The Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), one of the nonprofits that co-sponsored the letter, promotes belonging and academic freedom for Asian American Academics. According to Gisela Perez Kusakawa, the executive director of the AASF, signatories came from 44 U.S. states and Washington, D.C., and more than 300 academic institutions.
In an interview, she described Wu’s death as both a “private tragedy” but also something that concerned the Asian American academic community at large.
“What we saw happened to Dr. Jane Ying Wu was … something that our community thought was really reflective of this broader climate of fear, and also a widespread concern about how Asian Americans and Asian immigrant scientists, researchers and scholars are treated at their places of employment, at their academic institutions,” she explained.
The suit from Wu’s estate claims that Northwestern discriminated against Wu on the basis of gender, race, national origin or disability. The suit also accuses the Northwestern and Chicago Police departments of assault, battery and false imprisonment.
The Chicago Police Department, which was not named in the lawsuit, refused to comment on Thursday and Northwestern University did not respond to requests for comment.
NIH investigation and aftermath
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which had awarded millions of dollars in grant funding to Wu’s projects over the years, launched an administrative investigation into her ties to Chinese researchers in 2019 as part of the first Trump administration’s “China Initiative,” according to the suit. Wu was born in China, but became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2000.
“It was creating a climate of fear, not just for the faculty, but also for universities,” Kusakawa said of the China Initiative. “It wasn’t just a fear of being Chinese American. It was a fear of being associated with someone who’s Chinese American or perceived to be of a Chinese background.”
The lawsuit claims that no charges were ever brought against Wu, and that the NIH closed its investigation in 2023. In the same letter announcing she was no longer under NIH scrutiny, Feinberg leadership “cut her salary for lack of funding of her research during the NIH investigation,” added additional requirements for her to apply for future grants and “gave her only a limited chance” to meet those requirements, the suit says.
In February 2024, the lawsuit claims, Northwestern closed part of Wu’s lab space and “took away” members of her research team.
In spite of this, the suit continues, Wu notified Northwestern administrators that she was in the process of applying for new NIH grants to continue her research. On May 2, 2024, according to the lawsuit, administrators “misleadingly” told Wu that she would be allowed to apply for NIH funding. Just days later, though, the university announced the “pending” closure of the rest of her lab.
Wu died by suicide on July 10, 2024.
“The alleged treatment of Dr. Wu is inconsistent with her status as one of very few endowed Asian American women professors and her nineteen years of contributions as a tenured faculty member at the Feinberg School,” the letter from Asian American scholars states. “Northwestern and Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s (NMH) treatment of Dr. Wu has shocked many in the research community and resulted in fear.”
‘Justice for my mom‘
Wu published 176 peer-reviewed articles and three books over the course of her career, according to the complaint. She held both a medical degree from Shanghai Medical University and a doctorate in cancer biology from Stanford University. She joined the faculty at Northwestern in 2005, after two years at Vanderbilt University.
Elizabeth Rao, Wu’s daughter, is an independent filmmaker and not a member of the AASF. She is also the executor of her mother’s estate.
“I hope for justice for my mom,” she wrote in an email.
Kusakawa said that if people consider the alleged treatment of Wu an isolated incident, they are missing why it has “hit a cord” in the Asian American research community. Professors and scientists, Kusakawa said, are concerned about receiving grants, or their projects being moved to someone else.
“Because they’ve become an inconvenience to their university or at worse, a risk where they will potentially lose funding or find themselves going through lengthy criminal investigations,” Kusakawa explained.
