The wife of data privacy professor Xiaofeng Wang, who was fired from his tenured job at Indiana University, Bloomington (IU) the same day the couple’s houses were searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last month, said on Monday that she believes her family has been unfairly targeted by the US government and is the victim of what she described as “misplaced accusations of academic misconduct.”

“Our family is determined to fight, not only for ourselves, but for the broader research community who would be impacted if this type of allegation goes unchallenged,” Nianli Ma said.

This is the first time Ma has spoken publicly since the FBI searches occurred in late March. She appeared at a webinar hosted by the Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), a nonprofit group formed in early 2021 to advocate for the rights and recognition of Asian American scholars. Ma worked as a library analyst at the university before she was also abruptly fired from IU days before the FBI searched two of the couple's homes, The Indiana Daily Student reported.

“I just can’t understand how the university, to which we dedicated two decades of our lives, could treat us like this, without even telling us why or going through due process, especially for my husband,” Ma said. “I’ve lost weight and have had difficulty sleeping. I feel trapped in a constant state of worry and sadness.”

Wang’s case has raised concerns among academics that a shuttered Department of Justice program called the China Initiative is being revived under the new Trump administration. The campaign, which was started during President Trump’s first term in office with the stated goal of combating economic espionage, was accused by critics of unfairly targeting Chinese-born researchers and other Asian-immigrant and Asian-American academic communities. The DOJ later abandoned the program under the Biden administration after it lost or withdrew a number of associated cases.

One of the most high-profile of them was the case of MIT prof...