A Cybersecurity Professor Disappeared Amid an FBI Search. His Family Is ‘Determined to Fight’ | EUROtoday

The spouse of knowledge privateness professor Xiaofeng Wang, who was fired from his tenured job at Indiana University, Bloomington (IU) the identical day the couple’s homes have been searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation final month, mentioned on Monday that she believes her household has been unfairly focused by the US authorities and is the sufferer of what she described as “misplaced accusations of academic misconduct.”

“Our family is determined to fight, not only for ourselves, but for the broader research community who would be impacted if this type of allegation goes unchallenged,” Nianli Ma mentioned.

This is the primary time Ma has spoken publicly for the reason that FBI searches occurred in late March. She appeared at a webinar hosted by the Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), a nonprofit group fashioned in early 2021 to advocate for the rights and recognition of Asian American students. Ma labored as a library analyst on the college earlier than she was additionally abruptly fired from IU days earlier than the FBI searched two of the couple’s houses, The Indiana Daily Student reported.

“I just can’t understand how the university, to which we dedicated two decades of our lives, could treat us like this, without even telling us why or going through due process, especially for my husband,” Ma mentioned. “I’ve lost weight and have had difficulty sleeping. I feel trapped in a constant state of worry and sadness.”

Wang’s case has raised issues amongst lecturers {that a} shuttered Department of Justice program known as the China Initiative is being revived beneath the brand new Trump administration. The marketing campaign, which was began throughout President Trump’s first time period in workplace with the said aim of combating financial espionage, was accused by critics of unfairly concentrating on Chinese-born researchers and different Asian-immigrant and Asian-American educational communities. The DOJ later deserted this system beneath the Biden administration after it misplaced or withdrew various related instances.

One of probably the most high-profile of them was the case of MIT professor Gang Chen, who was charged in 2021 beneath the China initiative for allegedly failing to reveal hyperlinks to a number of Chinese establishments in grant purposes. Chen additionally spoke at Monday’s webinar. The costs in opposition to him have been dropped the next 12 months after the disclosures have been discovered to not be required by the federal authorities.

“Nianli’s story is heartbreaking. The images of the FBI raid of Nianli and Professor Xiaofeng Wang’s home brings chills to our spines,” Chen mentioned. “It brings back the fear my family and many others went through under the China Initiative. Reading the news report about you, one can not stop asking if the China Initiative has in fact returned,” he mentioned, talking on to Ma.

Brian Sun, a member of the AASF authorized advisory council mentioned on the webinar that there presently seems to be “no evidence that Xiaofeng’s case involves any kind of unlawful transfer of technology or anything that would implicate the kind of concerns that led to the founding of the China initiative.”

US consultant Grace Meng of New York, who gave a keynote speech on the occasion, mentioned she’s involved about efforts by the present US presidential administration to reinstate the China Initiative, which “did nothing to meaningfully address national security concerns and instead created a deep chilling effect on research and scientific innovation, as well as ruining the lives and livelihoods of those who were falsely charged.”