Peking University removes actor from post-doctoral program over academic misconduct

Peking University confirmed a Chinese actor has been found to have academic misconduct issues and would remove him from a post-doctoral program of Guanghua School of Management, the university said in a statement on Saturday.

The prestigious university admitted that interviewers and the Guanghua School of Management didn’t review and verify the applications of Zhai Tianlin carefully enough and have ordered them to "undergo profound self-criticism." 

In light of the situation, Zhai’s instructor is not allowed to further recruit new post-doctoral candidates, the university said.

Zhai, a 32-year-old actor, has a PhD from the Beijing Film Academy and was a postdoctoral candidate at the Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. His doctoral dissertations were nowhere to be found on China’s largest academic library and significant amounts of plagiarism were discovered in his other research papers. 

After his academic integrity was challenged, the actor apologized for dishonesty and said he would withdraw from the post-doctoral program at the Peking University.

The Beijing Film Academy has also started an investigation.