Press Release

The Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF) is proud to announce it has welcomed Gisela Perez Kusakawa as its founding executive director to lead the organization in providing a voice for Asian American scientists, researchers, and scholars across the country. AASF endeavors to protect the rights of Asian Americans and immigrants and promote academic belonging, openness, freedom, and equality for all.

On Thursday, the Senate confirmed Dr. Arati Prabhakar as the next director for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in a 56-40 bipartisan vote. She is the first woman and first person of color confirmed by the Senate to lead OSTP. Prabhakar is an engineer and former director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Today, the Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF) released a report, “Caught in the Crossfire: Fears of Chinese-American Scientists,” with data that shows a growing number of Chinese-origin American academics leaving the United States and switching from U.S. to Chinese affiliations. The research shows the chilling effect of potential federal investigation and prosecution since the U.S. Department of Justice’s “China Initiative,” which launched in 2018.

This morning, oral arguments will be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit for Dr. Xiaoxing Xi, a physics professor at Temple University and an internationally recognized expert in superconducting technology, after a federal court in Pennsylvania in April 2021 dismissed claims brought by Dr. Xi and his family against the U.S. government and the FBI agent involved in wrongly investigating and prosecuting him.

Washington, D.C.– Professor Gang Chen, the former head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, has led a team to discover what is said to be the best semiconductor ever found, performing better than silicon at conducting heat and electricity. This discovery opens up new possibilities for smaller and faster chips.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Over the weekend, the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a $430 billion landmark bill without any anti-immigration or discriminatory amendments that would be harmful to immigrants, including Asian American and Asian immigrant communities.

On March 14th, 2022, Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF) submitted the following letter to request Judge Rya W. Zobel to take into account the special conditions and circumstances of Professor Charles Lieber's case.

The Asian American Scholar Forum appreciates that the DOJ heard the voices and concerns of the scientific and the Asian American communities. We support the new strategy and welcome the termination of a flawed program that targeted scientists based on national heritage. 

On December 24, 2021, Amy Wax, a Law Professor at the University of Pennsylvania made racist comments in public towards Asian and Asian-American communities, which was in Conversation with Brown University Professor Glenn Loury on the Glenn Show. On January 5, 2022, Amy Wax responded the overwhelming criticisms of her words. She further made worse racist remark: “… I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration”. We, the Asian American Scholar Forum, give our statement to express our strong disagreement of her racist comments.

In November 2021, AASF sent the following letter to Dr. Eric Lander, Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to the President, to express the importance of open science and academic freedom, and to submit our comments regarding the implementation of National Security Presidential Memorandum-33 (NSPM-33), “Presidential Memorandum on United States Government Support Research and Development National Security Policy.”