Chen declined an interview request from MIT Technology Review however mentioned by means of her lawyer that she’s “currently thinking through [her] next steps.” But her buddy Gang Chen, an MIT scientist who has additionally been wrongfully accused of spying for China (and isn’t associated to Sherry Chen), tells us he feels her ache.
“Despite the victory, it is important to remember that this was a decade of Sherry’s life,” Gang Chen says. “I reflect on the years that so many have lost, including myself, and the trauma that lingers on for those directly impacted and for their families. Victories, such as this, alone do not fully compensate for what has been lost.”
Secondly, Sherry Chen’s case is an anomaly—in {that a} broad sample of misconduct by her accusers was confirmed definitively. One of the greatest criticisms of the China Initiative is that regulation enforcement casts doubt on actions that sure ethnic teams have interaction in each day, like touring again house. It’s often laborious to show racial bias in courtroom. But in Chen’s scenario, the Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS), an inside safety unit on the Commerce Department that began investigating Chen in 2012, was discovered to be significantly blatant in its racial profiling practices.
A 2021 report from the Senate Commerce Committee revealed that ITMS “ran ethnic surnames through secure databases,” focused an worker “purely because of her ethnic Chinese origin,” and “broadly targeted departmental divisions with comparably high proportions of Asian-American employees.” This led to an inside investigation of ITMS, and the unit was shut down in September 2021.
Obviously, not all authorities malpractice is revealed in heavyweight Senate studies, and way more is definitely swept beneath the rug. “You rarely get a smoking gun such as that, breaking open a case,” says Frank Wu, a lawyer, activist, and president of Queens College on the City University of New York. (Wu consulted on Chen’s case however by no means acted as her lawyer.)
And regardless that Chen gained her settlement and the DOJ ended the China Initiative, that doesn’t imply the implicit bias that set in movement such discriminatory prosecutions has gone away. It might have simply change into extra covert.
Lastly, Chen’s win doesn’t essentially imply others in her scenario can have a neater time getting justice. Yes, Chen’s settlement was the primary of its variety for a wrongfully accused Chinese-American scientist, and other people definitely hope it is going to set a precedent. But the truth is probably going not that simple.
“I have not seen the settlement, but I fully expect that it is worded to make clear that this is specific to this particular case,” says Margaret Lewis, a professor of regulation at Seton Hall University who focuses on felony justice and human rights. “I am confident that the government was careful to avoid any indication that it was setting a broader precedent.” That would imply different students preventing their very own wrongful prosecution instances couldn’t simply level to Chen’s case and argue that the identical determination ought to apply.