Amid warnings from the Trump administration about Chinese espionage, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last week wrote an open letter in support of students and scholars of Chinese descent.

In the note, addressed to “members of the MIT community,” L. Rafael Reif wrote that he felt compelled to share his “dismay” over the Trump administration’s scrutiny of Chinese and Chinese American researchers and pupils due to heightened concerns about academic espionage.

“Faculty members, post-docs, research staff and students tell me that, in their dealings with government agencies, they now feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge – because of their Chinese ethnicity alone,” he wrote. “Nothing could be further from – or more corrosive to ­– our community’s collaborative strength and open-hearted ideals. To hear such reports from Chinese and Chinese American colleagues is heartbreaking.”

Last year, FBI Director Christopher Wray accused Chinese individuals in academia of “exploiting the very open research and development environment in the U.S.,” calling those from China a “whole-of-society threat” during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

He doubled down on his statements in an interview with NBC News the following month. “To be clear, we do not open investigations based on race, or ethnicity, or national origin,” Wray told the outlet. “But when we open investigations into economic espionage, time and time again, they keep leading back to China.”