John,
     Over the past thirty years I have been the direct supervisor for approximately one hundred full-time UTK employees, of whom about a dozen were on H1B visa status while employed here. These were essentially all supported by external funding sources which had limited duration. Many of these, but not all, were postdoctoral appointments with a generally limited time stated in their employment letter. As you know, there are very explicit requirements to allow UTK to hire a non-US citizen who doesn't have green card authorization. The process has changed over the decades and I relied greatly on the International Office here (with many, many interactions with Wendy Slyer particularly over this time) to help make sure we followed the INS rules in hiring people. Wendy and others were of great help in allowing me to know the rules to ensure that we treated all these employees fairly when the funding supporting their position was ending.
 
   I felt it was my obligation to be as supportive as possible of these employees, both US and non-US, as the funding for their position ended or as they were reaching the end date stated in their appointment letter. Particularly for the non-US citizen employees it was a very stressful time as they often wished to remain in the US. The International Office worked with me, the employee and whoever was the business manager I worked with at the time to be very clear about the rules and tell us options. If the end-date in an  employee's appointment letter was arriving, they were informed how long they could remain in the US legally - my memory is that this varied over the decades but I relied on the International Office to be up-to-date on the INS rules. Quite a few of these employees on H1B visas had arranged new positions in the US but with a gap that would have placed them in some difficulty regarding their visa. For many of these individuals, I had the flexibility to reassign their work to a different funding source, we worked with the International Office to complete the paperwork to extend their H1B (typically by a few months) and the employee was very appreciative of our efforts.
 
   I am very proud of my care in treating all our employees as fairly as possible when funding for their position was ending. I am also thankful that I was sufficiently successful in obtaining external funding that I had some flexibility to assist employees at a stressful time in their careers. One indication of the benefit of this approach is that two of those international employees I supervised on postdoctoral appointments went on to take positions elsewhere, and have since returned to be colleagues here at UTK in tenure-track faculty positions. 
 
  All of the above informed my responses to the variety of individuals, some of whom were reporters and some not, who asked me about the case of former Professor Hu. As I endeavored to be supportive of employees whose visa status would be affected by my decisions regarding their employment, I have hoped that others here at UTK would be similarly supportive. It is the right thing to do to enhance our reputation as a University that cares about the well-being of all our employees.
 
Stay well,
        Lou
 
-- 
Louis J. Gross (he, him, his)
Chancellor’s Professor and Alvin and Sally Beaman Distinguished Professor
     of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics
Director Emeritus, National Institute for Mathematical and Biological
     Synthesis (NIMBioS.org)
Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling
University of Tennessee - Knoxville
President, 2006-2007, 2021-2022, UTK Faculty Senate
Past-President, 2003-2005, Society for Mathematical Biology
http://lgross.utk.edu/
9/24/2021