Nearly 200 professors have signed a letter demanding Joe Biden’s Department of Justice terminate a Trump-era initiative targeting Chinese Communist Party-linked academics exploiting American universities for intellectual property theft and espionage.
The 177 professors come from Stanford University, where Pamela Karlan, Biden’s Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), is on a leave of absence from as a professor. Karlan, who testified during then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, has spearheaded the Biden White House’s anti-election audit efforts.
Karlan’s university is now lobbying the DOJ to repeal the “China Initiative,” inaugurated by Trump’s DOJ to combat espionage, infiltration, and intellectual property theft campaigns conducted by the Chinese Communist Party.
“We, a group of 177 Stanford faculty members from more than 40 departments, have sent the following open letter to the U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, requesting that he terminates the Department of Justice’s China Initiative. The China Initiative was introduced by then Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018, with the objective of combating economic espionage, intellectual property theft and other threats associated with the government of China,” the group begins.
“Many of our most challenging global problems, including climate change & sustainability and current & future pandemics, require international engagement. Without an open
and inclusive environment that attracts the best talents in all areas, the United States cannot retain its world leading position in science and technology,” the letter adds amidst its conclusion.
Signatories on the letter include Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford Professor and advisor to Twitter with ties to the Chinese government.
She has attended several Chinese Communist Party-backed conferences and routinely collaborates with a “leading artificial intelligence research body at Tsinghua University, a prestigious Chinese academic institution that also conducts AI research for the Chinese military.”
Story cited here.
