BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (AP) – Indiana University is denouncing the sentence of life in prison given to a prominent scholar who championed China's Uighur minority and who was to be a visiting faculty member at the school.

A Chinese court this week ordered the sentence against Ilham Tohti who was convicted after a closed-door trial of encouraging separatism in his writings and lectures.

Tohti was first detained in early 2013 in Beijing while on his way to IU's Bloomington campus, where he had been invited as a visiting scholar at the Institute of International Education. 

IU spokesman Mark Land tells The Herald-Times (http://bit.ly/1oiPk9I ) that Tohti's sentence is extreme.

Tohti's 20-year-old daughter, Jewher Ilham, is now a student at IU. She says her father wanted her to stay in a country with freedom.