Scientists seek hearing on ‘racial profiling’ by US federal agencies

Federal Bureau of Investigation points to leader’s past insistence that Chinese-Americans are not its focus

Scientific and civil rights groups, Democrat senator Susan Lee and University of Maryland Institute of Human Virology advice board chair Terry Lierman have called on the House of Representatives’ Civil Rights Committee to conduct an oversight hearing into what they described as the “racial profiling” of ethnically Chinese or Asian researchers by US government agencies.

“Overzealous, broad, unchecked and overreaching” investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and National Institutes of Health have led to “civil rights violations [and] crippled America’s ability to develop medical innovations that can enhance the quality of and save lives, especially during this Covid-19 pandemic”, Lierman said on 1 February.