Last month, we noted that eminent computer scientist Bill Wulf had taken the unprecedented step of resigning from the University of Virginia to protest the ousting of UVa president Teresa Sullivan by the university’s Board of Visitors. The Board reinstated Sullivan as president a week later, and since then, many in our community have wondered if Bill would rejoin the UVa faculty. Bill has maintained his stance despite pleas from his colleagues — faculty and administration alike — including Sullivan herself. Yesterday, he publicly released a letter explaining his rationale for not “un-resigning.” Here it is, in its entirety:

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Louiqa Raschid, a professor in the School of Business, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, Department of Computer Science, and Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, and H.V. Jagadish, Bernard A. Galler Collegiate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. Louiqa and Jag co-organized a workshop on next-generational financial cyberinfrastructure on July 18-19. Earlier this month, experts in computer science as well as finance gathered outside Washington, DC, to consider the need for a new financial cyberinfrastructure, and to elucidate the computing research challenges that are arising in this increasingly interdisciplinary space. Participants were drawn […]