Traumatized: The New Politics of Public Suffering will officially hit shelves on September 29. As the book launches, Catherine Liu will be speaking at events in Portugal, London, and California, as well as online. We would love to see you in-person at these events (as well as others we have in the works and will announce soon!).
Books will be available for purchase at many of these locations, and you can also pre-order Traumatized here.
September 10: George Mason University Lecture at 4:30pm EDT (Livestream) (more information here)
September 14: University of Coimbra Centre for Social Studies Lecture at 9:30am WEST (Coimbra, Portugal) (more information here)
September 20: How the Light Gets In Festival Lecture at 10am BST (Kenwood House, London) (more information here)
September 21: Novara Media Trauma Farming Event at 6:30pm BST (EartH Theatre, London) (more information here)
September 22: Live Interview with Freddie Feltham from What’s Left at 2pm BST (Location TBD)
September 29: Traumatized Book Launch at Foyles (London, time TBD)
October 3: Keynote Speaker at Dangerous Stories, Hosted by California Family Institute in Newport Beach, California (Information and tickets available here).
In Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (2008), a distant alien race tries to stop human technological and scientific progress by targeting research scientists and driving them to suicide. The aliens use string theory and quantum physics to create aberrations in our physical universe that only scientists are aware of. These anomalies make the scientists doubt their purpose and the stability of a physical world they are studying and trying to master.
In 2026, two academic suicides occurred that should shake our faith in academic and political institutions. Only one, Jason Arday, has ignited a media firestorm. The details and controversies surrounding his tragic death, seemingly by his own hand, are well known. The other suicide involves a Chinese researcher, Wang Danhao at the University of Michigan. The title of this article, published by The Michigan Daily, describes Wang’s interrogation by a U.S. government agency as “alleged.” Other reports claim that the interrogation by the FBI that took place on March 19, 2026 was extremely hostile. On March 20, Wang was dead. The FBI has refused to comment on the case. No charges had ever been filed against Wang.
Wang had turned thirty this year. In 2025, Wang published a paper as first co-author in the journal Nature, detailing a remarkable discovery on next-generation materials in semiconductors. I found a good description of the science behind his breakthrough here. Wang’s work had revealed that wurtzite ferroelectric nitrides remained “stable despite extreme polarization discontinuities that should theoretically tear the crystals apart.” These crystals could conduct and store both energy and data, with polarization fields easily reversed without creating magnetic repulsion. The unique atomic arrangement of nitrides has serious consequences for the development of AI and other semi-conductor dependent technologies, including military applications. We know that the U.S. is extremely worried about Chinese engineering prowess and Chinese researchers who work in these sensitive areas.
The Chinese government has demanded a thorough investigation into Wang’s death. The University of Michigan is pursuing an investigation, but the New York Times, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed and the Guardian have not published a single article about Wang Danhao’s suicide. No prominent civil rights figure of any race has made any statements about the U.S. government’s treatment of this young scientist.
Arday’s career, and the media coverage before and after his suicide, reveal something about the state of social science and humanities research. It’s almost as if there were a conspiracy to make race and anti-racism the major preoccupation of higher education research in the Anglo-American world, while state security agencies are working overtime to prevent scientific breakthroughs from being shared internationally. Next to the significance of Wang Danhao’s work, life and death, the social impact of Arday’s research should appear even more questionable, the strategies of mediated distraction even more pernicious.
If I were a member of an alien race, hoping to stall technological progress and sow the seeds of political confusion and discontent on planet Earth, I would encourage endless debates about Arday, race and equity in higher education. And I would also encourage the forces that drove Wang to jump off a building to act more violently and more covertly.