|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Asian and Asian-American scientists are spurning jobs at prestigious U.S. weapons laboratories, saying they believe they are harassed and denied advancement because of their race, the New York Times reported. According to the daily, all three U.S. weapons laboratories - Los Alamos and Sandia in New Mexico and Lawrence Livermore in California - have seen a decline in the numbers of Asian and Asian-American applicants for research positions. In other cases, scientists have voluntarily left their jobs at the labs. Many who have remarked on the trend believe Asian-Americans are reacting to the perception that suspected spy Dr. Wen Ho Lee, who was arrested and accused of mishandling nuclear secrets at Los Alamos, has been treated more harshly because of his ethnic origin. Many Asian-Americans told the Times that Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, was singled out because of his ethnicity, and said they believed that measures put in place following the security breach had unduly targeted Asian-American scientists. At Los Alamos, the number of Asian applicants dwindled in the first six months of 2000 to 3, from an average of 28 in both 1998 and 1999. The number of Asians accepting jobs at the lab fell from 18 in 1998 to 9 in 1999 to 3 in the first half of 2000. "To me, this is an indicator that some of the best have decided either not to apply, or even when they do apply, not to come when they're offered a position," Dr. John Browne, director of Los Alamos, told the daily. "There's no question in my mind that the Asian-Americans are conscientiously avoiding working in Los Alamos and the other labs like the plague," concurred Ling-chi Wang, director of the Asian-American studies program at the University of California at Berkeley. Laboratory officials deny any systematic discrimination. The Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education and the Association for Asian-American Studies, each have called for a boycott, urging Asian-Americans not to work at the laboratories, according to the newspaper
Newswires |
