#408 Frank Wu Remarks; August Meeting Highlights; AAU on OMB Rules; Inside Higher Ed Report

In This Issue #408

·      Frank Wu Remarks on the Misleading Argument About Racism Raised During the House Select Committee Hearing on China

·      More August 2026 APA Justice Monthly Meeting Highlights

·      AAU: White House's Proposed Restrictions on International Science Collaboration "A Mistake"

·      Agencies Move to Implement OMB’s Proposed Takeover of Grant Making

·      News and Activities for the Communities

Frank Wu Remarks on the Misleading Argument About Racism Raised During the House Select Committee Hearing on China

At the July 6, 2026 APA Justice Meeting, Frank Wu, a leading scholar on racism toward minority communities who recently retired as the 11th president of Queens College, City University of New York, shared his perspective on the argument made during a House Select Committee on the CCP hearing, where a witness and a committee member argued that a person “cannot be racist because he is married to a Chinese woman.”

Placing the Argument in Historical Context

Frank situated this exchange within the broader arc of American civil rights history. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he noted, American society has largely rejected explicit racial stereotyping — but this is a “fragile consensus” that took decades to build, and one that does not extend evenly to all groups.

Asian Americans, Frank argued, do not always fall inside this consensus because they do not fit the traditional Black-White civil rights paradigm familiar to most Americans. Instead, they are persistently viewed through a lens of foreignness and national security – particularly during periods of geopolitical tension  — leaving Asian Americans subject to the enduring “perpetual foreigner” stereotype. National security concerns, he noted, have historically created conditions in which discrimination against Asian Americans becomes socially acceptable, even as similar treatment of other groups would be widely condemned.

Why "I'm Married to a Chinese Woman" Misses the Point

Frank directly addressed the hearing exchange, cautioning against generalizing the actions or traits of a small number of individuals to an entire ethnic community - describing this generalization as the core mechanism of racial stereotyping itself. A personal relationship, he suggested, does not inoculate someone from perpetuating harmful stereotypes about an entire community.

He also cited the Committee of 100 polling data showing that the general American public holds more favorable views of Chinese people and China than many policymakers and political leaders do, suggesting that some of the rhetoric emerging from Washington may be out of step with broader public sentiment.

Focus on Impact, Not Intent 

Frank’s central recommendation: debate over whether someone is personally “a racist” are a distraction and an unwinnable argument. Instead, he urged focusing on the real-world effects and impacts of people's words and actions, regardless of their intent — a framework he argued is both more productive and harder to deflect than litigating someone's inner character.

More August 2026 APA Justice Monthly Meeting Highlights

At APA Justice's August 2026 monthly meeting, Roger Innes — a Distinguished Professor of Biology at Indiana University and a leading plant pathologist — offered a firsthand account of how National Science Foundation’s (NSF's) new research security policy and Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB's) proposed grantmaking overhaul are playing out in an active, NSF-funded lab.

Why International Collaboration Matters in His Field

Roger opened with a vivid illustration of the stakes: plant disease resistance and food security research depends fundamentally on international collaboration, since researchers work to protect U.S. crops from pathogens that cross borders freely, regardless of geopolitics. Roger is NSF-funded and has employed numerous international postdocs over the years, including several from China — several of whom have since returned home and now run their own labs there, relationships he maintains to this day.

Routine Science, Now Caught in Ambiguity

Roger's account connected directly to the "vague definition of collaboration" problem raised earlier in the meeting by Kenny Evans and Tam Dao of Rice University. Practices that are entirely routine in his field — exchanging biological materials like plant seed and plasmid DNA with international colleagues, something both expected and often required by funding agencies and journals as a condition of publication — are now caught in ambiguity under the new rules.

In direct response, Indiana University has implemented a policy requiring express permission before shipping or requesting biological materials to or from any lab in China, with a review process that now takes about a month to determine compliance.

A Policy Working Against Its Own Stated Goal

Roger argued this new review process is significantly slowing down research — and, in his view, is being used by both government and universities to shut down international collaborations outright. He described this as producing the opposite of the policy's stated purpose: rather than protecting U.S. science from IP theft, the added friction risks cutting American researchers off from cutting-edge innovations happening in leading labs abroad, particularly in China, which he described as a leader in his own field of plant disease resistance.

"Jaw-Dropping": Roger's Reaction to the OMB Proposal

Turning to the OMB grantmaking rule, Roger called the proposal "jaw-dropping," expressing alarm that it would politicize all federally funded work — pure science and social-support programs alike — by subjecting grant decisions to political appointee review rather than traditional peer review.

He framed the scientific community's core objection simply: funding should go to the best science, not the most politically palatable science, and this policy risks effectively ending peer review as the basis for federal research funding altogether. Roger noted the strong pushback the proposal has already generated across the scientific community — consistent with the nearly 497,000 public comments we have reported — leaving an open question of whether OMB will respond to those concerns, or whether Congress will act if it does not.

Roger's account puts a human face on the policy debates APA Justice has tracked closely this year — showing how abstract rulemaking translates into monthlong compliance delays, chilled international collaboration, and researchers questioning whether routine scientific exchange is even permissible anymore. His observation that China now leads in aspects of his own field underscores a recurring theme across our recent coverage: that policies aimed at protecting U.S. science risk instead isolating it, at real cost to the researchers — including the many Chinese and Chinese American scientists — who make that science possible.

Report by Joanna YangQing Derman

During the same meeting, Joanna YangQing Derman, Director at Advancing Justice | AAJC, reported that the House passed the FY27 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 880) on July 22 by a bipartisan vote of 216-212. The bill heads to the Senate for consideration and negotiation. As in past years, AAJC plans to send a letter to NDAA conferees outlining AAPI priorities, and is currently tracking relevant amendments in both the House and Senate versions to inform that letter. More details will follow as they become available.

AAJC is also reviewing state-level "land laws" (state restrictions on land ownership by certain foreign nationals or entities) and updating AAJC's federal and state-level tracker, targeted for completion by the end of August recess, in addition to other public-facing materials, such as messaging guidance and a resource to help individuals assess their own state's land laws and identify community-level advocacy steps.

August 2026 Monthly Meeting Summary Posted

The August 2026 monthly meeting summary has been posted at https://bit.ly/3V4c0pj.  We thank these distinguished speakers at the August 3 meeting:

·       Judith Teruya, Executive Director, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC)

·       Joanna YangQing Derman, Director, Anti-Profiling, Civil Rights & National Security Program, Advancing Justice | AAJC

·       Tam Dao, Associate Vice President of Public Safety and Research Security, Rice University

·       Kenny Evans, Fellow in Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, Rice University

·       Roger Innes, Distinguished Professor, Biology, Indiana University

AAU: White House's Proposed Restrictions on International Science Collaboration "A Mistake"

The Association of American Universities published a detailed critique on August 26, 2026, of OMB's proposed Uniform Guidance rule — the same sweeping grantmaking overhaul we have covered extensively in recent issues — arguing that its international-collaboration restrictions go far beyond addressing genuine security risks and would instead isolate American science at precisely the moment it can least afford to.

What OMB Is Proposing

The rule would bar federal funds from being used for collaborations with "covered foreign countries" or "covered foreign entities" unless pre-authorized by an agency head or expressly permitted by statute, and would separately prohibit collaboration with countries under national-security-related sanctions. Central to the proposal: expanding the "Wolf Amendment" — currently limited to NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy's dealings with China — across the entire federal government. The rule also imposes a "domestic-first" framework restricting awards to foreign entities, and classifies most publication and international conference-travel costs as unallowable without prior agency approval.

AAU's Core Argument: This Solves Nothing That Isn't Already Addressed

AAU's central critique is that robust research security frameworks already exist — federally funded institutions already must disclose foreign funding, screen for ties to foreign talent programs, and maintain formal security programs. OMB's proposal, AAU argues, abandons that targeted approach in favor of treating entire categories of international science as inherently suspect, without clearly defining the terms ("covered foreign countries," "covered foreign entities") institutions would need to comply with.

Concrete Harms AAU and Others Have Identified

Fundamental research with no security risk would be banned outright — including U.S.-China collaboration on public health, pandemic preparedness, and food security research intended for open publication.

Multinational projects could be derailed by a single foreign participant. Stand Up for Science warned the rule could bar U.S. researchers from projects that include even one Chinese researcher — and ProPublica reported this could exclude American scientists from facilities like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which more than 60 nations contributed to and where China, Russia, India, Italy, and Pakistan have all supplied critical components or expertise.

The Wolf Amendment expansion would effectively end U.S.-China research collaboration entirely. A recent congressional report and subsequent NASA enforcement actions suggest even routine, multi-author studies with Chinese co-authors could now be treated as restricted. The Washington Post called this potentially "the largest break in U.S.-China scientific engagement in decades" — arriving at a moment when China has now overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest R&D funder. AAU's Toby Smith told the Post: "I do think there are still members of Congress who think we have a monopoly on knowledge... That is not the case with China. We are no longer the leader in many areas of science."

Even allied nations would be affected. The International Association for Great Lakes Research warned the "domestic-first" framework would hamper Great Lakes research collaboration with Canada, calling the approach "counterproductive to collaborative partnerships working on transnational problems."

International Alarm

The pushback is not limited to U.S. institutions. The League of European Research Universities warned the rule would make the U.S. a less attractive research partner; London's Royal Society said it was "deeply concerned," noting science has historically built bridges between nations "even during periods of geopolitical tension"; and the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities said the rule "would impose significant barriers on international research collaboration" essential to scientific progress.

AAU's Bottom Line

AAU's comment letter urged OMB to withdraw or substantially revise the international-collaboration provisions entirely, arguing that "a more effective approach would build on existing, targeted research security frameworks while preserving the openness and international collaboration that have long been central to U.S. scientific leadership."

A Significant Update: Senate Acts to Block the Rule

In a related AAU report published on August 13, 2026, the Senate passed a bill temporarily blocking OMB's proposed revisions to federal grantmaking processes. This marks the most concrete legislative pushback to date against the rule we have tracked since its May proposal — a potentially major development for APA Justice's ongoing coverage of this issue, and one we will aim to cover in more detail in an upcoming issue.

Why This Matters for APA Community

This AAU statement reinforces concerns we have raised throughout our coverage of the OMB rule and NSF's parallel China collaboration ban: that policies framed as national security measures risk sweeping in vast amounts of legitimate, low-risk scientific collaboration — with Asian American and Chinese American researchers, and the broader U.S.-China scientific relationship, bearing a disproportionate share of the disruption.

Agencies Move to Implement OMB’s Proposed Takeover of Grant Making

On August 24, 2026, Inside Higher Ed reported that the Education Department and NSF are moving forward with their own agency-specific rules that would implement key elements of OMB's controversial grantmaking overhaul — even though the underlying OMB rule itself has not been finalized, and a Senate-passed continuing resolution has temporarily blocked it through mid-December.

What the agencies are proposing:

·       The Education Department published a proposed rule Monday that would let the Education Secretary terminate ED grants (covering college access, workforce training, and similar programs) simply "for convenience," and would let her prioritize grant applicants who agree to lower or zero overhead cost rates. States and subgrantees receiving these grants would also have to comply with the president's executive orders — even though such orders are not supposed to carry the force of law.

·       NSF closed its own public comment period on a similar proposal, which includes language stating NSF "may act immediately to suspend or terminate [grants] if needed to protect government interests." Notably, NSF's proposal explicitly states one of its goals is "aligning with the proposed revisions to" OMB's Uniform Guidance rule — an open acknowledgment that this is meant to implement OMB's vision at the agency level.

The "runaround" framing: Amanda Fuchs Miller (Seventh Street Strategies, former Biden-era deputy assistant secretary) argues this is a deliberate workaround: after courts rejected the administration's earlier attempts to cancel grants at will, and after the OMB rule drew nearly 500,000 public comments and a temporary congressional block, individual agencies are now pursuing the same substantive powers through smaller, less-scrutinized agency-specific rules that may "fly under the radar." She warned this introduces "huge unpredictability" for colleges, whose grants could be canceled at any time.

American Council on Education (ACE) President Ted Mitchell submitted a comment on behalf of ACE and 24 other higher ed organizations expressing "deep concerns" that NSF's proposal "would incorporate many of the problematic provisions" from the OMB rule, urging NSF not to finalize its rule until the OMB rule itself is resolved. ACE's Sarah Spreitzer noted OMB has not even responded to comments on its own proposal yet, but said proceeding out of order is consistent with how the administration has operated for the past year and a half — creating chaos first, then "retroactively going back to provide the structure for those decisions."

News and Activities for the Communities

1. APA Justice Community Calendar

Upcoming Events:

2026/09/10 Beyond the party line: Chinese American partisanship and vote choice

2026/09/11 Getting Tech Right: U.S. China Policy for a New Era

2026/09/14 AAAS Town Hall with Sudip Parikh

202/6/09/24 C100 – Men of Iron and the Transcontinental Railroad

2026/09/28 Committee of 100 Awards Gala

2026/10/05 APA Justice Monthly Meeting

Visit https://bit.ly/3XD61qV for event details.

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APA Justice Task Force is a non-partisan platform to build a sustainable ecosystem that addresses racial profiling concerns and to facilitate, inform, and advocate on selected issues related to justice and fairness for the Asian Pacific American community.  For more information, please refer to the APA Justice website at www.apajusticetaskforce.org. We value your feedback. Please send your comments to contact@apajustice.org.