#263 Return of Anming Hu; AAJC on Land Laws; Spying on USPS Mail; Vincent Chin's Legacy; +

In This Issue #263

·       The Return of Exonerated Professor Anming Hu

·       Advancing Justice | AAJC Speaks Up on Discriminatory Land Laws

·       WP: Law Enforcement is Spying on Thousands of Americans' Mail

·       FBI Released 602 Pages of Its Vincent Chin Files

·       News and Activities for the Communities

The next APA Justice monthly meeting will be held via Zoom today, July 1, 2024, starting at 1:55 pm ET.  In addition to Nisha Ramachandran, Joanna YangQing Derman, and Gisela Perez Kusakawa. confirmed invited speakers include Neal Lane, Kei Koizumi, Xiaoxing Xi, and Karla Hagan.  Please register to attend.  The virtual monthly meeting is by invitation only. It is closed to the press. If you wish to join, either one time or for future meetings, please contact one of the co-organizers of APA Justice - Steven Pei 白先慎, Vincent Wang 王文奎, and Jeremy Wu 胡善庆 - or send a message to contact@apajustice.org.

The Return of Exonerated Professor Anming Hu

Professor Anming Hu returned and spoke at the APA Justice monthly meeting on June 3, 2024.  It has been almost three years since he was fully acquitted of all charges against him under the now-defunct China Initiative.Professor Hu was born in China, a naturalized Canadian citizen, and Professor of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK).On February 27, 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment of Professor Hu.  He was the second China Initiative case involving a U.S. university professor of Asian ancestry.  He was charged with three counts each of wire fraud and making false statements, but not espionage. The charges stemmed from his purported failure to disclose affiliations with a Chinese university while receiving funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).At the time of his arrest, he was a tenured professor.  After his arrest, UTK suspended him without pay and then terminated his employment on October 8, 2020.Professor Hu was the first academic to go to trial under the China Initiative.  A mistrial was declared on June 16, 2021, after the jury deadlocked.  On September 9, 2021, Judge Thomas Varlan acquitted Professor Hu of all charges in his indictment.  “The government has failed to provide sufficient evidence from which any rational jury could find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that defendant had specific intent to defraud NASA by hiding his affiliation with BJUT [Beijing University of Technology] from UTK," the judge wrote.On October 14, 2021, UTK offered to reinstate Professor Hu.  On February 1, 2022, Professor Hu returned to his laboratory.

During the APA Justice monthly meeting on June 6, 2024, Professor Hu provided updates on his situation and his family's well being since his return to UTK.   He expressed gratitude to his attorney Phil Lomonaco, members of the UTK Faculty Senate, Congressional representatives, CAPAC, and various Asian American justice organizations for their support.Professor Hu spent a year rebuilding his lab with startup support from the university's leadership. He acquired new equipment and repaired old, damaged devices. Despite recovering about 95% of his equipment, nearly 50% were malfunctioning and 30% were completely damaged.With help from collaborators, two of his PhD students graduated in 2022 and 2023.Professor Hu focused on applying for external funds and hiring new students. He secured one federal and one industrial fund, enabling him to hire one new PhD student and two undergraduates. However, his lab size is still only about 30% of its previous capacity, and it may take another one to two years to fully recover.The wrongful prosecution caused significant mental and physical harm to his family. They continue to struggle with sleep issues and anxiety, and Professor Hu sometimes needs medication to sleep. His wife still becomes anxious when receiving phone calls in the afternoon, a reminder of the day Professor Hu was arrested.In the past two years, the family has shared their experience with colleagues, friends, and church groups. Professor Hu also participated in panel discussions on the China Initiative and civil rights.

Despite his reinstatement, the US government continued to falsely accuse him of being part of China's Thousand Talents Program. With support from lawyers and Congressional representatives Judy Chu, Ted Lieu, and Jamie Raskin, his U.S. permanent residency was approved in March 2024. Recently, his older son's green card was also approved.A summary for the June 3 APA Justice monthly meeting is being prepared at this time. APA Justice has compiled Professor Hu's story as an impacted scientist under the China Initiative.  It is posted for beta review for its content, navigation, and links at https://bit.ly/44V5tOG.  Please send your comments and feedback to contact@apajustice.org. 

Advancing Justice | AAJC Speaks Up on Discriminatory Land Laws 

During the APA Justice monthly meeting on June 3, 2024, Joanna YangQing Derman, Director, Anti-Profiling, Civil Rights & National Security Program, Advancing Justice | AAJC, reported that John Yang, President and Executive Director of AAJC, testified before the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee on May 29. The hearing addressed three interim charges or topics, one of which was foreign investment in Texas land. John Yang emphasized AAJC’s deep concern about the resurgence of discriminatory land laws under the guise of national security. He underscored the historical context of AAPI discrimination and called for robust research to accurately identify the issues these land laws aim to address. John successfully countered harmful and overbroad anti-China rhetoric that conflates Chinese individuals with the Chinese government. Overall, it was a successful testimony, with special credit to Asian Texans for Justice (ATJ) for facilitating the opportunity and playing a critical role in coordinating the response. John Yang’s written testimony is posted here: https://bit.ly/3zkxgwe.  A summary for the June 3 APA Justice monthly meeting is being prepared at this time. 

WP: Law Enforcement is Spying on Thousands of Americans' Mail

According to the Washington Post on June 24, 2024,  

·       The U.S. Postal Service shares mail data with law enforcement without warrants.

·       More than 60,000 requests have been received since 2015, with a 97% acceptance rate.

·       A group of senators want judicial oversight, but the chief inspector declined to change the policy.

The U.S. Postal Service has shared information from thousands of Americans’ letters and packages with law enforcement every year for the past decade, conveying the names, addresses and other details from the outside of boxes and envelopes without requiring a court order.Postal inspectors say they fulfill such requests only when mail monitoring can help find a fugitive or investigate a crime. But a decade’s worth of records, provided exclusively to The Washington Post in response to a congressional probe, show Postal Service officials have received more than 60,000 requests from federal agents and police officers since 2015, and that they rarely say no.Each request can cover days or weeks of mail sent to or from a person or address, and 97 percent of the requests were approved, according to the data. Postal inspectors recorded more than 312,000 letters and packages between 2015 and 2023, the records show.The IRS, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were among the top requesters.

In a letter in May 2023, a group of eight senators, including Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), urged the agency to require a federal judge to approve the requests and to share more details on the program, saying officials there had chosen to “provide this surveillance service and to keep postal customers in the dark about the fact they have been subjected to monitoring.”In a response earlier this month, the chief postal inspector, Gary Barksdale, declined to change the policy but provided nearly a decade’s worth of data showing that postal inspectors, federal agencies, and state and local police forces made an average of about 6,700 requests a year, and that inspectors additionally recorded data from about another 35,000 pieces of mail a year, on average.The practice, he added, had been legally authorized since 1879, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that government officials needed a warrant before opening any sealed letter.Wyden said in a statement, “These new statistics show that thousands of Americans are subjected to warrantless surveillance each year, and that the Postal Inspection Service rubber stamps practically all of the requests they receive.” He also criticized the agency for “refusing to raise its standards and require law enforcement agencies monitoring the outside of Americans’ mail to get a court order, which is already required to monitor emails and texts.”In their letter last year, the senators said that even the exteriors of mail could be deeply revealing for many Americans, giving clues about the people they talk to, the bills they pay, the churches they attend, the political views they subscribe to and the social causes they support.Read the Washington Post report: https://wapo.st/3Xxr9yO

FBI Released 602 Pages of Its Vincent Chin Files

Without explanation, the FBI released 602 pages of its files on Vincent Chin during the week of his murder 42 years ago.  Helen Zia published an essay at the Vincent Chin Institute about its good, bad, and ugly on June 26, 2024.  This is an AI-assisted summary of her essay: 

The Good

·       Community Support and Advocacy: The essay highlights the significant support and advocacy from the Asian American community and various organizations in seeking justice for Vincent Chin.

·       Awareness of Anti-Asian Hate: The release of the FBI documents and the efforts to commemorate Vincent Chin's legacy help raise awareness of anti-Asian hate and the historical context of such violence.

·       Legacy and Education: The essay emphasizes the importance of educating others about Vincent Chin's case and the ongoing fight against racial prejudice, contributing to a more informed and empathetic society.

The Bad

·       Incomplete Investigation: The FBI documents are incomplete, missing critical details from the Wayne County criminal proceedings and failing to interview key witnesses, which hindered the investigation and justice process.

·       Inadequate Judicial Response: The essay criticizes the judicial system's response, particularly the sentencing judge's decision to release the attackers on probation and fines, which highlights systemic racial biases.

·       Media Bias: The essay points out how media coverage at the time failed to grasp or acknowledge the anti-Asian prejudice involved in the case, often casting doubt on the racial motivations behind the crime.

The Ugly

·       Racially Motivated Violence: The brutal attack on Vincent Chin, driven by racial hatred and scapegoating during an economic recession, represents the ugly reality of racially motivated violence and bigotry.

·       Traumatic Aftermath: The essay describes the trauma endured by Vincent Chin's family and the Asian American community, exacerbated by the lack of justice and recognition from the judicial system.

·       Enduring Prejudice: The essay underscores the persistent ignorance and harmful stereotypes surrounding Asian Americans, both in the past and present, highlighting the ongoing struggle against racial prejudice and discrimination.

Overall, the essay provides a detailed account of the events surrounding Vincent Chin's death, the community's response, and the broader implications for understanding and combating racial hatred.  Read Helen Zia's essay: https://bit.ly/4eN4Nzg.  Read the 602-page FBI case file: https://bit.ly/3RQobSt 

Vincent Chin's Legacy on Asian American Activism

According to the Washington Post on June 26, 2024, when Vincent Chin, a Chinese American groom-to-be, was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat by two white Detroit autoworkers in 1982, his loved ones’ cries for justice fell on deaf ears.  The autoworkers who attacked Vincent Chin did so under the false belief that he was Japanese, attributing the auto industry’s hardships to foreign competition from Japan.It took twelve full days before the media reported his killing — without recognizing the racism involved, remembers Curtis Chin, the nephew of Vincent Chin’s best man. Nine months later, judge Charles Kaufman handed the perpetrators just three years’ probation and a $3,780 fine, reasoning that “These aren’t the kind of men you send to jail.”Despite media silence and a lenient sentence for the perpetrators, Chin's case galvanized Asian Americans to unite across ethnic lines.Today, advocates still ensure that Vincent Chin’s name is never forgotten. In the wake of his death anniversary, and amid increasing xenophobia worldwide, his story provides guiding light for the struggle toward equality.Curtis Chin found his calling in the experience, and instead of taking over Chung’s — his family’s restaurant of five decades — spent the next 30 years elevating Asian American voices as a writer and a filmmaker. In his memoir and his documentary, “Vincent Who?,” Curtis Chin recounts Vincent Chin’s story and the racial animosity of 1980s Detroit.For Helen Zia, an activist who moved to Detroit in 1976 and took up work at an auto plant, Chin’s case laid bare the glaring injustices that Asian Americans faced: “There were two legal organizations in the whole country, one in New York and one in California,” Zia says. “We were in Detroit, and they couldn’t help us.”

Zia rallied leaders from Detroit’s Chinatown and local lawyers to support Vincent Chin's mother Lily Chin and co-founded the American Citizens for Justice, which helped secure a federal trial for Vincent Chin. Zia launched the Vincent Chin Institute in 2022 to fill the void Asian American Detroiters found themselves in four decades ago through advocacy, education, and resources for Asian Americans in underserved areas.In the 21st century, the killing of Vincent Chin continues to energize Asian American advocacy and presence. Law students reenact his trial to highlight legal shortcomings. Hollywood has adapted his case into films like “Hold Still, Vincent” and “Who Killed Vincent Chin?”The fear of foreign economic threat parallels modern “anti-China hysteria and scapegoating,” says Stop AAPI Hate co-founder Cynthia Choi, pointing to how COVID-19 was racialized and fueled attacks on Asians across the country.  The Vincent Chin case remains a cornerstone for Asian American advocacy, inspiring films, reenactments, and organizations like Stop AAPI Hate, which combats rising xenophobia and discrimination. Despite the progress achieved, advocates against anti-Asian hate assert that there is still considerable work ahead in every sector, from the workplace to the entertainment industry.  The comprehensive history of Asian Americans, for instance, continues to be excluded from core K-12 history curricula in the United States. Some advocates like John Yang, the president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice AAJC, are turning their attention to what they say is a new form of anti-Asian hate: a growing number of bills preventing some Chinese citizens from buying and owning land.  “Everyone is concerned about whether an Asian American is truly an American, and so they’re not being shown the same houses, they’re not being afforded the same opportunities,” Yang says.

Wilson Lee, co-founder of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Boston Lodge and the Chinese American Heritage Foundation, has organized a vigil for Vincent Chin every June 23 for the past six years. “We’re in it for the long haul,” Lee tells the Associated Press. “Because it’s the right thing to do, not because it’s the popular thing to do.”On June 21, 2024, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus issued a press statement marking the 42nd Anniversary of the murder of Vincent Chin: https://bit.ly/4cdUAKTRead the Washington Post report: https://wapo.st/3VHk4Jf.  Visit the Vincent Chin Institute website: https://bit.ly/39Bu0QQ

News and Activities for the Communities

1.  APA Justice Community Calendar

Upcoming Events:2024/07/01 APA Justice Monthly Meeting2024/07/01 President's Advisory Commission Public Meeting - Livestreaming2024/07/02 President's Advisory Commission Public Meeting - In Person2024/07/03 Hearing on Preliminary Injunction on Florida SB 8462024/07/07 Rep. Gene Wu's Town Hall Meeting2024/07/11-12 National AAPI Leadership Summit2024/07/13 APIAVote: Presidential Town Hall, Philadelphia PA2024/07/15 APIAVote: RNC Convention, AAPI Briefing &Reception, Milwaukee, WI2024/07/16-17 National Science, Technology, and Security Roundtable - Capstone2024/08/04 Rep. Gene Wu's Town Hall MeetingThe Community Calendar has moved.  Visit https://bit.ly/3XD61qV for event details.

2. New Appointments at Johns Hopkins University 

Starting July 1, 2024, Professor Jessica Chen Weiss joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC as the David M. Lampton Professor of China Studies and the inaugural director of a new institute on the evolving role of China in the world to be established this fall at SAIS, bringing together scholars, practitioners and experts from the private sector to foster deeper understanding and informed policy making.  Professor Chen Weiss comes to SAIS from Cornell University, where she was the Michael J. Zak Professor for China and Asia-Pacific Studies in the Department of Government. From August 2021 to July 2022, she served as senior advisor to the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. State Department on a Council on Foreign Relations Fellowship for Tenured International Relations Scholars.Also starting July 1, 2024, Jeremy Lee Wallace has been named the A. Doak Barnett Professor of China Studies, also starting July 1, 2024; and he will be affiliated with the new institute at SAIS as well as the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins. Read the Johns Hopkins University announcement: https://bit.ly/4beT3CJ