honored President Hrabowski (who held this position for almost 30 years and relentlessly promote 'inclusion and diversity') must take actions to

• (1) Convene a third-party external committee to investigate the racial discrimination & retaliation allegations Dr. Xu has reported to the University (27 pages report & evidence);

• (2) Revise UMBC faculty handbook and authorize faculty senates to be representatives to hear complaints about contract termination and academic misconduct investigation, should the afflicted faculty members believe that they are unfairly treated or wrongly accused even the president makes the decision;

• (3) Hold the administrative team (VPR's office and Dean's office) accountable, when they abuse their entrusted power and misguide the Provost and President's decision in Dr. Xu's case;

• (4) Stop racial profiling and pretextutal accusation of Asian background scholars at UMBC;

• (5) Restore Dr. Xu's reputation to the federal funding agency NSF, NIH and DOE.

If you support Dr. Xu, please sign this petition with your name and affiliation. Feel free to leave any anonymous comments (optional). You can check all signed names and anonymous comments in the appendix section.

Dr. Xu would like to conclude this petition by quoting the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzu (approx. 6th century BC) "Can you cleanse your inner vision until you see nothing but the light? Can you lead people without imposing your will? This is the supreme virtue. "(Tao Te Ching, vers 10. 《道德经》原文, "涤除玄鉴，能无疵乎？ ... 为而不恃，长而不宰，是谓玄德"), and the philosopher of the French Renaissance, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) , " He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak ". Truth and justice will triumph over lies and defamatory speculations, and the light shall shine upon thy way.

Thank you for your time and I hope you all stay healthy and enjoy the beginning of 2021.

Peng Xu, PhD

Email: pxu999@gmail.com

Google scholar profile

Former UMBC lab profile

Link to petition signature

Link to anonymous comments

Link to a quote made by Qing dynasty scholar in China