“The government substantially is concerned that we are going to highlight – rather than Dr Lieber’s alleged involvement with China – all of Harvard University’s deep ties to China,” Marc Mukasey, Lieber’s lead lawyer, said in a hearing aimed at setting terms before the jury was seated.

“Harvard has funds in China, they have classes in China, they have centres in China. Many Harvard faculty and presidents have travelled to China,” Mukasey added. “Harvard has touted its own connections to China, literally going back to 1869 when the first professor from China came to Harvard for an exchange programme.”

“We’re not going to turn this case into Harvard on trial,” he said.

But Mukasey quickly added that the defence wasn’t going to ignore America’s oldest university either. In academia, travelling to China, giving lectures there, mentoring students was all normal practice, he said.

“And it’s not toxic,” he said. “It’s something we would like to raise.”

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Federal prosecutors, who had filed a motion to keep Harvard in the background, said they had no problem with Lieber’s side discussing how professors go to China routinely for work.

“But when we start veering off into specifics – Professor X was doing things in China that Harvard may or may not have known about – that would seem to us to be something completely different,” said Jason Casey, the assistant US attorney who is leading the prosecution.

Federal District Judge Rya Zobel ruled that the relevance of Harvard’s broader role would be considered on a case-by-case basis as evidence was presented.

Lieber sat in the courtroom Tuesday morning wearing a white face mask and a grey suit, flanked by lawyers, his head slightly bowed.

­­Lieber’s case has attracted widespread attention, not only because of Harvard’s fame and his prominent position there as a nanotechnologist but also amid growing concern that the Justice Department has overreached in bringing cases against Chinese-American scientists and academics.

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The controversial “China Initiative” programme, introduced in 2018, has sought to stem the loss of technological secrets to China. But Asian advocates say it has ruined careers, fuelled racism and guilt by association and should be ended.

Behind all the arguing over Harvard’s role is a battle for advantage in the eyes of the jury, legal experts said.

Lieber is accused of failing to disclose payments he reportedly received from the Wuhan University of Technology and China’s Thousand Talents Plan, a foreign recruitment programme.

If the defence can show that such activities were widespread at Harvard and across academia, Lieber may be able to convince the jury of his relative innocence, the experts said.

On the other hand, if the government can keep the case narrowly focused on alleged transgressions involving paperwork, the prosecution has a better chance of winning a conviction.

“You can’t say everybody else violated the law as well, the jury won’t buy that,” said Gabriel Chin, a law professor at University of California at Davis. “But they may be able to say everyone else treats this as not really my money. They may want to shoehorn into the case the idea that this is industry standard.”

The government has filed six charges against Lieber, the former chairman of Harvard’s chemistry department. Two involve mischaracterising documents, two relate to tax evasion and two are tied to undisclosed foreign bank accounts.

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Lieber has pleaded not guilty, saying that he did not act knowingly, intentionally or wilfully make any false statements. Harvard has placed him on paid administrative leave and his teaching duties have been suspended.

“The prosecution does want to focus on individual behaviour, while the idea is that the defence would try to muddle the guilt, spread the guilt around,” said Don Clarke, a professor at George Washington University Law School.

Clarke said he has had to fill out many of the same forms that Lieber is on trial for filing inaccurately, including those detailing sources of funding and outside affiliations.

“People say he was just filling out forms. I fill out forms. It’s not hard to fill them out,” said Clarke, founder of Chinalaw, an internet discussion group.

“And I don’t see it on taxes. He’s chairman of the Harvard chemistry department and he doesn’t know how to fill out forms? Give me a break.”

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Others said that the government has taken the easy way out, focusing on paperwork violations that are easier to prove rather than more difficult – and often more dubious – trade-secret theft cases at the core of the China Initiative.

Washington pioneered this paperwork strategy when it filed an ultimately successful tax-evasion case against the notorious Chicago gangster Al Capone in 1930 after struggling to convict him on more conventional criminal charges.

“The government is settling for charges that have little to do with technology,” said Mark Cohen, a law school fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. “They’re doing the Al Capone thing. I don’t think Lieber is an Al Capone.”