Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley has become a leading champion of small economies in global climate discussions. And so I took note at last year’s United Nations climate conference when she said she thought countries should engage then-President elect Trump to try to explain the importance of climate work. “I am not one of those who will come out and say immediately that with the election of President Trump all is gloom and doom,” she said at a fireside chat last November. “We need to find mechanisms… to have the conversations.” Mottley’s position has evolved since then. Trump entered office in January with an aggressive agenda to attack clean energy and end collaboration on climate change. Last week, as delegates from around the world gathered in Barbados for a sustainable energy conference, Mottley instead insisted that small countries would need to find their own way forward. “You don't spend time or energy praying over what could have been,” she said. “But we deal with the world as it is.” Across three days of talks at the SEforAll Global Forum in Barbados, Trump barely came up explicitly. It’s not that anyone there underestimated the consequences of his election for global climate progress. Rather, his election has finally sunk in, and attention has turned to paving a path forward—without the U.S. It’s a telling glimpse at how climate discussions may be shifting. The gravitational pull of the U.S. should not be dismissed; some countries will inevitably follow his lead. Nonetheless, if the conversations in Barbados provide any indication, many emerging and developing economies remain eager to forge their own clean energy path. The U.S. shadow has always loomed large over international climate collaboration. As the world’s largest economy and only superpower, climate negotiators had to adjust language carefully to respond to the U.S. political context. With the Paris Agreement in place, conversations have largely focused on finance—getting money flowing to energy transition projects, particularly in developing and emerging economies. But despite the central role the U.S. played in setting up the system, U.S. public money never came to represent the lifeblood of international climate finance—even as developing countries and climate advocates insisted that the country owed it to the rest of the world to pay up because of its historical emissions. Even in the climate-friendly Biden Administration, it took significant wrangling for the White House to commit to $11 billion in annual international climate finance. To put that in perspective, developing countries left last year’s U.N. climate talks disappointed that their wealthier counterparts committed only to a total $300 billion in annual climate finance. Advertisement In other words, on the finance front, the U.S. isn’t leaving that big of a gap to fill. So where will the money come from? One key area under discussion at the SEforAll forum, where I spoke with officials in the public and private sectors based everywhere from Fiji to Sierra Leone, was so-called south-south collaboration. Instead of looking to the U.S. and Europe to pony up capital, developing and emerging market countries can work together—providing the goods and finance without the help of their wealthier counterparts. According to research from the Brookings Institution, trade between Global South countries recently surpassed trade between Global North countries. “This is a great signal of progress,” Arancha González, a former foreign minister of Spain who is now the dean of the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, told me on a panel I moderated at the forum. “It tells us that there is a new world out there.” Advertisement Potential sources of finance include development banks located in large emerging economies like Brazil and South Africa. Institutions like the New Development Bank, formed in 2014 by the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, have financed billions in clean energy development. And, of course, it’s impossible to talk about this financial picture without talking about China. The country’s Belt and Road Initiative has been a source of more than $1 trillion in capital for infrastructure since its inception in 2013. In recent years, the country has increasingly focused its funding on green projects. Many developing countries have also focused on raising capital locally to fund projects—pushing savings and pension fund money to invest in the local market rather than looking abroad for higher returns. And then there are the new methods of what is often called blended finance. Traditionally, the term refers to a combination of public and private capital where the public money lowers the risk for private investors. More recently, philanthropy has entered the blended finance conversation, playing an increasingly important role providing money Advertisement “We have what we call strange bedfellows, where… institutional investors are partnering with a philanthropic organization, and together coming up with a blended finance solution that is innovative in approach,” says Ije Ikoku Okeke, who runs catalytic climate capital for the Global South at RMI, a clean energy non-profit. A right-wing populist might not object to this new dynamic. In such a world view, American money should support Americans—leaving other countries to their own devices. But is the U.S. really better off if the rest of the world builds a coalition with Americans on the sidelines? Putting U.S. strategic interests aside, it is a little refreshing to hear a conversation about clean energy in the Global South that doesn’t get bogged down in whether the U.S. is going to live up to its moral responsibility as the world’s biggest historic emitter and instead focuses on solutions.

When oil and gas executives first began using the phrase “all of the above” more than a decade ago, it was their pitch that climate advocates and sympathetic policymakers should keep natural gas alongside renewables in their vision of a new energy future. The grid needs abundant, reliable natural gas as back up when the wind isn’t blowing, they argued. This year, the tables have turned. With renewable energy in the Trump Administration’s crosshairs, energy industry big wigs have come to use “all of the above” as a reminder that renewable energy—particularly solar—has an important role to play in keeping the lights on. “We believe in all forms of energy,” said John Ketchum, CEO of NextEra Energy, the world’s most valuable electricity company, at a CERAWeek side event. “When we go to customers, we don't really care if we're selling wind turbines or gas turbines, we want to give them the lowest cost solution.” To hear some activists talk about the new Trump Administration, the president blindly does the bidding of his fossil fuel benefactors. And, in public, many top executives are keen to praise Trump and show close relations with the White House. But behind the scenes many in the industry are more measured, and even critical. Projections of soaring power demand in the U.S. have led utility executives to turn to whatever power source is available—including wind and solar—even as the Trump Administration tries to diminish renewables. Tariffs have threatened the bottomline. And oil executives have woken up to the reality that Trump’s vision of low oil prices doesn’t align with increased domestic production—or industry profits. It’s certainly possible that these tensions remain under wraps. Corporate executives are not inclined to cross Trump, and market forces may be strong enough to keep the energy sector humming along mostly in line with expectations. Nonetheless, understanding the complicated nuance—which in many ways is counterintuitive—is important to grappling with the opportunities to minimize emissions in the coming years. There is no better place to digest energy industry sentiments and trends than the annual CERAWeek conference by S&P Global in Houston. The conference, held last week, draws energy executives and government officials from around the world. This year’s conference, which I attended for part of last week, offered a prime example of the phrase “two things can be true at once.” Industry officials widely praised some of the new administration’s deregulatory moves, but at the same time many expressed deep concerns about the uncertainty that Trump has created. Advertisement "Swinging from one extreme to another is not the right policy approach," Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said on the CERAWeek main stage. "We have allocated capital that's out there for decades, and so we really need consistent and durable policy." Jack Fusco, CEO of natural gas company Cheniere, praised the administration for pivoting the “regulatory machine” in a direction that’s “fair and transparent.” But he followed his praise with a hint of apprehension, saying he hoped the agenda would “hold up in a rule of law”—an acknowledgement of the litigation and uncertainty that surrounds much of Trump’s policy agenda. Even attacks on the Inflation Reduction Act, former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate change law, have some corners of the industry worried. Oil and gas companies had planned to pursue tax incentives for technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture and storage—and dedicated billions in capital to doing so. “We're looking for the continuation of 45Q,” said Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, referring to a tax credit for carbon capture on the conference main stage. “To accelerate the technology at the pace that the U.S. needs it to accelerate, to start having the positive impact on our energy independence, we need 45Q to happen and to stay in place.” (The provision is thought to be one of the credits most likely to survive though everything will be in play during negotiations). Advertisement Behind the scenes many executives offered more vocal concern. As stocks plummeted on the conference’s opening day, executives stewed over tariffs that Trump imposed on Canada’s energy sector, which is highly integrated with the U.S. And Trump’s unpredictable approach more broadly drew concern. In the long term, different views on the price of oil may represent the biggest potential collision. Trump has repeatedly suggested he would like to see the price of oil come down as low as $50/barrel. (Right now the U.S. benchmark for crude oil is around $72/barrel). Voters love low energy prices because it means affordable gas at the pump. But oil companies hate when prices sink too low because it’s harder to turn a profit. For utility executives, the complication of rising power demand remains top of mind. Analysts have predicted soaring demand for electricity as technology companies grow their data center footprint in response to artificial intelligence. That has led the industry to pursue whatever electricity it can build quickly—a lot of natural gas, yes, but also a lot of solar. Advertisement As I’ve written before, the dynamic nature of the Trump Administration’s policymaking makes it difficult for companies to plan. And predicting what comes next is folly. But whatever happens it’s safe to say that the convenient narrative of a Trump Administration moving in lockstep with the energy sector is, at the very least, missing several puzzle pieces. It also means, oddly, that the most influential advocates in Washington for some decarbonization provisions—like carbon capture, sustainable aviation fuel, and hydrogen—may be energy executives embracing the “all of the above” mantra. But even that may not be enough to save climate-friendly tax incentives.

The environmental organization Greenpeace was ordered to pay more than $660 million dollars to the Texas-based pipeline company Energy Transfer this week over its role in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests nearly a decade ago. The outcome was a blow to the environmental advocacy group, which has previously said that a lawsuit of this size could bankrupt its U.S. operations. Energy Transfer, the operator of the Dakota Access Pipeline, accused Greenpeace USA and International of playing a central role in organizing the resistance to the pipeline at Standing Rock in 2016 and 2017. The protests drew national attention as activists set up camp on land owned by Energy Transfer in an attempt to delay the project’s construction. Law enforcement responded by deploying water cannons, tear gas, and other weapons on unarmed protesters—injuring hundreds. Greenpeace denied the company’s claims, and has said the case is “one of the largest Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) cases ever filed.” “Greenpeace played an extremely limited role at Standing Rock, and is proud of showing up in solidarity with Standing Rock activists,” Deepa Padmanabha, senior legal advisor for Greenpeace, said in a statement in February. The protests brought together thousands of activists from around the country who opposed the development of part of the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock reservation. “At no time did Greenpeace engage in property destruction or violence. All claims to the contrary are a reckless disregard for the truth.” Experts say that the success of the so-called SLAPP lawsuit—and heavy penalty Greenpeace was dealt—stands to silence other activists who speak up against big companies. “This verdict, especially given its scope, really changes the calculus for advocacy groups who are engaged in, not just environmental issues, but more generally, in advocacy,” says Jennifer Safstrom, director of the Stanton Foundation First Amendment Clinic at Vanderbilt Law School. “They too could face liability for their advocacy efforts.” What are SLAPP Lawsuits? SLAPP lawsuits are a type of strategic civil litigation aimed at silencing speech by burying an organization or private citizen in legal fees. The term was coined by two professors in the ‘90s, Safstrom says, who notes that the practice was created in large part to target environmental activists—so much so that the professors used another term, “eco-SLAPP,” to define the practice. "It's an abuse of the court system, not for a legitimate legal end, but to try to shut somebody up,” says Gabe Walters, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The practice has grown in prominence in the last decade. EarthRights, a non-profit environmental law group, identified 152 cases by fossil fuel companies between 2012 and 2022 that used strategic lawsuits against critics. A report by the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE) documented 820 SLAPP suits in Europe as of August 2023, with 161 lawsuits filed in 2022, and 135 cases filed in 2021. (The European Union passed an anti-SLAPP directive in April 2024, which aims to provide safeguards against strategic lawsuits that target public participation.) Advertisement Thirty-five states and Washington D.C. have anti-SLAPP laws in place, though what protections they provide may vary. Some states require that verdicts be reached on expedited timelines, while others have implemented “fee shifting,” which allows a defendant to recover legal fees if they win their case. But in states that don’t have protections in place, the impact of a SLAPP lawsuit can be devastating for organizations and individuals alike. “The goal is not even necessarily to win in court,” says Walters. “Just having to defend a lawsuit can be financially ruinous for a private person or for a nonprofit advocacy organization because the costs of litigation are so high.” How are Environmental Groups Responding? Environmental groups have said they won’t back down from their work. In a statement released after the verdict was announced, EarthRights, said that the decision would not silence environmental advocacy. “EarthRights proudly joins Greenpeace USA in speaking up against brazen legal attacks and ensuring that the environmental movement only continues to grow stronger, despite the appalling result in North Dakota.” Advertisement Rebecca Brown, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law, said that “no abusive company, lawsuit, or court decision” would hinder the climate fight. “This misuse of the legal system stifles legitimate dissent and must be seen as a direct threat to environmental justice and democratic freedoms,” said Brown. “Such tactics will not deter us, they only strengthen our commitment to resistance and solidarity and defense of the constitutionally-protected right to protest.” ClientEarth CEO Laura Clarke, said in a statement to TIME that the loss “highlights the growing trend of big polluters using the legal system to intimidate and silence critics.” “The message they seek to convey is a deeply chilling one: that no organization that challenges polluting industries is safe.” Greenpeace has said it plans to challenge the ruling. The group’s international arm also filed a lawsuit in Dutch court against Energy Transfer in 2024—one of the first tests of the European Union’s newly-enacted anti-SLAPP Directive. “Energy Transfer hasn’t heard the last of us in this fight. We’re just getting started with our anti-SLAPP lawsuit against Energy Transfer’s attacks on free speech and peaceful protest,” Kristin Casper, Greenpeace International General Counsel, said in a statement. Advertisement In the meantime, Walters warns that, without national anti-SLAPP protections in place, Wednesday’s verdict will likely embolden powerful companies—and potentially silence activists and groups that are unable to afford a costly legal battle. “The judgment in the Greenpeace case has two practical effects,” he says. “One is that the sheer size of the judgment will chill speech. It will deter others from criticizing powerful interests. The other effect is that it may incentivize copycat lawsuits. A large judgment like this can be a powerful incentive to file further litigation and try to silence critics.”

When Geoff Perlman’s 20-year-old son broke his arm in December 2022, the bill was paid by strangers who chipped in to cover the costs. And rather than paying a monthly premium to a health care company, Perlman writes a check each month, never exceeding $420 for his family of four, to foot strangers’ health care bills, covering part of a pregnancy for one family or chemotherapy for another. Perlman, a 61-year-old tech CEO from Austin, Texas, is a member of CrowdHealth, a health care startup that seeks to replace health insurance with a crowd-funding model that the company says lowers costs and diverts money from insurance conglomerates to real people. Perlman likes the company because he says it sidesteps insurers’ incentive to deny claims and seek profit, while erasing patients’ ignorance about what health care actually costs. Advertisement “You have a feeling you’re part of a community and you’re looking out for them,” says Perlman. “It feels like the money I am paying is helping other people.” CrowdHealth, which was founded in 2021, offers a new take on an old idea. For decades, religious health-sharing ministries with names like Medi-Share and Samaritan Ministries have asked communities to pitch in for the medical bills of strangers. CrowdHealth has no spiritual affiliation; it’s a peer-to-peer financial-technology company that allows its roughly 10,000 paying members to make payments toward fellow members’ medical expenses. To join, members pay an administrative fee of about $55 a month. Each month, they get a message from CrowdHealth informing them that another member needs financial assistance for a specific medical issue. Members can agree to pay their share of the bill, which doesn’t exceed $140 per month for a single person under 55, or $420 for a family of four. Or they can decline—at the cost of eroding their rating on CrowdHealth’s site, making it less likely that fellow members will contribute to their own needs. Read More: Why Some Food Additives Banned in Europe Are Still on U.S. Shelves. When a member has a health care expense, they’re instructed to pay in cash, or tell a hospital that they are a self-pay customer, save the receipts, and submit them to CrowdHealth for compensation. (CrowdHealth sometimes negotiates the price of planned labs or procedures ahead of time.) The company says it covers 99.8% of claims, though it does not specify what exactly is counted in that statistic. What draws people to CrowdHealth is deep discontent with the U.S. health insurance system. The share of Americans who said that the quality of health care in the U.S. is excellent or good—44%—is the lowest since at least 2001, according to a December Gallup poll. Even many of those with good insurance coverage are frustrated at the system’s perverse incentives, byzantine regulations, and opaque processes. It’s this frustration, in part, that led to a groundswell of public support for Luigi Mangione, who was charged with first-degree murder in December for allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan. (Mangione has pleaded not guilty.)

The University of California said on Wednesday that it would stop requiring the use of diversity statements in hiring, a practice praised by some who said it made campuses more inclusive but criticized by others who said it did the opposite. Diversity statements typically ask job applicants to describe in a page or so how they would contribute to campus diversity. The move away from them, by one of the biggest higher education systems in the United States, comes as the Trump administration escalates an attack on higher education over diversity programming. For a decade, the 10-campus system was a national leader in using such statements, as universities increasingly came under pressure from those who wanted more diverse student bodies and faculties. “Our values and commitment to our mission have not changed,” Janet Reilly, the chair of the system’s Board of Regents, said in a statement late Wednesday. “We will continue to embrace and celebrate Californians from a variety of life experiences, backgrounds and points of view.” The announcement came as universities have faced a number of direct challenges from the new Trump administration. Two weeks ago, the administration announced that it would end $400 million in research grants with Columbia University over criticism that the institution had not done enough to crack down on antisemitism. The Education Department sent letters last week to 60 colleges warning of “potential enforcement actions” if they didn’t protect Jewish students. Four of the University of California system’s 10 campuses — Berkeley, Davis, San Diego and Santa Barbara — received the letters. And last month, the Education Department issued guidance that interpreted the 2023 Supreme Court ruling striking down race-conscious admissions practices far more expansively to include any “race-based decision-making.” The University of California system’s president, Michael Drake, did not address diversity statements during his opening remarks at a meeting of the Regents on Wednesday. But he painted a bleak picture about the university’s finances. The system is bracing for a state budget cut of 8 percent and is concerned about threats from the federal government to curb funding. Like several other universities in recent days, Dr. Drake announced a systemwide hiring freeze. In a letter to the system’s leaders on Wednesday, the university’s provost, Katherine S. Newman, said the Regents had directed Dr. Drake to eliminate diversity statements for all new hires. “The requirement to submit a diversity statement may lead applicants to focus on an aspect of their candidacy that is outside their expertise or prior experience,” she wrote. She added, “We can continue to effectively serve our communities from a variety of life experiences, backgrounds and points of view without requiring diversity statements.” Even before Mr. Trump took office, diversity statements had become a lightning rod. Conservative critics describe them as “loyalty oaths” that limit diversity of thought in academia. Others saw them as another tool that savvy applicants could use to hit the right buzzwords and gain an edge in hiring. Some states, including North Dakota, Florida and Texas, have barred requiring them or stopped them altogether. Amid the pressure, several colleges, including Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Michigan, recently said they would stop requiring them in faculty hiring. “They encouraged a performativity,” said Steven Brint, a professor at the University of California, Riverside. “People knew the right thing to say.” The University of California was sued over diversity statements, but the federal suit was ultimately tossed out because a judge said the plaintiffs lacked standing. But to their supporters, the statements were a test of how comfortable applicants were navigating increasingly diverse student bodies. Diversity statements do not gauge beliefs, but actions, said Brian Soucek, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. Professor Soucek said the university was backing away from one of its core values and capitulating to the Trump administration in a futile attempt to avoid the president’s wrath. “Attempts to appease those who have been explicit about their intent to destroy higher education as we currently know it are politically naïve,” Professor Soucek wrote this week in a letter to faculty leaders. In an interview, he added, “Show me how that worked out for Columbia.”

In October 2023, three days before Hamas fighters attacked Israel, Columbia University’s new president stood outside Low Library and posed a foundational question. “What,” she asked, “does the world need from a great university in the 21st century?” The president, Nemat Shafik, argued that the world required much. Rigorous thinkers who were grounded in the age’s great debates. Researchers whose breakthroughs could transform societies. Universities that extended their missions far beyond their gates. Seventeen months later, Dr. Shafik is gone and the Trump administration is offering a far different answer. The ideal Dr. Shafik described, much of it historically bankrolled by American taxpayers, is under siege, as President Trump ties public money to his government’s vision for higher education. That vision is a narrower one. Teach what you must, defend “the American tradition and Western civilization,” prepare people for the work force, and limit protests and research. “I have not experienced, across 46 years of higher education, a period where there’s been this much distance” between the agendas of university leaders and Washington, said Robert J. Jones, the chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The outcome of this clash over the purpose of higher education stands to shape American culture for a generation or more. If the president realizes his ambitions, many American universities — public and private, in conservative states and liberal ones — could be hollowed out, imperiling the backbone of the nation’s research endeavors.Two months into Mr. Trump’s term, universities are laying off workers, imposing hiring freezes, shutting down laboratories and facing federal investigations. After the administration sent Columbia a list of demands and canceled $400 million in grants and contracts, university leaders across the country fear how the government might wield its financial might to influence curriculums, staffing and admissions. “Colleges have gotten hundreds of billions of dollars from hard-working taxpayers,” Mr. Trump said in a campaign video. “And now we are going to get this anti-American insanity out of our institutions once and for all. We are going to have real education in America.” The goal, Mr. Trump declared, is to reclaim “our once-great educational institutions from the radical left.” Other Republicans have spoken, often in more measured language, about their own frustrations with higher education. Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, bluntly complained during a hearing last month that colleges were “not preparing students to succeed in the modern work force.” With presidential power magnified by a largely genuflecting Congress, Mr. Trump’s challenges to academic freedom and First Amendment protections have not provoked broad and visible public outrage. The sobering reality for university leaders is that Mr. Trump has the administrative upper hand, and academia has startlingly few vocal allies. The fusillade against higher education led by Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance — men with Ivy League degrees — is more furious than past conservative crusades against the country’s elite academic institutions. The administration, though, is capitalizing on imperfections that have been tearing at the system’s stature for years. “His genius was in understanding and then exploiting the resentments, the anxieties, and the vulnerabilities of” voters who already had “critical sentiments” toward higher education, Ronald J. Daniels, the president of Johns Hopkins University, wrote of Mr. Trump in his 2021 book, “What Universities Owe Democracy.” Private polling conducted for universities shows that many people believe that these nonprofit institutions are anything but — one consequence of high tuition costs. Even though a college education almost always provides graduates with higher lifetime incomes, rising debt has made the value of a degree a matter of debate. Politicians have eagerly caricatured colleges as sanctuaries of intolerance and “wokeism” where admissions processes have sometimes considered race or favored the well-connected.For all of their grand talk — “For Humanity” is the name of Yale University’s $7 billion fund-raising campaign — administrators and professors often acknowledge that they have not mustered easy-to-digest responses against even routine criticisms. Universities strained to be more accessible, building up more diverse classes and handing out more financial aid. But Chancellor Jones, who will become the University of Washington’s president this summer, nevertheless described higher education’s public relations strategy as “a work in progress.” Many leaders concede that while the role of the university in American life is clear to them, it has grown muddled to many. “Higher education has always been able to stand up and invoke its moral authority,” said Roger L. Geiger, a distinguished professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and a leading authority on the history of American colleges. “What’s happened is they’ve simply lost that moral authority.” The Pew Research Center found in 2012 that 26 percent of Americans believed that colleges and universities were negatively affecting the United States. Last year, even before the campus demonstrations that led to thousands of arrests, Pew reported that figure had increased to 45 percent. Much of Mr. Trump’s higher education agenda during his first term empowered for-profit colleges. Now, though, Mr. Trump is taking clearer aim at the cultures and missions of major nonprofit universities. His tactics, university officials and researchers believe, could throw American higher education toward an earlier time — closer to when, as Dr. Shafik put it, universities “were kept separate from the world around them.”American higher education predates the republic itself. Harvard, for example, was established in the colonial period to educate clergymen. George Washington’s idea for a national university was never realized, but Abraham Lincoln found more success pursuing the idea that higher education was entwined with American ambition when he signed the measure that led to publicly funded land-grant institutions. Research became a focus of universities late in the 19th century. The nation’s reliance on universities greatly accelerated during and after World War II, as the United States began to lean on academia more than most other countries. Essential to the system was Washington’s new willingness to underwrite overhead costs of expensive research projects. By 1995, the National Academy of Sciences concluded that universities were “the core strength” of the American research-and-development apparatus. Universities also assumed part of the United States’ soft-power strategy, working on foreign aid projects that spanned the globe. That symbiotic arrangement is now in jeopardy. The administration has framed its proposed cuts to overhead expenses, for instance, as a way “to ensure that as many funds as possible go toward direct scientific research costs.” But administration officials have also depicted the longstanding framework in harsh terms, including the assertion that it created a “slush fund” for liberal university administrators. As Dr. Geiger put it, the Trump administration’s approach represented “a new era.” Besides upending individual studies, cuts to federal money could unleash dramatic consequences for the structures and objectives of universities. “No one can assume, for example, that biochemistry is going to have a sustained future of generous funding,” said John Thelin, a professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky and a former president of the Association for the Study of Higher Education. He could think of no president, provost or medical school dean who had, in recent years, appeared particularly nervous about an evaporation of funding. These days, it is hard to find a president, provost or medical school dean who is not anxious about something. At Illinois, the federally funded Soybean Innovation Lab will close next month. Dr. Jones fears that research on everything from insulin production to artificial intelligence could ultimately wither, undermining the university’s ability to advance what he called “the public good.” “Before, we were just trying to tell our story to improve the value proposition in the eyes of the public, but now it becomes a bigger, much larger issue than that,” said Dr. Jones, one of the few top university chiefs who have been willing to be interviewed on the record since Mr. Trump’s inauguration. The threat is also acute at private institutions, even those with the biggest war chests. Johns Hopkins said last week that it would eliminate more than 2,000 jobs in the United States and overseas, the largest round of layoffs in its history. The University of Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump’s alma mater, is among the universities with new hiring freezes. (It announced that step before the Trump administration said on Wednesday that it would pause about $175 million in funding for Penn because it had allowed a transgender woman to compete on its women’s swim team.) In recent weeks, presidents at public and private universities alike have weighed how long any institutional lifelines could last. But professors doubt that a major university can meet its modern ambitions without a relatively open spigot of federal support. “Ultimately, the university cannot exist without research,” said Brent R. Stockwell, the chair of biological sciences at Columbia. “It would be really, really more akin to a high school or a local community college where you’re just teaching some classes without world-class researchers bringing the frontier of knowledge into the classroom.”So far, Mr. Trump has not signaled any interest in retreat. That has left academic leaders searching urgently for how to save an ideal they insist is imperative. Asked whether he feared a wholesale remaking of the American university, Dr. Jones replied that he did not like to use the word “fear.” But, he added, “it is a concern — I can’t say that it is not one of those things that a lot of us are concerned about.”

As conservatives fought against cancel culture on college campuses, they developed a particular fondness for the First Amendment. It was un-American, they argued, to punish someone for exercising their right to speak freely. Today, however, many of those same conservatives, now in power in state and federal government, are behind a growing crackdown on political expression at universities, in ways that try to sidestep the Constitution’s free-speech guarantees. President Trump and Republican lawmakers say that new laws and policies are necessary to protect students from harmful and objectionable content, to prevent harassment and to discourage conformity. To that end, Mr. Trump has threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of federal dollars from universities because they moved too slowly to quell protests that left many Jewish students feeling threatened. And Republicans in state legislatures have drafted sweeping prohibitions against classroom “indoctrination” and the display of certain L.G.B.T.Q. symbols. They have also demanded the removal of art they consider inappropriate. In some cases, the Trump administration has said existing federal law already gives the president all the power he needs to act. When Mr. Trump said he would deport student activists, for example, he claimed to be acting in the interest of American foreign policy. Tellingly, administration officials have said they are not bound by the First Amendment when it comes to noncitizens. “This is not about free speech,” said Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States to begin with. No one has a right to a student visa. No one has a right to a green card.” Critics of this broad approach, including some on the right, say Republicans are being just as heavy-handed and censorious as they claimed the left was toward them. “That makes the situation so much worse,” said Greg Lukianoff, chief executive of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech group that often represents moderates and conservatives who claim they’ve been retaliated against for their political views. “Now we have all this federal pressure and pressure from state governments — sometimes really direct and clear, and sometimes hazy and confusing,” he said, adding, “There’s a lot fewer people who care about the nonpartisan defense of free speech now.”For many First Amendment experts and academics, the new laws and orders reveal an especially insidious threat: Public officials who are willing to marshal the power of the state against people whose views they dislike. “A number of people in elected office have gotten extraordinarily comfortable with the idea that they should use that office to control the spread of ideas and information,” said Jonathan Friedman, a managing director at PEN America, a free speech advocacy group. “And at a fundamental level, that’s what makes all of this so dangerous,” Mr. Friedman added. While the federal government’s role in some aspects of education is fairly limited, it does hold powerful tools that the Trump administration has been eager to use. It can launch civil rights investigations, for instance, or withhold research grants. States, which provide more funding for public schools and universities than the federal government does, have greater leverage and control. Legislation approved last month by the Ohio State Senate sets parameters for the discussion of any “controversial belief or policy” at state universities — including climate change, electoral politics, abortion and immigration. The bill demands that faculty members “shall not seek to indoctrinate any social, political, or religious point of view.” Sponsors say its purpose is to “allow students to exercise their right to free speech without threat of reprisal.” If it becomes law, universities would also be required to post all undergraduate course syllabuses online, along with the professor’s contact information and professional qualifications. Many states have taken aim at diversity, equity and inclusion programs in university hiring and admissions. But Republicans in Arizona are going further, by trying to remove the subject entirely from the classroom. The State Senate approved a bill this month that would deny funding to any public college or university that teaches about contemporary American society through the academic framework of concepts including “critical theory, whiteness, systemic racism, institutional racism, antiracism, microaggressions.” A bill awaiting the governor’s signature in Utah would outlaw pride flags at public schools and on government property.In some cases, Republicans have directly interfered with campus activities. Students at the University of North Texas took down a pro-Palestinian art exhibit last month after a Republican lawmaker complained that it referred to genocide in Hebrew.At Texas A&M University, officials banned drag performances on campus, saying it was “inconsistent” with the university’s values to host events that “involve biological males dressing in women’s clothing.” The American education system has long been a target for conservatives, many of whom see it as hostile to their values. In the last few years, the country’s most explosive political and cultural clashes — over Covid policy, racial inequality, gender identity, immigration, Gaza — have played out with intensity on campus quads, at school board meetings and in the classroom. Disruptive student protests have been an animating issue for Mr. Trump. In 2017, he suggested revoking funding from the University of California, Berkeley, after the university canceled an appearance by the professional right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Today, Mr. Trump — who declared in his recent address to Congress that he had “brought back free speech” — continues to antagonize academia, but this time he is using the power of the presidency. After his administration announced that it was canceling $400 million in funding for Columbia University, accusing it of failing to protect students and faculty members from “antisemitic violence and harassment,” legal scholars called the move an existential threat to academic freedom. “Never has the government brought such leverage against an institution of higher education,” said Lee C. Bollinger, the former president of Columbia University. Some conservatives said this kind of action is overdue and unsurprising. “When you take federal funds, you agree to abide by all kinds of rules,” said Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the conservative Manhattan Institute. Universities agree, for instance, to abide by certain accounting standards and anti-discrimination policies. Those rules are not always enforced consistently, Mr. Shapiro said. Nor is the Trump administration “exactly being legally precise” in a lot of what it has done, he added. “But part of this vibe shift that elected Trump is wanting law and order in a lot of ways,” Mr. Shapiro said. “And that includes on college campuses.” The arrest earlier this month of Mahmoud Khalil, a green-card holder who was born in Syria and studied at Columbia, was one of the most aggressive moves yet by the Trump administration in its effort to punish pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Mr. Khalil served as a spokesman for a student group that embraces hard-line anti-Israel rhetoric and says it supports liberation for Palestinians “by any means necessary, including armed resistance.” In announcing the arrest, the Department of Homeland Security accused Mr. Khalil of aligning himself with Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. Voicing support for such causes is not, however, a crime, and the Supreme Court has declared all manner of hateful speech to be protected by the First Amendment, including cheering the deaths of soldiers at their funerals and, in certain cases, cross burnings. “It can’t be a crime — or even a civil offense — simply to hold and express heinous views,” said Ann Coulter, the conservative firebrand whose college speeches have been the targets of protesters and have sometimes been threatened with violence. Ms. Coulter, an immigration hard-liner who acknowledged that she had rarely heard of a deportation that she didn’t support, said the president would be setting a terrible precedent by making protected speech — as offensive as it may be — a reason for deporting a legal green card holder like Mr. Khalil. But Eugene Volokh, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, said that the law is not always clear when the speech of noncitizens is at issue. And he said that Mr. Trump’s attempts to punish noncitizens seemed consistent in many ways with powers that Congress had already given presidents. Does that mean that Mr. Khalil can be deported for protesting, which is a constitutionally protected act? “The only honest answer,” Mr. Volokh said, “is we don’t know.” Conservatives have tested the scope of the First Amendment in other ways recently. Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, told the dean of Georgetown University Law Center that he had begun an “inquiry” into the school’s teaching and promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion — and insisted that he would not hire students from any university that continues to offer such programs. In response, the school’s dean, William Treanor, wrote in a letter that the First Amendment guarantees Georgetown, a private, Catholic institution, “its abilities to determine, on academic grounds, who may teach, what to teach, and how to teach it.” “This is a bedrock principle of constitutional law,” Mr. Treanor continued, “recognized not only by the courts, but by the administration in which you serve.”

It was an obscure, 44-word demand toward the end of the Trump administration’s ultimatum to Columbia University this month ordering a dramatic overhaul of admissions and disciplinary rules. But it could prove to have consequences for colleges and universities nationwide. With $400 million in canceled government grants and contracts on the line, federal officials ordered Columbia’s administration to place the university’s Middle Eastern studies department under academic receivership for at least five years. Typically, a receivership is handled internally. University administrators can take the rare step of imposing the measure when a department descends into chaos. It is viewed as a last-resort solution to extended periods of internal strife and dysfunction. This time is different. The call for a receivership is coming from outside the university — and directly from the White House. And it arrives at a moment when dozens of other colleges and universities are facing federal inquiries and fear a fate similar to Columbia’s. “It is one small department in one university,” said Sheldon Pollock, a retired former chair of the Middle Eastern studies department at Columbia. “But it will reverberate across the entire country.” The interdisciplinary program at the center of the government’s demand — the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department — has been in a pitched battle for decades over its scholarship and employment of faculty members who describe themselves as anti-Zionist. Several historians and veteran professors said that the move by the federal government to intervene in an academic department at a private university would be unparalleled in the modern history of U.S. higher education. Laurie A. Brand, a professor emerita at the University of Southern California, who described the department as one of the most respected in the field, compared the move to the Turkish government’s centralized control of higher education during its “hard authoritarian turn” in the 2010s. “I certainly don’t remember a case in the United States,” said Dr. Brand, the chair of the Committee on Academic Freedom at the Middle East Studies Association, an organization of scholars who focus on the region. The swirling questions about the department’s future have emerged as the latest crisis for Columbia, where pro-Palestinian demonstrations against the war in Gaza ignited a national protest movement and animated debate over free speech and antisemitism. The federal government accused the university last week of failing to safeguard students and faculty members “from antisemitic violence and harassment,” calling for changes that include the school formalizing its definition of antisemitism. The government said that it had extended its deadline to the end of Friday for Columbia to respond to its ultimatum, which would include offering a timeline for placing the Middle Eastern studies department under receivership. College administrators across the nation are closely watching whether Columbia acts with deference or defiance. As higher education institutions face federal scrutiny, many see the dispute over the department as a high-stakes test case for other Middle Eastern studies programs — and for other endeavors that could run afoul of conservative orthodoxy, such as centers for the study of climate change or gender and sexuality. Dr. Pollock described the government’s “intrusion” as “jaw-dropping” and “a historic and astonishing event.” Such a move would signal “the beginning of the end of the American university as we’ve known it since 1915,” the year that the American Association of University Professors first codified guidelines and practices for academic freedom. A spokeswoman for the Department of Education, one of three federal agencies named in the letter to Columbia, did not respond to questions about the rationale for the receivership. In a letter to the university on Wednesday, Columbia’s interim president, Katrina A. Armstrong, seemed to acknowledge the growing concern over how the school might respond. “Legitimate questions about our practices and progress can be asked, and we will answer them,” Dr. Armstrong wrote. “But we will never compromise our values of pedagogical independence, our commitment to academic freedom or our obligation to follow the law.” President Trump has previously homed in on Middle Eastern studies programs for potential bias, including in his first term. The Education Department, under its former head, Betsy DeVos, ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to remake their jointly run Middle East studies program, accusing it of offering students a biased curriculum in violation of federal funding standards. It was one example of the charged conflict over Middle Eastern studies, which has historically inspired debate, in part because the discipline can highlight academic scholarship that casts Israel in a negative light. At some institutions, students, professors, alumni and donors have been divided over the distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism in such work — and whether the two should be regarded as distinct issues. Columbia’s Manhattan campus — and its roughly 50-member Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department — have been a hot spot for these disputes. The department was a central focus of a 2004 documentary called “Columbia Unbecoming,” which interviewed students who had taken classes in the department and described facing intimidation from faculty members for their pro-Israel views. Its central thesis, which has been strenuously debated, depicted a systemic silencing of Jewish students in campus culture. During the past 17 months of fighting in Gaza, the department has come under a wave of renewed scrutiny, including during a high-profile hearing on antisemitism last spring. A number of Congressional Republicans took issue with some faculty members, including Joseph Massad, a tenured professor of Palestinian Christian descent who teaches modern Arab politics and intellectual history. Many students and alumni were enraged over an article he wrote after the Hamas attack, which included descriptors like “resistance offensive” and “awesome.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Michelle Steel, a former Republican representative from California, said during the hearing that the article illustrated that the department had been “extremely hostile to both Israel and Jewish students” for more than two decades, and asked whether the school would consider “placing the department into receivership.” Nemat Shafik, Columbia’s president at the time, avoided a direct answer. “Academic departments at Columbia are — there isn’t really a notion of receivership,” Dr. Shafik, who resigned from her post in August, responded. Some Jewish organizations in recent months called on Columbia’s leadership to overhaul the department. Kenneth L. Marcus, the founder of the Brandeis Center in Washington, D.C., said that many Jewish students during the past two decades had “simply been warned to avoid the program altogether.” It may be debatable whether academic receivership is the answer, Mr. Marcus said. Still, he called it a milestone for federal officials to recognize “that the campus problem cannot be solved without a faculty solution.” The chair of the Columbia department, Gil Hochberg, did not respond to requests for comment. It remains unclear what an academic receivership might entail. Several advocates of academic freedom raised concerns in interviews that the government might seek to influence the selection of a new department chair, who could have broad leeway to reshape course content or pursue the dismissal of tenured faculty members. Others worried that the move could set a precedent for the Trump administration to make threats to federal funding at other universities over scholarship that it finds unfavorable. One professor wondered whether history departments could come under fire for courses that federal officials believed portray slavery and segregation too negatively. Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, which is representing Palestinian students in a civil rights case against Columbia, said that Middle Eastern studies departments had often been targeted for punishment or defunding because they challenged dominant narratives about Israel. Ms. Sainath called the receivership demand “straight out of an authoritarian playbook where attacking universities is the first step,” and “any institution that represents opposition to Trump’s agenda” could be next. It would not be Columbia’s first experiment with academic receivership. Some two decades ago, school administrators placed the Middle Eastern studies department under a one-year receivership and appointed an interim chair in part because of struggles to find a new leader, Dr. Pollock, the former chair, said. And amid internal disputes over cultural shifts in the study of literature, Columbia leaders appointed a scholar from a Pennsylvania university to lead the English department in the early 2000s. A weekly newspaper in New York described the stakes in now familiar terms: “Crisis at Columbia.” David Damrosch, a Harvard professor of comparative literature who was a member of Columbia’s English department at the time, said the move helped mend divisions. But he added that a receivership “might be the single most dangerous thing the administration has demanded out of everything.” To Dr. Damrosch, who has studied academic culture at colleges, the current turmoil was vaguely reminiscent of a 1940s episode at the school now known as Iowa State University. The school’s economics department — in a paper on economic policy for wartime food production — had proposed replacing butter with margarine, said Dr. Damrosch. The dairy industry and its supporters in the state legislature “went ballistic,” he said, pressuring the school’s president to place the department under receivership. The move triggered an immediate backlash and mass departure of faculty members. It might have also played a small role in the reshaping of the higher education landscape: At least six professors fled to Chicago, where they helped build one of the most renowned economics departments in the world.

Pro-Palestinian activists are suing the University of California, Los Angeles, accusing it of allowing pro-Israel counterprotesters to terrorize and assault people at an encampment set up on campus last spring. The pro-Palestinian camp became a major flashpoint in the conflict over the war in Gaza and over how universities responded. The demonstrators have accused the school and various police forces of failing to protect them and shutting down the camp without legal justification, after it was attacked by pro-Israel activists over the course of several hours one night in April. But Jewish students said the university allowed the camp to stay for days, even though it had created a hostile environment and prevented them from entering some parts of campus. The new lawsuit, announced on Thursday, came the same week the Trump administration joined a separate lawsuit filed by Jewish students and a Jewish professor, in June, accusing the university of failing to protect them from the pro-Palestinian activists. The administration says it is also investigating complaints of antisemitism at a growing list of universities, including U.C.L.A., through a federal task force. The new complaint was filed on behalf of 35 pro-Palestinian activists, including students, faculty members, legal observers, journalists and sympathizers. It also names 20 people as defendants who are described as members of a “rioting mob.” Filed in superior court in Los Angeles County, the lawsuit seeks monetary damages for physical and psychological injuries suffered by the protesters. According to the suit, the university’s administration allowed pro-Israel counterprotesters to mount a large jumbotron near the pro-Palestinian encampment, which broadcast “a loop of clips of graphic descriptions of rape and sexual violence, sounds of gunshots, screaming babies, clips of President Biden pledging unconditional support for Israel, and extremely loud amplified music,” including a children’s song that the lawsuit says was used to torture Palestinian prisoners. The noise continued during the night and seeped into classrooms during the day, according to court papers. Then, on April 30, the lawsuit says, counterprotesters, some in Guy Fawkes-like masks, some draped in Israeli flags, attacked the camp in the middle of the night. They sprayed chemical irritants into people’s eyes and pulled down metal and wooden barricades, using them as weapons. The lawsuit also says that attackers threw fireworks into the encampment, and that several people went to the hospital for injuries. All the while, the lawsuit says, U.C.L.A.’s administration, the campus police, the Los Angeles police and the state highway patrol stood by passively and ignored the pro-Palestinian group’s pleas for help. Stett Holbrook, a spokesman for the University of California president’s office, said that the university had instituted reforms to promote safety and combat harassment and discrimination systemwide. “Violence of any kind has no place at U.C.,” he said in a statement. Highway patrol and the Los Angeles police said they would not comment on pending litigation. As the violence escalated, private security officers fled the area, the lawsuit says, and it took hours for them to be replaced by the police. The attack continued for nearly five hours, from about 10:30 p.m. to about 3:15 a.m. “It was immediately apparent that there was not a semblance of protection for the physical safety of the encampment members, and the mob had successfully transformed a peaceful, interfaith community into a site of horror,” court papers say. According to the suit, many of the counterprotesters were not students but community members, including a Beverly Hills jeweler, a Laguna Beach attorney and a Los Angeles teenager, who are named as defendants. Many could not be reached or did not respond to requests for comment. “Those were adult, grown members of the community,” Thomas B. Harvey, the lead lawyer in the case, said on Thursday, adding, “I think it’s a totally different understanding of who’s in that attack.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations California is also providing legal assistance on the case. Less than 12 hours after the attack, the police disbanded the encampment, and in doing so, according to the lawsuit, subjected protesters to a new round of violence, including being shot at with rubber bullets, beaten with batons, wrestled to the ground and restrained. The police raid resulted in more than 200 arrests. One of the plaintiffs, Thistle Boosinger, was beaten by the counterprotesters with a metal rod that shattered her hand and severed a nerve, hurting her career as a drummer, according to the complaint. Jakob Johnson, who graduated from U.C.L.A. last year, was shot in the chest with a rubber bullet by a police officer standing less than 10 feet away, the complaint says. He suffered heart and lung injuries and depression, and had to withdraw from law school, the complaint says. Mr. Harvey said the plaintiffs had identified the counterprotesters by analyzing a CNN report on the violence that night, which captured some names and images. The lawsuit notes that none of the people who attacked the encampment were arrested. On Monday, the Justice Department filed a statement of interest in the separate lawsuit filed by Jewish students. That lawsuit accused pro-Palestinian protesters of setting up checkpoints on campus to block people who supported the existence of the state of Israel. In a preliminary injunction in August, a federal judge said the checkpoints were “abhorrent” to the constitutional right of religious freedom, and ordered the university to protect Jewish students. “The statement of interest is part of the task force’s nationwide effort to combat antisemitism in all of its forms,” the Trump administration said. A year after the disbanding of the encampment, the protest activity continues, though more quietly. About two dozen protesters gathered at U.C.L.A. for a second day on Wednesday to call on the university to divest from money tied to Israel, and to call for a public meeting with the University of California Board of Regents. They chanted, banged on drums and held a sign saying, “Keep your eyes on Palestine.”

It seemed as if the president just needed a little reassurance. He was in the East Room of the White House, which was packed with jittery children, conservative activists, influencers and Republican governors from states including Florida, Texas, Indiana, Ohio and Iowa. All had come to watch him sign an executive order to gut the Education Department, something conservatives have dreamed of doing for decades. No other president had done it, not even this one the first time he was in office. Now he was back, and there was the order, sitting atop a small desk at the front of that grandiose room, waiting to be signed. All around his desk were lots of other little desks, the kind you sit at in grade school. Children of varying ages, dressed in school uniforms, sat swinging their legs under their desks. They looked up expectantly as Mr. Trump approached. He turned to one small boy and said, “Should I do this?” The boy nodded eagerly. The president spun around and looked at a young girl. “Should I do it?” he asked. She nodded, too. Encouraged, he sat down, pulled out his power pen and scrawled. The governors and the children and their parents burst into applause. In some sense, Thursday’s executive order signing was on-brand for Mr. Trump. Whether he’s releasing files related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination, purging the board of the Kennedy Center to appoint himself its head, or carving up the Education Department, this president takes pride in doing what none of the others would dare do. But otherwise, this signing session was an odd one, as even he had to admit. He lacked that fiery conviction he usually brings to such affairs. He kept emphasizing that what he was doing was not as radical as it might have seemed: “It sounds strange, doesn’t it? Department of Education. We’re going to eliminate it.” In fact, only Congress can abolish a cabinet agency, but Mr. Trump’s order basically called on the Education Department to come up with a plan for shutting itself down. He insisted that “everybody knows it’s right,” and he reminded the room that when the department was established, by President Jimmy Carter in the same room in which Mr. Trump was now destroying it, many Americans opposed the idea — even the “famed Democrat senator” Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the editorial board of this newspaper.Mr. Trump recognized that he was putting his education secretary, Linda McMahon, out of a job, which was maybe a bit awkward. “We’re going to find something else for you to do, OK?” he told her. He often describes people who make up the federal work force as being part of a shadowy cabal that he is all too happy to pulverize. Not so in this case. “They’re good people,” he said of the Education Department’s 4,200-person work force, many of whom he was effectively firing. “I want to just make one little personal statement,” Mr. Trump said at one point. Teachers, he said, are among the most important people in the country and everyone ought to “cherish” them. At another point, he promised that money for the federal Pell Grant was not going to vanish. “Supposed to be a very good program,” he said. What was interesting about Mr. Trump’s seeming ambivalence over this thing he was about to do was that everybody around him was so overwhelmingly ecstatic about it. The person who appeared least excited about what was happening was the one who was making it happen. “I never thought we’d get any serious major education reform done, let alone dismantling the Department of Education,” said Terry Schilling, a 38-year-old father and activist from Burke, Va., a Washington suburb. He was there with his wife and six of their seven children. “It’s a beautiful day,” he said, bouncing a baby boy named Tucker on his shoulder, “and I’m just so happy to be here.” There were activists in the room like Chaya Raichik, the creator of the influential Libs of TikTok account, and Tiffany Justice, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a parents rights group that worked hard to help elect Mr. Trump. This was exactly how they hoped a Trump restoration might go. “You had a lot of Republican presidents promise this,” observed Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America. Mr. Trump didn’t have the temerity to tear up the Education Department the last time he was president. What changed? “He had four years to think about it and plan,” Ms. Nance said. “All of us did, frankly.”