Abstract: The relationship between the United States and China has entered a new era of high tension. Federally-funded research is a major focus of the U.S. government, which considers interference and exploitation by China as a national security threat. The FBI views professors, scientists, and students of Chinese ethnicity as well as those engaging in academic collaborations with China as suspected nontraditional collectors for China, and thousands of them are under criminal investigation. In 2015, I became a casualty of this campaign despite being innocent. The ordeal prompted me to speak up for the Chinese-American community and the scientific community. In this talk, I will present a personal digest of public records and court filings to illustrate the risks faced by academics with ties in China. While being prepared to meet these challenges is important, I argue that the ultimate defense of our civil rights is for all to speak up against racial profiling and for open fundamental research.

Speaker Bio: Xiaoxing Xi, recipient of the American Physical Society 2020 Andrei Sakharov Prize, is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Physics at Temple University. Prior to 2009, he was Professor of Physics and Materials Science and Engineering at the Penn State University. He received his PhD degree in physics from Peking University and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 1987. After several years of research at Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center, Germany, Bell Communication Research/Rutgers University, and University of Maryland, he joined the Physics faculty at Penn State in 1995. His research focuses on the materials physics of oxide, boride, and 2-dimensional dichalcogenide thin films. He is author of over 340 refereed journal articles and 3 U.S. patents in the area of thin films of high-Tc superconductors and magnesium diboride. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Since 2015, he has spoken out actively for open fundamental research and against racial profiling.

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