In Japan, University of Tokyo fires AI professor over ‘will not hire Chinese’ tweet
- Artificial intelligence researcher Shohei Ohsawa also said ‘lower-class citizens who do not understand Japanese’ were speaking out against him
- His dismissal has sparked heated debate on Twitter, where users are alleging the university’s campus is ‘full of Chinese spies’
The University of Tokyo has sacked an associate professor over a series of anti-Chinese comments he posted on Twitter last year, triggering a heated debate online.
“I will not bother to hold an interview if [I learn the applicant is] Chinese. I will eliminate the applicant in document screening,” he wrote, adding: “Workers with low performance levels deserve to be discriminated against in the context of capitalism.”
The University of Tokyo cited other reasons for the disciplinary action, including Ohsawa’s allegation that the Information, Technology, and Society in Asia course run by the institution was under the control of anti-Japanese forces. It also removed Ohsawa’s profile from its faculty member information page.
In response, Ohsawa said his dismissal was “unfair” and that the university was “wrong in making light of Japan’s AI technology development while valuing the diversity of various Asian countries”.