Chinese American researchers targeted at US border

March 20, 2023

President Joseph Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Biden,

The Committee of Concerned Scientists (CCS) is an independent organization of scientists, physicians, engineers, and scholars that has been working, since 1972, on the advancement of human rights and scientific freedom for our colleagues all over the world. For over half a century, CCS has been helping persecuted scientists and scholars escape injustice.

We are asking for your assistance as we have learned that a number of Chinese American researchers, including their family members, have been stopped and questioned upon re-entering the US. A piece titled “Chinese American researchers say they were questioned at the border” by Karin Fischer in the Chronicle of Higher Education on March 1, 2023 [https://www.chronicle.com/newsletter/latitudes/2023-03-01] describes instances where professors and scientists have been subjected to harassment and interrogations at the US border.

In this article, advocates for Asian American academics describe several instances of harassment and interrogations, which have been rising over the past few months. The situation is worrisome since Chinese American researchers should feel free from the China Initiative policy of a few years ago. This policy disproportionately focused on Chinese American researchers in the U.S. Department of Justice’s sometimes overzealous efforts to uncover academic and economic espionage, and in our opinion often constituted ethnic profiling.

Ethnic profiling of Chinese scientists in the US was the subject of the National Civic Leadership Forum, for example, at the September 15–18, 2019 meeting. At this meeting, it was revealed that been about 240 prosecutions and over 1,000 investigations since the Economic Espionage Act (EEA) was enacted in 1996 [“Free Academic Exchange” Chemical & Engineering News (Nov. 9, 2019, 97(44))]. Sadly, it was also revealed that individuals with Asian names are indicted more, dismissed more, and when convicted, punished about twice as severely in EEA cases (see “Prosecuting Chinese ‘Spies’: An Empirical Analysis of the Economic Espionage Act,” Cardoza Law Review, 2018).

The climate for Chinese American researchers needs to be made more welcoming. Indeed Gisela Kusakawa (Executive Director, Asian American Scholar Forum) commented poignantly “Although the China Initiative has ended — and that was a very important and critical step — for many Chinese Americans, it is clear that they still live in a climate that’s less welcoming.” While the Asian American Scholar Forum is aiming to collect more exact data on the number of these border stops, we are aware of a few specific cases: (1) Zhigang Suo, a professor of mechanics and materials at Harvard University; (2) Hong Qi, a visiting scholar of mathematical sciences at Louisiana State University and lecturer at Queen Mary University, London; and (3) a young daughter of a Chinese American scholar traveling alone who was stopped and interrogated about the nature of her father’s research.

We ask for border officials to receive further anti-bias training and be encouraged to not focus selectively on Chinese American researchers in stopping them for secondary screening. Thank you for your attention to this very important matter and we look forward to a response from you shortly.

Respectfully,

Joel L. Lebowitz, Paul H. Plotz, Walter Reich, Eugene M. Chudnovsky, Alexander Greer
Co-Chairs, Committee of Concerned Scientists

CC:
Senator Charles E. Schumer
Senate Majority Leader
322 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (518) 431-4070
Twitter: @SenSchumer

Representative Kevin McCarthy
Speaker of the House
US House of Representatives
2468 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (661) 327-3611
Twitter: @SpeakerMcCarthy

Antony J. Blinken
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520 USA
Phone: (202) 647-4000
Twitter: @ABlinken