[MUSIC PLAYING]
JOYCE XI: My name is
Joyce XI, and I'm here
today to introduce
my father to you all.
First of all, I wanted
to say thank you
all for putting on
this event today.
And thank you for having
my father and I at Google.
So my father is a physics
professor at Temple University.
And he's a physicist, but
because of his experience
with his prosecution,
he has also
been sharing his
experiences and speaking out
against racial profiling and
all forms of scapegoating
of communities of color in
the name of national security.
He's in the Bay Area this week
on a speaking tour organized
by universities and
also a coalition
called the End National
Security Coalition,
which is a group of
individuals and organizations
that have been
working on this issue.
So I want to say thank you to
everybody who's been welcoming
to my father this week.
In 2015, my father,
Xiaxong Xi, was falsely
accused of passing US technology
secrets to entities in China.
He was widely labeled
a spy, and he was seen
as a national security threat.
This ordeal took a
huge toll on him,
as well as my whole family,
and our community at large.
After several months,
all of the charges
were dropped completely
because they were wrong.
They were not
based on any facts.
Yet today, the US government,
who accused my father
and prosecuted him, has
not apologized, explained,
or been accountable in any
way for this abuse of power
that they have created.
And my family has still been
dealing with the consequences
of this action.
So today, my dad
will share his story.
He'll talk about what
happened in his case.
He'll talk about his
background, his experiences,
and really how there is a human
impact about cases like this.
Individuals may read
about this in the news
and see the headlines
of a prosecution
and dropped charges.
But really, behind
the scenes, there's
a lot of hurt, and pain, and
fear that goes behind it.
And he'll also be
speaking to, just
based on his story, the
harms of racial profiling
and scapegoating in the
name of national security.
So I'd like to head
it off to my father.
And thank you again
for having us here.
[APPLAUSE]
XIAOXING XI: Thank you.
And thank you, [INAUDIBLE],,
for hosting outside Google.
So I'm thrilled here
to be here and to talk
about my experience of being
accused by the US government
as a Chinese spy.
And why does it
still matter anymore
now that the case
has been dropped?
Because what the
government did to
me represents a great danger
to liberty in this country,
because I don't want
this to happen to you.
If we don't speak up
against the practice
of racial profiling,
what happened to me
could happen to anybody.
So first, let me give you a
little bit of my background.
I'm a first
generation immigrant.
I was born in Beijing in 1957.
When I was nine, the Cultural
Revolution broke out.
And I often studied
by myself at home,
because there was not
much to learn at school.
And like many Chinese youth,
I was sent to the countryside
after high school.
And I would continue to study
after a day's hard work,
hard labor.
And after the end of
the Cultural Revolution,
I entered the Peking University
and spent nine years there,
where I met and married
my fellow graduate student
and got my PhD in physics.
We came to the
United States in 1989
for better career opportunity
and a better life.
And in 1995, we
joined Penn State.
And so after many years
and two daughters,
and here you see
Joyce and Sarah,
we realized that our home is
here and our careers are here.
So we decided to
become US citizens.
In 2009, I moved to
Temple University,
and built my
research group there.
Just to give you some idea
about the research I'm doing,
here are some of the
most important papers
I have published over
a period of 30 years.
It's about thin films, about
100 thousands of an inch thick.
And I have studied a
wide range of materials
from superconductors, to
ferroelectrics, from borides,
to oxides.
America has given
me the opportunity
to a level in my profession that
I would not have imagined when
I was a youngster in China.
And so May, 2015, is
a normal, busy day
for me filled with
my work, my teaching,
and my administrative duty
as chair of the physics
department.
And Joyce just came back
home a day later from college
for a few days, and
Sarah was anxious
about her dental
surgery the next day.
And I gave a public lecture
at a science festival
called the Pint of
Science at dinnertime,
and then I went to the
Philadelphia Airport
to pick up my wife, who came
back from a oversee conference
trip.
And by the time we made
a plan that we will all
visit a famous Korean
restaurant for fried chicken,
it was already
way past midnight.
A few hours later,
our life would
be suddenly and forever
changed when I was woken up
by loud knocks on my door.
It was May 21st, 2015, before
7 o'clock in the morning.
The pounding on the door were
so loud and urgent that I
ran to open the door
without even fully dressed.
And I saw many people
outside my house.
Some were armed, and some
had the battering ram
ready to take down my door.
And after an agent showed
me his badge, asked my name,
and announced my arrest.
And another agent turned me
around and put handcuffs on me.
And I was in total
shock, and thought,
there must be a mistake.
It must be a mistaken identity.
So I asked them for
what I was arrested,
and they wouldn't tell me.
And in the meantime, the armed
agent in bulletproof vest
burst into my house, running
about, and rounding up
my wife and the two daughters.
And one by one, they
came out of their bedroom
at gunpoint, with
their hands raised.
And I was really worried
that how frightening this
must be to them, but I could
not have a word with them.
And later, I
learned from my wife
that her top
thought at that time
was to protect the
12-year-old, Sarah,
from possible mental damages.
So the FBI agent let
me put on a shirt
and let me out of my house
in front of my family.
And I had no idea when I would
be able to see them again.
Because in the Cultural
Revolution in China,
it was not unusual for
people to be taken away
and could not see their
family for a long time.
So at FBI field office
in Philadelphia,
I was subjected to
fingerprinting, mug shots,
and interrogation.
And when I was transferred
to the US Marshals Service
to wait for my first
court appearance,
I was ordered to strip naked,
bend over against the wall
so that a US Marshal
could check whether I
hid anything in my body.
I was in handcuffs all
the time, except when
I was using a restroom
or locked up in a cell.
During the two-hour
interrogation,
I was handcuffed to the
table that I was sitting at.
At the end of the interrogation,
the FBI agent finally
told me that I was charged
for having made a pocket
heater, a device
that was covered
by a non-disclosure agreement
with a Chinese company
with a Chinese collaborator.
And I said immediately,
that's absurd.
The fact is that I had never
shared the pocket heater
information with
anybody in China.
And I was shocked,
and think that,
how could the government
do this to me?
They charged me for crimes,
and they used these tactics
for violent criminals
to me and to my family
without a thread of truth
in their accusation.
So I was really shocked.
And to that, the FBI
agent said, Xiaoxing Xi,
I'm sure the whole thing
today has been surprising.
And in the afternoon at
my first court appearance,
I was released on bail
for $100,000 or my house,
with various travel
restrictions.
So when I finally
United with Joyce
and my wife outside of the
jail, it was drizzling.
And I shivered, because I had
very little clothes on me.
When we were just pulling
into our driveway, and then
we saw the FBI agent waiting
for us with a search warrant.
For the next two
hours, the FBI agents
searched every
corner of our house
and carried away our belongings.
When all these were over,
I told Joyce and Sarah
that dad has done
nothing wrong, but you
have to prepare for a very,
very hard life ahead of us.
The charges against me was
about a device called the pocket
heater.
And that was developed
by a US company STI.
And in 2002 to 2003, I
took a sabbatical leave
from Penn State to work at
Stanford and a Sunnyvale,
California company called
Conductus near here.
And in the indictment,
the government
said that the individual
at this US company
invented a piece of
technology, a device
which revolutionized the field
of superconducting magnesium
diboride thin film growth.
And this tale of an invention
of a revolutionary device by STI
was pure fabrication.
The pocket heater was
invented by a German company
in the 1990s.
And STI just modified
it for its own purpose.
And this slide shows
the pocket heater
that was invented
by Professor Helmut
Kinder in [INAUDIBLE] Munich.
And a heater is what we use
to heat a substrate when
we make thin film materials.
It's much like using
a stove for cooking.
And the picture that
I'm showing here
was from his paper published in
1993, and also from the patent
that the Kinder's company filed,
which was published in 1998.
And so a pocket heater,
you can see from the left
that it looks like a cookie can
with half of his cap removed.
And inside of the pocket,
it was filled with oxygen.
And there is a
rotating [INAUDIBLE]
that switched the substrate
on it from the opening where
metals are deposited
on a substrate
into the pocket, where
they will be oxidized.
And this is a
wide-known invention.
In the community, it was
known as a Kinder heater.
In the 1990s, conductors
adopted the Kinder heater
for their own thin
film production.
And after conductors and STI
merged at the end of 2002,
STI continued to use the
Kinder heater for its thin film
production.
And this slides shows the STI
pocket heater for magnesium
diboride thin films.
And I can toggle it back
and forth like this.
And the STI pocket heater
looks like a Kinder heater
and it works like
a Kinder heater.
STI simply modified
a pocket heater
so that in the pocket
instead of oxygen,
now its magnesium vapor.
And this heater, the STI
started to talk about it
at conferences from 2003.
And they published a
paper about it in 2006.
So the pocket heater is not
classified, it's not sensitive,
but rather, it's
widely known publicly.
And the STI I pocket
heater produced
magnesium diboride thin
films inferior in quality
compared to the films
produced by the technique
that I invented at
Penn State before I
started my sabbatical leave.
And my technique has been
universally recognized
as the best technique
for magnesium diboride.
So in addition, I'm not
aware of any economic value
of this pocket heater
to the US company.
And the prosecutor admitted
that the so-called crime
that committed had no
economic damage to STI.
So I really don't understand why
the US government should even
care about a pocket heater.
So in the indictment,
the government
alleged that I repeatedly
reproduced, sold, transferred,
distributed, and otherwise
shared the pocket
heater and the pocket
heater technology,
and exploited it for the
benefit of third party in China,
including government
entities in an effort
to help Chinese entities become
world leader in the field
of superconductivity.
I have never done
any of the things
that the government
accused me of doing.
It is utterly
ridiculous that I would
steal a publicly available
STI pocket heater, which
is inferior to my own
technique, and that
somehow could make
the Chinese world
leaders in superconductivity.
So there were four
counts in the indictment,
based on four emails that I
sent from my Temple University
address to colleagues in China.
And none of the emails talked
about the pocket heater.
They were about
things completely
different from
the pocket heater.
If you look at
the first account,
it was about an email confirming
that a certain technology had
been delivered to a
laboratory in China.
In fact, the certain
technology had
nothing to do with
the STI pocket heater.
It was about the HPCVD
tactic that my group invented
at Penn State, and before
my sabbatical leave.
And my collaborators
fabricated this system
with a local Chinese
manufacturer,
with the help from me
and my former post-doc.
And there's nothing secretive
and sensitive about HPCVD.
Even the New York
Times covered it
when we first published
our paper about HPCVD.
And from its invention
in 2002 to 2010,
that's when my
email was written,
I have published 91 papers,
and have given 90 talks
about the HPCVD and thin
films that was grown by HPCVD.
And the emails
that I was sending
to my Chinese colleagues
was about using
HPCVD for SRF cavities.
You may have heard
about the Higgs
boson, which was discovered
in 2012 at the Large Hadron
Collider.
And even before that,
a team of physicists
led by Barry Barish, who got
the Nobel Prize this year
for the discovery of off the
gravitational wave [INAUDIBLE]..
By the way, the discovery
of the Higgs boson,
one of the theories that
predicted its existence
the 2013 Nobel Prize.
And as I said, the design
team by a Barry Barish
had decided that this
International Linear Collider,
or ILC, will use SRF cavities,
which is shown in the picture
down here.
So the collaboration that I
have with my Chinese colleague
was about using HPCVD to coat
the inside wall of this cavity
with magnesium diboride.
You cannot do it with
STI pocket heater,
which are for flat thin films.
And count two to count
four are even more bizarre,
because they were not
about magnesium diboride.
They were about oxide.
And magnesium diboride
is not an oxide.
Here is the email two.
And on the subject line,
it says very clearly
that it's about oxide
films and interfaces.
And here it says that I will be
happy to build up a world class
oxide thin film lab that would
include laser MBE and oxide
MBE.
An oxide thin film lab that
use laser MBE and oxide MBE
has no use for the STI pocket
heater for magnesium diboride.
So even though I knew
that I was innocent,
I understood perfectly
that we could still
be in jeopardy if I did not
defend myself successfully.
So I was very fortunate
to have engaged
a team of expert lawyers.
It was led by Peter Zeidenberg
of Arent Fox in Washington DC.
And it has a local
counsel, Mike Schwartz
from Pepper Hamilton
in Philadelphia,
and an IP attorney, Tony
Shaw, from the New York
office of Arent Fox.
And my lawyer contacted top
experts in my research field
and gave them all my
email communications
with my Chinese colleagues.
And so you can see
these experts not only
have impeccable statures and
reputations, but if you see,
John Rowell was the former CTO
and the president of Conductus.
And Paul Chu discovered the
high temperature superconductor
YBCO.
David Larbalestier
is a top expert
on applied superconductivity,
including magnesium diboride.
And Venky Venkatesan pioneered
the technique of pulse laser
deposition, and his company
sells PLD and the laser MBE
equipment.
And Ward Ruby, whose company
sold me a pocket heater,
said that I am very familiar
with the pocket heater
as I was one of
the co-inventors.
They all said in
their affidavits
that I had never shared
the pocket heater
technology with China.
With these
affidavits, my lawyers
made a presentation-- a
48 slides presentation--
to the government,
on August 21, 2015.
And here I'm going to
show you a few of them.
And they told the prosecutors
and FBI agents, the tube heater
that we were talking about
for coating SRF cavities,
shown on the left, which
the government said
was the STI pocket heater that
I stole for Chinese entities,
is unrelated to the SDI
pocket heater, which
is shown on the right.
They have different principles.
They have different designs.
And they have different
functionalities.
And you remembered the
email for account 224 that
was talking about the
oxide films lab, which
the government said was evidence
that I stole the STI pocket
heater of magnesium diboride
to help Chinese to become world
leaders in superconductivity.
My lawyers had to tell them
that magnesium diboride is not
an oxide.
And so magnesium
diboride and oxide
have opposite requirement
for making thin films.
They had to tell the
government that oxide MBE is
unrelated to the pocket
heater, and laser MBE
is unrelated to
the pocket heater.
And the STI pocket heater
has no value or utility
for oxide thin film labs that
use laser MBE and oxide MBE.
And John Rowell, who was
the CEO of Conductus,
when he adopted the Kinder
heater for its thin film
production, wrote,
"The STI pocket heater
was in no sense a
revolutionary device.
It was a modification of
an existing technology
that was well understood."
Then at the end, my lawyer made
a request to the government,
find your own expert.
Give them all my
email communications
with my Chinese
colleagues and ask them,
is there any evidence
that Professor Xi
shared any pictures, drawings,
or schematics of the STI MGB2
pocket heater?
And we also shared
a draft motion
to dismiss the indictment with
the government, which we were
ready to file with the court.
And it says that the
government's entire prosecution
is based on the presentation of
false and misleading testimony
to the grand jury, premised
on a faulty understanding
of basic and non-controversial
scientific principles
and concepts by an
FBI agent who was not
qualified to be the
government's sole witness
before the grand jury.
And on September 11, 2015,
which is the deadline date which
the court ordered us
to file our motion,
the government
dismissed the case,
citing additional
information came
to the attention
of the government.
To mark that
occasion, we decided
to go to the famous
Korean restaurant
to try their fried chicken,
and it tasted so good.
On September 17th,
I went to my lab
for the first time
in four months
and my group presented me
with a bouquet of flowers,
and I was really
very much moved.
So the question why it matters.
Of course it matters to us.
As I told the New
York Times reporter,
that this is not a joke.
This is not a game.
Just imagine that one day I
was a respected researcher
and chair of the
physics department.
The next day I was
painted as a Chinese spy
all over the internet
and in the news.
And that's made us think
that everything that I
had worked for, for 30 years--
my reputation, and our
livelihood, and my career--
would all be gone.
And so that sudden blow was
enough to crush anybody.
But the pressure that accumulate
every day, day in day out,
were even worse.
And we ask ourself,
I ask myself,
how would my family
live if I go to prison?
And how would I spend
the rest of my life
knowing that my career
will be finished?
And we wonder, was the
FBI still surveilling me?
And would it be safe
for me to go out?
And also, this thought
has never left my mind.
And it weighed very
heavily on all of us.
And friends and colleagues
stopped talking to me,
and I could not see and
talk to my students.
And also, we did not
know, how were we
going to pay for the
amounting legal fee
if the case dragged out?
At the end it cost us 200--
more than $220,000.
And I feel that we are lucky
because the case only lasted
for less than four months.
And so you can imagine
that our emotions just
go through the roller coasters,
like a roller coaster.
So we were outraged raging in
the defiance, and disbelieve,
and then worries
and frustrations.
And then scares and despair.
It was really a
nightmare that I do not
wish to see any innocent
American to go through.
But it's more than
us, more than just us.
And whenever a Chinese
scientist is arrested,
some would say, well, he or she
must have done something wrong.
I would say to
them, you don't need
to have done anything wrong.
It could happen to you.
It could happen to anybody.
So what did I do wrong?
What I was doing was,
I was doing my job
as a university professor, which
is to create and disseminate
knowledge for the benefit of
the public, the human kind.
And my collaboration
with Chinese colleagues
for advancing sciences
for publications.
It was never for
financial gains.
Well, you may ask, what
about the key technology
you developed using government
funding, or defense department
funding?
Well, I do not expect you to
read every word on this slide.
But the principle of freedom
to publish and disseminate
is so fundamental to US
universities that most of them,
including Temple University,
do not accept funding
if they restrict its faculty
to publish and disseminate
the result of their research.
And I have never done research
that involves sensitive,
classified, or
protected information,
or the export
controlled technologies.
And in addition that
the collaboration
with Chinese colleagues
is encouraged
by the US government.
And in a report
from the Department
of State to the Congress, it
says that the US China science
and technology cooperation
accelerated scientific progress
in the United States, providing
significant direct benefit
to a range of US
technical agencies.
The national academies,
whose main mission
is to advise the US government
on science and technology
issues, it says
that science thrives
on the open exchange
of information,
on collaboration, and
on the opportunity
to build on previous work.
The United States gained and
maintained its preeminence
in science and
technology in part
by embracing the
values of openness,
and by welcoming
students and researchers
from all parts of the
world to America's shores.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- You can do things to help
a foreign nation state,
as I said, without realizing
that you're dealing with.
You think you're
helping a buddy who's
a researcher at a university
in China, when what you're
actually doing is passing
information that ends up
with the Chinese government.
That's unwitting, and unwitting
is the same as your implicit.
Explicit would be you know,
I'm sending this stuff
to this researcher
in China and I'm
doing it because I want to
help the Chinese government
and I know he's hooked up
with the Chinese government.
[END PLAYBACK]
XIAOXING XI: So this
perfectly demonstrate
the mindset of the FBI.
And what the FBI sees as
Chinese government entities are
all universities in China,
like Peking University,
Qingquan University, Shanghai
Jiao Tong University,
or the Chinese
Academy of Sciences,
because they are funded
by the Chinese government.
So basically what
they are doing is
to criminalize all scientific
academic collaboration
with China.
You know, as pointed from this
National Academies report,
measures that hinders
international collaboration
in science and technology
actually hamper
US economic competitiveness
and well-being and prosperity.
So it's been two years
since my case was dismissed.
But our struggle
is far from over.
Last June, I had the opportunity
to attend this conference
organized by the
Georgetown Law School,
"The Color of Surveillance."
And I learned that
people of color,
minorities, religious
minorities and LGBT persons,
have disproportionately being
the target of government
surveillance.
In my case, we knew that
the FBI had all my emails.
They listened to my
phone calls, and they
conducted intense
electronic surveillance
and physical
searches against me,
pursuant to FISA, the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act.
And my case started as a
national security case.
And it changed to a
criminal case at some point.
What we don't know is why.
Why they are targeting me?
Once I was prosecuted
despite being innocent,
our peace of mind
is gone forever.
So even now, we are living
under a constant concern
that the government is
still reading my emails,
listening to my phone calls.
That anything I say
in the right could
be twisted by the government
as a reason to charge me.
Just like a Chinese saying,
to pick bones out of an egg.
So the question is,
did the government
target me because my
Chinese ethnic origin?
And is it because of my visit
to China, to my aging mother,
my friends, my relatives?
So my lawyer, Peter
Zeidenberg said,
if he was Canadian American,
or French American,
or he was from the UK,
would this have ever gotten
on the government's radar?
I don't believe so.
And when I met my local
counsel, Mike Schwartz,
for the first time
and I told him
that I didn't do anything
that the government charged me
of doing, he asked me,
have you made money
from your collaboration
with Chinese colleagues?
And I said no.
And he then said, it must be
because you are from China.
So what is alarming
is that my case is not
the only such cases.
There was the National
Weather Service hydrologist,
Sherry Chen.
And there was Guoqing Cao
and Shuyu Li, the Eli Lilly
scientists.
There is a pattern that the
scientist of Chinese origin
are being charged, and
just for it to be dropped
later on, without explanation.
And so this has prompted
many people like members
of the Congress, the US
commission on civil rights,
and many civil
rights organizations,
to ask the Department of
Justice to investigate
whether race, and ethnicity,
and national origin
had anything to do with
these kind of false charges.
So one point I want to say
is that the racial profiling
is not just a Chinese
American issue,
but an issue for all Americans.
I will just put this
borrowed and modify lines
from Martin Niemoller
up here for you to read.
And then I will tell you what an
African American student wrote
to me after he
listened to a talk
that I gave at the University
of Maryland about my ordeal.
He wrote in his email that I
cannot pretend to know what you
feel or struggle with.
I have been trained
my whole life
knowing that situations such
as yours could happen to me.
His great uncle was
wrongfully convicted
of raping a white woman and
spent 25 years in prison,
until it was shown that the
fingerprint in the evidence
matched another man.
So if race based persecution
and prosecution exists,
for any ethnic
group of Americans,
this practice infringe on
the constitutional rights
of all Americans.
So I want to call this
opinion of the Supreme Court
associate justice Louis
Brandeis in his opinion
in the wiretapping case of
Olmstead versus United States
in 1928.
He said that the greatest
dangers to liberty
lurk in the insidious
encroachment by men of zeal,
well-meaning but
without understanding.
So the men of zeal
in my case obviously
were without
understanding, right?
Quite literally.
But also that a man
of zeal can also
be malicious, not well meaning.
And I will say that persecution
or prosecution based on race
and ethnic origin, ethnicity
and national origin,
are definitely not well meaning.
So that is why I ask this
question, why it matters?
Because cases like
mine do not protect
our intellectual properties.
They threaten the
academic freedom.
They hamper the US
research enterprise
and economic well-being.
And they undermine
people's confidence
in America's legal system.
And they terrorized
Chinese American
in the scientific communities.
And they endanger the liberty
that we cherish so much
in this country.
That is why I'm
telling my story.
What happened to me
could happen to you,
unless we all speak up as
one against racial profiling
in government surveillance,
and any law enforcement.
We have to work together
to stop this injustice
of racial profiling.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
AUDIENCE: Coming from China,
and having experienced
a cultural revolution,
you must have
been thinking about
coming to the US
to escape these kind
of accusations and loss
of economic-- sorry,
academic freedom.
But then you come
to US, experience
the same, pretty much, same
things in essence again.
So does that change
how you think
about the essence of
the politics dynamics
in China and the US and how
you think about the propaganda
of governments?
XIAOXING XI: You're
absolutely right.
I mean, there is a
parallel in this.
And I can even tell you a story
that illustrate this parallel.
When I was in
elementary school--
I forgot, maybe 12
years old or so--
I was accused by my
teacher of saying
Chairman Mao three years old.
You know, at that time
everybody was forced to say,
long live Chairman Mao.
In Chinese that means
Chairman Mao, 10,000 years.
And the Chinese character of
10,000, the scribble of it
looks very similar to
the Arabic numeral three.
So my teacher was saying I was
saying that Chairman Mao three
years old.
And the whole class you know,
condemn me for the class.
So you are absolutely right.
This kind of being
false accused,
in a sense was not foreign
to us because I lived
through cultural revolution.
But absolutely, we were
not expecting it here
in the United States.
What I have to say is
that at least here there
is this process,
a legal process,
allowing me to defend
myself, to clear my name,
if I have enough money
and if I have enough will.
At least we have the system
that allows us to do this.
But you are right, that
nobody should be naive,
thinking that there is no
problem in this country.
This country is a great country.
We all love this country
that attracted people
from all around the world
to come to this country.
But this country also
have its problems.
But this country has
a democratic process
for all of us to get involved
so that we can change it
for the better.
That's why I'm talking,
telling people my story.
I hope I can encourage
people to become more active,
to, you know, take part
in the democratic process
and speak up.
Because we see racial
profiling happening and we
have to unite to make our
voice against racial profiling
loud and clear so
that politicians,
the people with decision
power, will take that
into their
consideration when they
are making their decisions.
So I hope that answer what
I'm thinking about this issue.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
AUDIENCE: My question
was, you seemed
to be at the peak
of your career,
about to be named the chairman
of the physics department.
Maybe you can tell
us a little more
about what the
impact of all this
has had on your
professional career.
And also you mentioned
a lot about Joyce
and the rest of your
family, maybe the impact
it's had on them.
XIAOXING XI: Well,
this obviously
had a very significant
impact, the negative impact,
on my career and my family.
As you said, I was really
at the peak of my career.
And I was working
24/7 on my research,
or on my administrative
job, and so on and so forth.
And then this happened.
And now, not only that I could
not do my research and my work
in that four months, but
the effect continues.
The effect continues.
And it's not going
go away very quickly.
So my reputation is tainted now.
And there are a lot of
opportunities that I would get
otherwise, I cannot
get it anymore.
And I was-- somebody was
asking me a similar question.
I was telling people that there
are, for example, workshops
of US-China
collaboration, cooperation
on superconductivity.
The organizers
would not invite me.
And if I am thinking
about advancing
in administrative roles,
well, I can forget about it.
Who would give these
kind of opportunities
to somebody who has
gone through like that,
and they're charged
by the government?
So my research group
is now a tiny portion
of the group I had
before my arrest.
And you know, I was concerned
that what I'm doing every day
could be misconstrued
by the government
for some evil purposes.
And I am even scared when
I'm signing my names on forms
that we need to do
for getting funding
and manage my
research or products.
So this kind of
effect on my career,
it's not going to go away.
And it's very, very negative.
In terms of the family,
obviously we went through this.
And my family, my wife, my
children, went through all this
for no reason--
for no reason.
That was the toughest
thing for me,
to see them suffer
because of me.
And well, Joyce was
a chemistry major
and now she's working in the
civil rights organization
and trying to raise awareness
of people off the injustice
that immigrants face.
This changed her life.
And our Sarah was trying
to go about her life
like nothing happened.
But we worry about
the long term effect.
And we know that it hurt.
You know, she was hurt.
She was scared.
AUDIENCE: Before your arrest
was, there any sign at all
that something bad
could happen to you?
Or was this just
pure surveillance
that going in the background
that you never knew?
XIAOXING XI: There was no sign.
The very first thought
that I opened the door,
see all these people there--
what's that?
This must be a mistake, right?
They must mix up people's name?
Why me?
I have not done
anything remarkable.
All these people--
I was still thinking
a lot of things
in the hat of a
department chair.
I was thinking,
all these people.
That must cost
government, the taxpayer,
tons of money for them to
have all these people come
to arrest me.
For what?
And so I was just like anybody.
I read news about some Chinese
got arrested and charged
and so on and so forth.
I never thought that
it will happen to me.
And I think a lot of people
are still thinking that way.
So that's why I'm
telling people.
I'm telling the details
about why they charged me,
what are the exact things that
I did and so on and so forth,
because I want
people to understand.
You don't have to
do anything wrong.
Just because maybe you
have a relative in China,
you talk to them over the phone.
Or maybe, you know,
you talk to somebody
which they are monitoring,
that can get you in trouble.
So it's very scary.
I have to say that.
But how do we change that?
This is going to happen.
The only way we can
change that is, we all
unite together and speak up.
And to make ourself a big
voice that the politicians have
to worry about.
They have to care about
our interests and so on.
That's what the
democracy is all about.
So that's why I'm talking.
Every time I talk to people,
I reach a certain number
of people.
And I'm doing this
because I recognize,
we just have to let
more and more and more
people be aware
of such injustice.
And everybody united
again, not just
Chinese American,
Asian American,
but African American,
Muslim American.
All the people will suffer
from this kind of injustice.
And uniting together,
and change it.
And only then when
the law enforcement
want to do something,
they have to be--
at least there shouldn't
be a policy like,
go after a particular
group of Americans.
AUDIENCE: OK, well thank
you again Professor Xi.
I really appreciate you
fighting against injustice,
relating this to racial
injustice across America.
Are there things that-- you
know, hearing your story
is great.
It makes us feel more angry
and wanting to do something.
So how can we learn more?
How can we find how
to help you and help
what you're working on?
XIAOXING XI: As
a matter of fact,
there are organizations
like the Coalition
to End the National
Security Scapegoating,
and many other Asian
American and you
know, the civil
rights organizations
from other minority groups.
I think what people can do is
to at least pay attention to it.
Probably go to
the event and then
once there are more and
more people are doing this,
then it becomes something
that can have an influence.
One thing I have to say
is that in my ordeal,
the several members of the
US Congress who are Asian
Americans have been
very, very supportive,
and asked the attorney general,
and asked the director of FBI,
whether racial profiling was
a factor in all these cases.
And we need more
people in that position
to ask these questions
so that our interest can
be taken care of.
So vote.
Whenever you know, go vote.
It doesn't matter.
You'll vote for a Democrat or
you'll vote for a Republican.
It doesn't matter, as
long as we all go vote.
Then politicians have
to take us seriously.
Thank you.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
