Orlando, the university’s spokesperson, declined to comment on a third investigation, which is still ongoing more than two years later. Li submitted his resignation three days after the second investigation. It said Li had lied about using a personal Dropbox account to share files with students and declined to restore the deleted files for the university to review. Files deleted in the months after Chen’s suicide might have been pertinent to the inquiry about how Li treated Chen, the school said. Witnesses, including administrative assistant Dina Quinn, overheard screaming in Mandarin and items crashing to the floor inside the professor’s office during one visit by Chen just a week before his death.Ī second university investigation, which ended in April, found that Li had destroyed documents and used non-UF approved communication services. Tension between Chen and Li had escalated days before Chen’s suicide. “If I ruin his reputation,” Chen wrote in a translated text, “he will kill me.” More seriously, Chen said, Li pressured him to submit false data in a research paper submitted under both their names and presented at a prestigious academic conference. He wrote that Li asked him for trips to airports and that he was responsible for driving Li’s wife and father-in-law places. In notes to friends, Chen had complained about being expected to run personal errands for Li unrelated to his studies. It cited another doctoral student of Li’s, for example, who said he was “just a normal professor and did not do bad things to us.” Complicating any settlement by the school with Chen’s family, one investigation concluded in February there was insufficient evidence to confirm that Li had mistreated Chen. Li has been the subject of at least three overlapping investigations by the university since Chen’s death. One friend was also concerned that speaking publicly could harm future academic prospects. Two of Chen’s friends declined to speak on the record about Chen’s depression, saying they already have faced legal threats from Li about speaking publicly about the case. Li said that Chen had opportunities to complain about any alleged mistreatment, that Chen could have withdrawn his problematic scientific paper at any point without interference from Li, that Li wasn’t responsible for Chen’s suicide and that Chen’s friends should have sought help for Chen’s deteriorating emotional state. Reached by email, Li would not answer specific questions but provided a 26-page statement about the case. Li resigned under pressure in May amid university investigations in the case. The divorce case alluded to a “long-distance parenting plan” for Li that was not included as part of the court records. A reporter visited all five of the former couple’s properties looking for him, and Li did not respond to questions about his whereabouts. It’s not clear where Li might be living now, or whether he has returned to China. It said the university and at least one other individual it did not identify – presumably Li – were liable in Chen’s death, and described a troubled relationship between Chen and Li. It sought unspecified payment for damages and attorney’s fees. The claim said Li “engaged in a pattern of emotional abuse, harassment, intimidation, threats and deceit” involving Chen and his studies, and said without citing evidence that the university had “notice and knowledge” of Li’s conduct and Chen’s “imminent threat of suicide.” Chen, 30, hanged himself in a university lab in June 2019 and left behind notes accusing his tenured professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Tao Li, 49, of abusive behavior and academic misconduct. The statement of claim filed by the family of Huixiang Chen with the Florida Department of Financial Services is a legal maneuver that is a precursor to a civil lawsuit against a state government agency. GAINESVILLE – The family of a University of Florida graduate student who died by suicide has filed a legal complaint seeking unspecified financial damages against the school for neglecting to intervene in what it said was mistreatment by a former professor.
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