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#247 4/8 Monthly Meeting; Historic Summit; AI Talent; DOJ/DHS Task Forces; Signature Issue

In This Issue #247

·       2024/04/08 APA Justice Monthly Meeting

·       White House Holds Historic AA-NHPI Leadership Summit at UC Berkeley

·       Global Competition for AI Talent

·       Departments of Justice and Homeland Security Task Forces

·       Chinese Signatures on Police Graduation Certificates

·       News and Activities for the Communities

 

2024/04/08 APA Justice Monthly Meeting

 

The next APA Justice monthly meeting will be held via Zoom on Monday, April 8, 2024, starting at 1:55 pm ET. In addition to updates by Nisha Ramachandran, Executive Director, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC); Joanna YangQing Derman, Director, Advancing Justice | AAJC; and Gisela Perez Kusakawa, Executive Director, Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), confirmed speakers are:

·       Robert Underwood, Commissioner, President's Advisory Commission on AA and NHPI; Former Chair of CAPAC; Former President of University of Guam

·       Yvonne Lee, Commissioner, USDA Equity Commission; Former Member, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

·       Jiangeng Xue, Zhong-Ren Peng, and Chenglong Li, Officers of Florida Chinese Faculty Association and Professors of University of Florida

·       Cindy Tsai, Interim President and Executive Director, Committee of 100

David Inoue, Executive Director of the Japanese American Citizens League, will not be able to join this meeting.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. 

 

White House Holds Historic AA-NHPI Leadership Summit at UC Berkeley


 

On April 2, 2024, the White House hosted a daylong AA and NHPI Higher Education Leadership Development Summit at University of California Berkeley. According to KTVU-TV, the summit was standing room only with over 600 leaders and other stakeholders, including seasoned administrators and student members of various campus organizations. Vice President Kamala Harris provided a statement that was read by Erika Moritsugu, Deputy Assistant to the President and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AA-NHPI) Senior Liaison at the White House, welcoming the attendees and thanking them for committing to supporting the effort for all to thrive. The summit provided a panel discussion and offered strategies for advocacy on how to serve this historically underserved population. Breakout sessions at the conference included grant funding strategies for organizations seeking funding for programs.  Bringing together leaders to encourage those in the pipeline of administration in higher education is necessary to address student, faculty and staff needs adequately in the future. Read and watch the KTVU-TV report: https://bit.ly/3U8h9cYDrRobert Underwood, Member of the President's Advisory Commission on AA and NHPI and a key leader at the UC Berkeley summit, will speak at the APA Justice monthly meeting on April 8, 2024.  He is expected to remark on the renewal of the Commission and the summit at UC Berkeley. 

Below left: Dr. Robert Underwood at the UC Berkeley summit.  Below right: (from left to right) Professor Steven Pei, Co-Organizer of APA Justice; Dr. Underwood; 2013 Nobel laureate Randy Schekman; and Santa Ono, President of University of Michigan. 


 

 

Global Competition for AI Talent


MacroPolo launched its talent tracker in 2020 as artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm. While companies and institutions are racing to monetize the power of AI, the prospect of its full potential is also giving pause to governments around the world. Much uncertainty centers on how to balance AI’s power to solve a range of economic and social problems while curtailing the downsides of its potential.It is clear that a large share of the tech world’s capital and talent will be deployed toward bringing AI applications to the real world. The competition among countries in this arena will be fiercer than ever—and much of that competition will be over the indispensable input of an AI ecosystem: talent. According to MacroPolo, talent also happens to be one of the most clearly quantifiable inputs.  After three years of a pandemic and amid geopolitical ructions, MacroPolo has produced "The Global AI Talent Tracker 2.0," updating on how the balance of talent changed from 2019 to 2023. To compare apples to apples, the 2023 update, like the previous version, uses the Neural Information Processing Systems conference (NeurIPS) as its sample. For its December 2022 conference, NeurIPS accepted a record-breaking 2,671 papers with an acceptance rate of 25.6%, compared with 1,428 papers and an acceptance rate of 21.6% in 2019. According to the Brookings Institution, the United States holding a key advantage: its attractiveness to Chinese talent. Yet, this appeal is under threat by security policies that alienate Chinese scientists and immigration policies that restrict the flow of talent.

With many of the leading AI companies based in the United States—ranging from established giants like Microsoft to innovative upstarts like OpenAI—one might assume that American leadership in this industry is secure. Yet, most do not recognize the role that Chinese nationals contribute to these prominent U.S. companies. This oversight highlights how the United States’ global dominance in AI may be more fragile than assumed.Nearly one in two top AI researchers is from China.According to the MacroPolo 2023 report, China produced 47 percent of the top AI talent in 2022, far surpassing the United States (ranked second), which accounted for 18 percent of the top AI talent.The prominence of Chinese talent in AI is not surprising, given the foundational role of mathematics in AI, and the fact that American students have fallen behind in STEM fields. AI was ranked as the most popular major for three consecutive years from 2020-2023 in China, while in the United States, business is the most popular major.Structurally, the American education system—particularly at the K-12 level—is segregated and unequal and fails to prepare students for foundational subjects such as math. The highly differentiated curriculum track placing students into tracks from honors to remedial, however, serves the privileged and leaves a large majority of American students from humble beginnings behind.

Pushed by the United States’ anti-China policies and pulled by Chinese higher education’s rising stature, more top Chinese AI talent is staying in China. In 2022, 28 percent of top AI researchers were working in China, up from only 11 percent in 2019. While a small number of Chinese students have participated in espionage on behalf of Chinese authorities, treating the entire group with suspicion has morphed into anti-Asian racism, which is not only experienced on the streets and in shopping malls but also in challenges of securing research funding. Asian researchers face the highest rejection rates for National Science Foundation Grant applications—undermining the stereotypical argument of Asian exceptionalism in academia—and are increasingly leaving the United States or returning to China as a result.Some may wonder whether the United States should diversify its dependence on foreign talent. Of course, it should. However, there are few alternative sources of AI talent outside of China. While India has overtaken China in the overall number of international students in the United States, it falls significantly short in producing top AI talent, contributing just 5 percent compared to China’s 47 percent. 

Fortunately, many U.S.-educated Chinese talent want to stay and work for American companies, especially in the AI industry, as they offer better pay and work-life balance than companies in China. However, U.S. immigration policies create formidable barriers. The tightening of H-1B visa regulations has led to a sharp decline in approval rates, from 46.1 percent in fiscal year 2021 to just 14.6 percent in fiscal year 2024, with Indian applicants securing 70 percent of these visas (in 2021). Considering that the United States has established a comprehensive system to identify foreign agents through visa screenings and law enforcement framework, denying entry to any law-abiding, skilled foreign talent directly undermines America’s capacity for innovation.

Immigration is a hot topic in the 2024 presidential election, yet the focus is predominantly on undocumented migrants at the southern border rather than the highly skilled workers who are integral to American innovation. Immigrants, notably those from the Chinese community, have been instrumental in driving innovation in AI and America’s broader high-tech industry, which suffers from a domestic “talent crisis.” Addressing this challenge demands more favorable immigration policies, particularly in relation to the restrictive H1-B visa lottery system, and a reduction in the hostility faced by Chinese scientists. It is in America’s best interest to reform these systems.MacroPolo: The Global AI Talent Tracker 2.02024/04/05 Forbes opinion: US Policy Undermines Talent Flows Amid Growing Competition With China2024/04/04 Brookings Institution: US security and immigration policies threaten its AI leadership2024/03/22 New York Times: In One Key A.I. Metric, China Pulls Ahead of the U.S.: Talent2024/03/14 Washington Post: Chinese students, academics say they’re facing extra scrutiny entering U.S.

 

Departments of Justice and Homeland Security Task Forces


 

On February 16, 2023, the Departments of Justice (DOJ) published a Fact Sheet on the Disruptive Technology Strike Force.  The strike force was launched a year ago by DOJ and the Department of Commerce, alongside their partners at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security Investigations, to "fiercely protect advanced technology from being unlawfully acquired by foreign adversaries."  Among the highlights in the Fact Sheet are:

·       14 cases involving alleged sanctions and export control violations, smuggling conspiracies, and other offenses related to the unlawful transfer of sensitive information, goods, and military-grade technology to Russia, China, or Iran. 

·       Three cases charged former employees of U.S. companies with stealing confidential and proprietary information related to sensitive technology and attempting to take such information to China, and one case charged a defendant with seeking to obtain technology from U.S. manufacturers on behalf of Chinese end users.

·       Three cases charged individuals with seeking to procure sensitive U.S. technology on behalf of the government of Iran or Iranian end users.

Read the DOJ announcement: https://bit.ly/43NwXFmA New Homeland Security Academic Partnership Council Subcommittee was created as part of the Homeland Security Academic Partnership Council (HSAPC) under the Department of Homeland Security last year.  It held an inaugural meeting on September 6, 2023.  The membership list of HSPAC is posted here: https://bit.ly/4atBhw3In a memorandum to HSAPC Chair Elisa Villanueva Beard dated November 14, 2023, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas tasked the subcommittee to assess and offer recommendations regarding foreign malign influence in higher education institutions.

Specifically, the review and recommendations should include:

·       Guidelines and best practices for higher education institutions to reduce the risk of and counter foreign malign influence;

·       Consideration of a public-private partnership to enhance collaboration and information sharing on foreign malign influence; and

·       An assessment of how the U.S. Government can enhance its internal operations and posture to effectively coordinate and address foreign malign influence-related national security risks posed to higher education institutions. 

Secretary Mayorkas requested HSAPC to submit its findings and key recommendations to him no later than 150 days from November 14, 2023 - the date of the memorandum.Read Secretary Mayorkas' memorandum: https://bit.ly/43LlyGd

 

Chinese Signatures on Police Graduation Certificates


 

According to APWashington Post, and other media reports, a northern Virginia town has been excluded from a countywide police training academy after the town’s chief complained about Chinese signatures on trainees’ graduation certificates.Herndon Police Chief Maggie DeBoard complained that the academy director, Maj. Wilson Lee, whose given name is Lee Wai-Shun, used Chinese characters to sign the certificates that graduates receive when they complete training at the Fairfax County Criminal Justice Academy.Herndon is a town in Fairfax County, Virginia, neighboring Washington DC.  The Herndon Police Department has about 54 officers. Among Herndon’s 24,000 residents, 16 percent are of Asian descent. The countywide figure is about 21 percent.DeBoard told Lee in an email, “I just found out that the academy graduation certificates were signed by you in some other language, not in English. This is unacceptable for my agency. I don’t want our Herndon officers to receive these and I am requesting that they are issued certificates signed in English, the language that they are expected to use as an officer.”On March 18, the county’s deputy executive for safety and security, Thomas Arnold, wrote to DeBoard informing her that the county was terminating Herndon’s affiliation with the academy.

Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis declined to comment on the dispute. But in an email he sent to officers, he defended Lee, saying. “For 16 years of an impeccable career, memorializing a legal name given at birth with a signature that exudes heritage pride has not garnered a single criticism. Nor should it.”The National Asian Peace Officers Association sent a letter to Davis, thanking him for defending Lee.  “We want to extend our heartfelt gratitude for your continued support and commitment in your efforts to exemplify Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in your workplace,” Shane W. Liu, the association president, wrote, adding that Davis’s department “clearly models and reflects the expectations of the community you serve.”Officials with the Hamkae Center, a grass-roots nonprofit that organizes Asian Americans in Virginia for social, racial and economic justice, praised the move in a statement.  “Residents of color are already less likely to trust police,” wrote Zowee Aquino, a leader of the center. “How are we supposed to trust that we will be treated with respect if this is how a chief of police is willing to treat a colleague?”  Aquino said Asian American advocates have “warned our state officials that using such race and ethnicity-based rhetoric … will negatively impact Asian Americans. Attempting to reject and delegitimize a signature from a highly-ranked official — because the name was written in an unfamiliar language that uses a non-Latin alphabet — is a direct example of that impact.”Read the Washington Post report: https://wapo.st/3TCi3gA.  Read the AP report: https://bit.ly/3J70mRC.  Watch the local NBC News report: https://bit.ly/4alefHI

 

News and Activities for the Communities

1.  APA Justice Community Calendar


Upcoming Events:2024/04/07 Rep. Gene Wu's Town Hall Meeting2024/04/08 APA Justice Monthly Meeting2024/04/09 China Town Hall (2-part program)2024/04/17 Racially Profiled for Being A Scientist: A Discussion of the US DOJ's China Initiative2024/04/18 Corky Lee's Asian America: Fifty Years of Photographic Justice2024/04/19 Committee of 100 Annual Conference and Gala2024/04/19 Appeals Court Hearing on Florida SB 264

Visit https://bit.ly/45KGyga for event details.

April 7, 2024

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