The wife of data privacy professor Xiaofeng Wang, who was fired from his tenured job at Indiana University, Bloomington (IU) the same day the couple’s houses were searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last month, said on Monday that she believes her family has been unfairly targeted by the US government and is the victim 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 said.

This is the first time Ma has spoken publicly since the FBI searches occurred in late March. She appeared at a webinar hosted by the Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), a nonprofit group formed in early 2021 to advocate for the rights and recognition of Asian American scholars. Ma worked as a library analyst at the university before she was also abruptly fired from IU days before the FBI searched two of the couple's homes, 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 said. “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 concerns among academics that a shuttered Department of Justice program called the China Initiative is being revived under the new Trump administration. The campaign, which was started during President Trump’s first term in office with the stated goal of combating economic espionage, was accused by critics of unfairly targeting Chinese-born researchers and other Asian-immigrant and Asian-American academic communities. The DOJ later abandoned the program under the Biden administration after it lost or withdrew a number of associated cases.

One of the most high-profile of them was the case of MIT professor Gang Chen, who was charged in 2021 under the China initiative for allegedly failing to disclose links to several Chinese institutions in grant applications. Chen also spoke at Monday’s webinar. The charges against him were dropped the following year after the disclosures were found not to be required by the federal government.

“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 said. “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 said, speaking directly to Ma.

Brian Sun, a member of the AASF legal advisory council said at the webinar that there currently appears 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 representative Grace Meng of New York, who gave a keynote speech at the event, said she’s concerned about efforts by the current 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.”

Chris Bavender, a spokesperson for the FBI, declined to comment. Indiana University did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The school said in a previous statement that “at the direction of the FBI, Indiana University will not make any public comments regarding this investigation. In accordance with Indiana University practices, Indiana University will also not make any public comments regarding the status of this individual.”

WIRED first reported that IU had allegedly been probing whether for months he received unreported research funding from China. Indiana University contacted Wang in December to ask about a 2017-2018 grant from a Chinese source that allegedly listed Wang as a researcher, according to an unsigned statement seen by WIRED that appeared to be written by Purdue University professor Ninghui Li, a longtime collaborator of Wang.

The statement said that the author believed IU was concerned that Wang allegedly failed to properly disclose the funding to the university and in applications for US federal research grants. It also said that Wang had apparently recently accepted a position with a university in Singapore.

On March 28, IU terminated Wang’s job via an email sent by provost Rahul Shrivastav, which WIRED obtained and was first reported by The Indiana Daily Student. The email also said it was understood that Wang had recently accepted a position with a Singaporean university.

Wang is one of the best-known researchers in the field of privacy, data security, and biometric privacy. Over the years, he has received funding from a variety of federal sources, including the US National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the US Army Research Office, according to a WIRED review of his academic publications.

Chen, the MIT professor, said that what happened to Wang is having broader impacts on the academic research community and could potentially deter scholars from working with international collaborators. “It is clear that such events, together with legislation and hostile rhetorics, are driving out our talents, deterring [researchers] from coming, and harming US competitiveness and national security,” he said.