His mother was Jane Wu, a US neuroscientific China of the Northwestern University whose laboratory closed abruptly in May 2024 after a government investigation into her research activities and ties with China. Wu was never accused, and died for suicide at age 60 only a few months later.
His family recently filed a lawsuit against the school claiming that Northwestern discriminated Wu even though he was authorized by closing his laboratory, forcing it to a psychiatric installation against his will and finally leading her to take her life. WU judicial records do not show related charges.
His daughter, Elizabeth Rao, is now talking to the media for the first time in the middle of the first anniversary of Wu’s death. Rao talked about his mother’s legacy and addressed the demand he expects to result in the fair treatment of academics like his mother.
“As painful as it is for us as his family to tell how Northwestern treated her, we are looking for justice to prevent this from happening to others again in the future,” Rao said.
Wu, a neuroscientist, had a career of almost 40 years that included almost two decades in Northwestern, according to the complaint, which said that his laboratory investigated the development and metastase of tumors, in addition to efforts to combat neurodegenerative diseases. A naturalized citizen, Wu lived in Chicago, enjoyed a wide variety of music that went from Tanya Tucker to the Taiwanese pop musician Teresa Teng and loved spending time with her two children.
In 2019, the National Health Institutes, a Federal Medical Research Agency that operates under the Department of Human Health and Services, WU investigated for any contacts related to China as part of a broader agency to investigate foreign influence on the institutions of US grantors. UU. His work included “occasional international contacts” in China, in addition to Argentina, Great Britain, Canada and more, said the demand.
While there were never positions, Northwestern made efforts to limit her to work during the investigation, the lawsuit said. And when the investigation could not present any revelation, the school still continued to punish it, said the demand.
“Nu did nothing to support or help lift the racial stigma placed on Dr. Wu despite his obvious innocence and the enormous financing that his work had brought to NU,” said the demand.
The demand of the WU family, presented on June 23, says that the treatment of the school to WU, including its alleged efforts to expel it, its physical eviction of its office and forced hospitalization, was a “substantial and decisive factor in its decision to put an end to its life.” Heritage is looking for an un specified amount of compensatory and punitive damage.
Northwestern told NBC News in an email that your heart is with the family, but “denys the accusations in demand.
The school “plans to present a motion to rule it before our next plea is due in early September,” said the university. The school refused to provide more details about specific accusations.
The demand says that although there was no evidence of irregularities, the school still took measures against WU after NIH’s investigation. Northwestern did not approach his interactions with NiH.
Nih faced a violent reaction for alleged racial profiles after he began sending letters to universities in 2018 asking them to investigate hundreds of winners of subsidies, mostly those with collaborators in China. The letters were part of a NIH effort to frustrate the theft of biomedical research and the intellectual property of other countries. The legislators in 2020 launched an investigation into the agency, as well as the FBI for their investigations of scientists of Asian ancestry.
While Nih has said that the majority, but not all scientists who were being investigated were of Chinese descent, the agency denied the racial profile.
“This is not xenophobic racism, this is not oriented and this is not a stigma. This is a real robbery,” said Dr. Michael Lauer, deputy director of NIH extramural research, on the investigations of the agency on Asian scientists who showed cases of retention of information on sources of funds.
At that time, under the Chinese initiative of the Department of Justice, several academics of Chinese descent throughout the country had been accused of espionage, including the Mit Chen gang in 2021, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Anming Hu in 2020 and Qing Wang formerly from the Cleveland Clinic that same year. The three were acquitted later. While NIH investigations were not formally part of the Chinese initiative, they generated criticism similar to discrimination.
Wu Estate’s demand alleges that Northwestern discriminated against her during the investigation by limiting her work, partly closing her laboratory space, breaking her research team and reassessing her subsidies to white colleagues from the Faculty and isolating her. During a meeting with the university leadership in which WU was told about the investigation, he was asked to write a “narrative related to activities in China,” said the demand.
The family accused the school of racial discrimination because the university had already approved its interactions in China and its work was a public domain, according to demand. Still, the school sought to limit Wu’s work even after the investigation concluded and continued efforts to isolate it, according to demand.
When the research ended in 2023, the University placed “even stronger restrictions to block Dr. Wu’s return to its funded scientific work,” the demand said. Among them, the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of the University, where Wu taught, reduced his salary and raised new requirements that he had to meet to restore his funded state, said the lawsuit.
Months later, the school continued the efforts to block Wu’s work, and for May, the administrators closed their laboratory “without explanation,” said the complaint.
The terrible experience had contributed to signs of depression and obsessive behavior in WU while trying to protect the work of his life, according to the complaint. He also suffered a loss of vision as a result of a stroke that he had under the stress of the investigation, the demand said. But she could still work. The school used its emotional disability as a “pretext” to evict it, already the end of May, Northwestern sent to public order forces to eliminate it and place it handcuffs, the demand said. The school then admitted it to the unit to the psychiatric unit of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital without notifying their loved ones or consultations outside the doctors, the demand said.
Northwestern declined to comment on specific accusations, including people with salary, application of the law and psychiatric treatment.
“The physical assault led by NU and forced hospitalization sent Dr. Wu to a state of severe shock,” the complaint said.
Two weeks after his hospital release, Wu took his life, the demand said.
In December 2024, NIH issued a statement recognizing that their efforts to protect against China’s related activities “have had the consequence of creating a difficult climate for our valuable American Asian research colleagues, Asian and Asian immigrant who may feel attacked and alienated.”
The history of WU has resorted to the support of several members of the scientific community, in addition to groups such as the Scholar American Asian forum, which condemned the treatment of the school to the late scientist.
“Universities must be places of community, support and justice, not fear and coercion,” said Gisela Pérez Kusakawa, executive director of the American Asian Forum Scholar, in a statement about Wu’s death.
For Rao, many of his best memories are Wu as a father. He described his mother as the opposite of the strict and demanding stereotype of “Mom” Tiger. “
Rao said that she and her mother would take hand and watch movies or immerse themselves in the “Wait, wait … Don’t tell me!” The two would also sing for songs for long walks, he said.
“She made sure that my brother and I had not only a great education, but also had to do everything related to an American childhood par excellence. Sports, road trips, dance classes, choir, whatever it is,” said Rao.
Rao said his mother also left his family with a lesson.
“We carry this with us: his honest moral and conviction to fight injustice,” he said.
