Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University, was released after 58 days. Rumeyza Ozturk, a Tufts doctoral student, was released after 45 days. Mohsen Mahdawi, a Columbia undergraduate, was released after 16 days. But 72 days after his arrest on March 9, Mahmoud Khalil — the country’s most prominent pro-Palestinian-protester-turned-prisoner — is still detained in Jena, La., waiting for a New Jersey federal judge to decide whether he can go free while his immigration case proceeds. The Trump administration has invoked a rarely cited law to argue that Mr. Khalil’s presence in the country threatens its foreign-policy goal of halting antisemitism. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers have argued that the government is retaliating against their client, a legal permanent resident, for participating in protests that shook Columbia University’s campus and that he should have his liberty while his immigration case is assessed. The New Jersey judge, Michael E. Farbiarz, has been thoroughly engaged. But he has yet to weigh in fully on the issues of free speech and due process that have attracted enormous attention to Mr. Khalil’s case.His meticulous approach has made the case an exemplar of Trump-era justice, in which the White House frequently moves with a speed that courts are not used to matching. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers have repeatedly asked the judge to decide whether to release their client on bail, like the other students, before ruling on the issues at the heart of the case. The judge has responded that he must deal with the procedural basics first. Judge Farbiarz has issued numerous orders and written two lengthy rulings: a 67-page determination that he had the right to preside over the case and a 108-page opinion asserting that his control over the case had not been stripped. In the second ruling, he acknowledged that the law’s response to cases like Mr. Khalil’s “has been the same across the board: no unnecessary delay.” That opinion was issued on April 29. “Mahmoud is understandably frustrated that he was the first to be detained and nine weeks later is still in detention,” said Baher Azmy, one of Mr. Khalil’s lawyers and the legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “But we remain optimistic that the court will see through the patent unconstitutionality of the government’s actions here and order him released soon.”Legal experts acknowledged that Judge Farbiarz, 51, has proceeded more slowly than other judges. But they emphasized that each judge was different and said they believed it made sense, particularly for an early-career jurist like Judge Farbiarz, to be as thorough as possible. “In a case that has gotten this much notoriety, I think there’s every reason if you’re the judge to make sure you have all of your ducks in a row,” said Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University. “Judge Farbiarz knows that there is a national spotlight, not just on him but on the ability of the federal courts to handle cases like these.” Judge Farbiarz has a reputation for thorough, methodical preparation that borders on the obsessive. Before he ascended to the bench in 2023, he was a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, where he headed the office’s terrorism and international narcotics unit. As a prosecutor, he led a case against one of Osama Bin Laden’s sons-in-law, and another against the first Guantánamo Bay detainee to be tried in civilian court. He also prosecuted a Swedish citizen, Oussama Kassir, who was accused of plotting to set up a training camp for terrorists at an Oregon ranch. Mark S. DeMarco, a defense lawyer based in the Bronx, represented Mr. Kassir. He was struck by the future Judge Farbiarz’s sense of fair play, and his thoroughness. “All his bases were covered. There was no stone left unturned,” Mr. DeMarco remembered, adding, “He was probably one of the most prepared prosecutors I’ve gone up against as an adversary.” After leaving the Manhattan office, the ex-prosecutor became a senior fellow at New York University’s law school, and worked on academic papers that focused on jurisdiction and due process issues involving defendants outside the United States — issues similar to those he has pondered at length in Mr. Khalil’s case. “What’s really marked about those articles is they do not read as somebody straight out of the prosecutorial trenches,” said Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia University who is friendly with the judge. “They read as written by somebody who stepped back from his own practice and really tried to get it right in terms of the legal doctrine.” People caught up in the legal system often find that judges do not rule quickly enough to account for rapidly unfolding events. The disjuncture has been particularly notable during the second Trump administration, during which courts have struggled to keep up. “A lot of us on the outside expect federal courts to move with the same dispatch that the executive branch can move. That’s not practicable and it’s not wise,” Mr. Vladeck said. “What separates judicial power from political power is principled legal rationale. Sometimes it takes a little time to make sure that you’ve got the right principles to inform your position.” In Mr. Khalil’s case, the administration moved with characteristic speed, both in initially detaining him and in rationalizing his arrest. A spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department quickly claimed he had led activities “aligned to Hamas.” And Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, accused him of “siding with terrorists,” and of participating in protests in which “pro-Hamas” fliers were handed out. But in the weeks since, those allegations have not been substantiated. Evidence submitted in Mr. Khalil’s immigration case revealed no secretive support for Hamas. And his lawyers have pointed to comments he made on CNN saying that “antisemitism and any form of racism has no place on campus and in this movement.” His case continues to play out in two separate courts. Judge Farbiarz has the power to free him and to determine the constitutionality of the administration’s attempts to deport him. An immigration court judge, Jamee Comans, is overseeing his immigration proceedings, which determine more narrowly whether the United States has met the legal burden for deporting him. Mr. Khalil’s next immigration court hearing is scheduled for Thursday. Over the weekend, friends and supporters of Mr. Khalil held a “people’s graduation” event in Manhattan, acknowledging that if he were free, he would have walked in a Columbia University commencement this week. Mr. Khalil’s wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, was there with the couple’s infant son, Deen, who was born on April 21. Speaking through tears, Dr. Abdalla said she had looked forward to her husband getting to experience his commencement ceremony. “Like witnessing the birth of our son, Deen, and the first precious month of his life, this moment was stolen from him,” she said.

McPherson College, in the middle of Kansas wheat country, is a small school that accepts the vast majority of its applicants, many from surrounding towns. It is best known for its degree in classic car restoration. The college might still end up a potential target in a Republican plan aimed primarily at the Ivy League, which would impose billions in taxes on the investment returns of several dozen private colleges and universities. The goal of the proposal, laid out in a report last week from Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, is to hold accountable “woke, elite universities that operate more like major corporations.” McPherson could be on the list because it has an endowment of $1.6 billion, thanks to an anonymous donation a few years ago. An analysis by The New York Times shows that at least 58 schools would potentially be subject to the tax, based on the size of their endowments and enrollments. The list includes highly selective and wealthy institutions like Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but also smaller schools like Berry College in Georgia and DePauw University in Indiana. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The tax idea has been discussed by Republicans since at least President Trump’s first term, when a 1.4 percent tax was imposed on some endowments. Momentum to broaden it grew in 2023, when JD Vance, then a senator from Ohio, proposed a 35 percent tax on endowments of $10 billion and larger. Now, as President Trump has made challenging the nation’s wealthiest colleges a centerpiece of his second-term agenda, the endowment tax could become a potent weapon. During Mr. Trump’s second presidential run, his campaign promised to collect billions “by taxing the large endowments of private universities plagued by antisemitism.” The tax, part of the House proposal that President Trump has called the “big, beautiful bill,” would be tiered depending on the size of the school’s endowment and enrollment, with a top rate of 21 percent for those with endowments of at least $2 million per student. That rate would hit nine schools, including Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The proposal threatens to cost Harvard about $850 million a year, Yale $690 million a year, and Princeton $586 million a year, according to estimates by Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, which would also be subject to the tax. The stated aim of the tax, according to the proposal, is to ensure elite schools in the country “can no longer abuse generous benefits provided through the tax code.”But the plan would envelop other institutions as well, including some in rural parts of Republican states. The earnings from McPherson’s endowment would be taxed at 7 percent, potentially costing the school nearly $8 million a year, for example.The criteria for the tax excludes some schools with large endowments, such as the University of Southern California, because of their large enrollment numbers. Columbia University, which has been targeted by Republicans over accusations that it mishandled claims of antisemitism, might not have qualified either, because of the size of its student population in relation to its endowment. But lawmakers tweaked the “per student” formula used in the bill to exclude the school's large number of international students. As a result, Columbia would pay $79 million a year. While The Times’s analysis is based on endowment size, under the proposal’s current language the list is likely to grow larger because the tax would also apply to other forms of university investment income, including royalties. The existing 1.4 percent tax hit 56 schools in 2023, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service. Republicans and others argue that the universities should use more of their endowments, some which have accumulated tax-free over centuries. Mr. Trump said on the campaign trail that the proceeds from the tax would “endow the American Academy,” a free virtual university that he said he would create. But a plan for that school has not materialized, and any money collected through the new taxes would go into the government’s general fund. Schools have pushed back against the tax, noting that they use their endowments to fund the education of poor and middle-class students. Of the $30 billion that schools spent in endowment funds in 2024, nearly half went to financial aid, according to an analysis by the National Association of College and University Business Officers. (Vice President Vance was a beneficiary of this need-based aid. He attended Yale Law School as a Marine Corps veteran with a financial aid package that he later wrote “exceeded my wildest dreams.”)Christopher L. Eisgruber, Princeton’s president, wrote in a recent message that 71 percent of students in this year’s freshman class received no-loan financial aid funded by the school’s endowment, with the average grant totaling $73,000. “This tax is a scholarship tax,” said Steven M. Bloom, an assistant vice president at the American Council on Education, a large industry trade group that is opposing the proposal. Williams College, a liberal arts school in Massachusetts, would be subject to at least a 14 percent tax. In an interview, its president, Maud S. Mandel, said the school devoted $92 million from its endowment this year to help over half the school’s student body. “Any tax on the endowment would have a direct impact on that,” she said. And in California, Pomona College’s vice president, Jonathan B. Williams, said the tax would cost the school $40 million a year, the equivalent of 460 full scholarships. Its enrollment is about 1,700. “This will shift the cost of tuition squarely on to families,” he said. Universities have dispatched lobbyists to Capitol Hill to try to water down the plan’s impact.Williams College has partnered with other colleges to hire a lobbying firm. DePauw University said it was also working with a group of small colleges to tell lawmakers how they would be affected. Four medical schools could also be on the list, including Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, which is not affiliated with Baylor University. Lori Williams, vice president of communications for the medical school, wonders whether independent medical schools were included accidentally. “We have been engaging with legislators to seek to remedy this,” Ms. Williams said. Lawmakers crafted an exception for religious institutions that could exempt some of the 58 schools included in The Times’s analysis. But schools formed before July 4, 1776, would be excluded from that exemption. That means Ivy League schools opened by religious groups before the nation’s founding would not be eligible. David A. Super, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said that could raise legal issues. “Particularly problematic is reliance on a date: Some faiths have established more colleges in some eras, some faiths have established more in other times,” Mr. Super said. “That starts to look like discrimination among religions.”Matthew Lindsey, president of the Kansas Independent College Association, hopes the religious exemption will ultimately protect McPherson, which was founded by the Church of the Brethren, a pacifist Protestant denomination. “Clearly McPherson is not the target of this legislation,” Mr. Lindsey said, noting that the bill “very much talked about woke colleges. They’re not talking about McPherson in that language.” McPherson, in McPherson, Kan., became rich practically overnight in 2022, when an anonymous donation grew its endowment to $1.6 billion from $50 million. The school’s classic car restoration program has also attracted support from the comedian Jay Leno, a classic car collector. McPherson officials did not respond to a request for comment, but Mr. Lindsey said the school used its endowment to help students graduate debt free. He said his association had been working to notify the Kansas congressional delegation of the predicament. Representative Tracey Mann, a Republican and a supporter of President Trump who represents the congressional district that includes McPherson, did not respond to requests for comment.

Marty Ross-Dolen went to Green-Wood Cemetery to stand by a monument that her grandparents’ names are on. The monument is “hidden back there,” she said. “You don’t know that people even know about it.” She herself didn’t know much about why her grandparents’ names belonged on the monument until nearly 20 years ago, when she was in her mid-40s and finally read up on something that was almost never talked about when she was growing up: a midair collision over New York Harbor in December 1960. Her grandparents — her mother’s mother and father — had been passengers on one of the two planes. “The plane crash had been a part of my life since I asked my mother where her parents were,” Ross-Dolen said. “I must have been 4. I knew who they were because there were pictures around the house, and I was named for my grandmother. But my mother raised me in silence. In the 1960s, there was no language for processing grief.” Ross-Dolen, who learned that language on her way to becoming a child psychiatrist and a writer, has processed more than grief in a just-published memoir, “Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter’s Search for Truth” (She Writes Press). It is a very personal account of the aftermath of a disaster that captured attention for a few days. Then the world moved on — for everyone else. Her mother’s parents, Garry and Mary Myers, ran the magazine Highlights for Children, which Garry Myers’s parents had started after World War II. Ross-Dolen said the trip to New York, with another Highlights executive, had a purpose. Her grandparents wanted to see about getting Highlights for Children on newsstands. They boarded a Trans World Airlines plane in Columbus, Ohio, where they lived and the magazine had its headquarters. New York was little more than 90 minutes away on the propeller-driven Super Constellation, and as it pushed through sleet and fog, air traffic controllers cleared it to descend to 5,000 feet on its way to landing at LaGuardia Airport.A different plane heading toward a different airport was also preparing to land — a United Airlines DC-8, bound for what was then known as Idlewild Airport (now John F. Kennedy International Airport). The two aircraft should never have been less than three miles from each other. But the jet, which had transceiver trouble, was not over New Jersey, where the pilots and the air traffic controllers assumed it was. It was already over Staten Island. And then the two dots on the radar screen merged into one. In all, 134 people died — 128 passengers and crew members on the two planes, and 6 people on the ground in Brooklyn, where wreckage from the United plane landed in Park Slope. “There was one time in high school when I discovered my mother looking at old newspapers,” Ross-Dolen said. “I didn’t inquire. I didn’t try to find those articles.” But in 2008, with a little time on her hands, “I decided to sneak, almost like a kid, and see what had happened.” And by 2008, there was Google, which made her search easier. “I’m sure I was shaking when I was reading about it,” she said. Then, in 2010, as the 50th anniversary of the accident approached, she and her mother talked about it — to a reporter from The Columbus Dispatch, who had asked to interview her mother. “We were trying to hold ourselves together,” Ross-Dolen said. “It became less a mother-daughter thing and more partners in mourning.” In The New York Times’s articles about the anniversary, I wrote that it was “almost a ghost disaster, one without the universally shared imagery of the Titanic or the Hindenburg, one that is, in a strange way, nearly forgotten by those who weren’t there or touched directly by it.” Ross-Dolen was touched by it, even though she was born six years after it happened. She began working on her book after the monument was unveiled on the 50th anniversary of the crash. She said that seeing it again last week was “profound,” because she had a feeling of coming full circle. “Fourteen years ago, I was standing there with people who had been connected to the story of the accident,” she said. “This time, I was standing by myself, but I was also putting my story into the world.”

Republican leaders in Louisiana are pushing to end the last remnants of federally ordered school desegregation in their state, arguing that the era of racial exclusion is in the past and that the U.S. government has forced burdensome requirements on school districts long enough. They may have found allies in the Trump administration, as it seeks to slash federal bureaucracy and roll back diversity efforts across the country. It has been 71 years since the Supreme Court made racially segregated schools illegal in its landmark 1954 ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. Louisiana officials say that federal orders forcing school districts to comply with the decision are outdated and no longer needed, and that the country needs to move on. Civil rights advocates see the effort as part of a broader attack on Black students and civil rights under the Trump administration, at a time when U.S. schools are only growing more segregated. Nationally, more than 300 desegregation orders are estimated to still be on the books from the 1960s and 1970s, when school districts resistant to integration were put under the supervision of federal courts. In the decades since, many orders have gone dormant, with little federal enforcement. In Louisiana, one of several Southern states with the bulk of remaining orders, the attorney general, with the support of the governor, is reviewing orders statewide and has vowed to work with school districts to “officially put the past in the past.” The Justice Department has already dismissed one order, in a district south of New Orleans, that it said was left open by mistake. Federal officials are open to lifting others. “I don’t think it serves the interest of justice to have ancient consent decrees out there,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general over civil rights under President Trump, who said her office would consider requests for dismissal on a case-by-case basis.“It is 2025,” Ms. Dhillon said. “I haven’t heard a recent claim that there is government mandated segregation happening in 2025 in a school district.” She added: “If it’s happening, it’s wrong.”Civil rights advocates fear any rollback of desegregation orders would harm Black students, at a moment when the Trump administration has been campaigning against programs meant to help them, including diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The administration is invoking Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin and which has historically been used to protect minority groups, to threaten and investigate school districts with certain D.E.I. policies. President Trump also issued new guidance on school discipline, instructing schools to look at behavior alone, without taking into account racial disparities in punishment. He has ordered the federal government more broadly to stop considering “disparate impact,” which is when a seemingly race-neutral policy has different outcomes for different demographic groups. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “You have an administration that denies the past and wants to tell a singular story about America and this country that erases this racial inequality,” said Janel George, an associate law professor at Georgetown, who focuses on racial equity in education. In many cases, school districts are still under federal oversight because they never proved that they desegregated, said GeDá Jones Herbert, chief legal counsel for Brown’s Promise, a group that supports school integration. An open desegregation order is a legal tool for students to take a district back to court “and say, ‘hey they are still not doing what they need to do,’” she added.Decades of research have shown that racially integrated schools improve academic and life outcomes for Black students, with no measurable harm to white students. That is largely because integration allows students of color to share in resources that white students already have. Liz Murrill, the Louisiana attorney general, argued the answer is not to keep school desegregation orders open for decades. She said many orders in her state had been dormant for 30 or 40 years, and others had racked up expensive legal bills for school districts. If a district is engaging in discriminatory practices today, she said, “you file a new lawsuit for a new problem.” In what Louisiana officials hope will be the first of many dismissals, the Trump administration lifted a desegregation order in Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, last month, addressing what it called a “historical wrong.” In that case, court records show, a judge ruled that the district had sufficiently desegregated in 1975, but the case remained open. Shaheena Simons, who oversaw desegregation cases at the Department of Justice for nine years before resigning in April, disputed that the case had been left open by mistake. She said the Justice Department “monitors these cases and works with districts until they can show they have fully desegregated.” The dismissal came as a relief to school officials, who had recently been dealing with reams of federal paperwork on everything from the number of Advanced Placement classes at each school to the racial makeup of athletic clubs, said Shelley Ritz, the superintendent. “It was binders on top of binders,” she said. That doesn’t mean there still isn’t important work to do, Dr. Ritz said.Plaquemines Parish in many ways exemplifies the lingering debates around school desegregation, whether the country has done enough to remedy the harms of the past and how much schools should be held responsible for factors outside of their direct control. The Justice Department took the Plaquemines Parish school district to court in 1966, a time when Leander Perez, a prominent segregationist, ruled the region. He was a towering political figure who opposed the integration of Ruby Bridges and other Black students in New Orleans and helped open all-white private academies in Plaquemines Parish. His legacy lives on in infamy in a communal history that has been passed down over generations, said Dione Griffin-Cossé, 56, who attended an all-Black school in Plaquemines Parish in the 1970s and ’80s and still lives in the area. Still, the news of the order’s end surprised her and some others, who said they thought the time of desegregation had already passed. “To me, that’s long gone,” she said. Today, the Plaquemines Parish school district is racially mixed, with a student body that is about 50 percent white, 25 percent Black, 12 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian. Many of the individual schools are themselves relatively diverse. But the bulk of white students attend schools on the north side, in a more populated area close to New Orleans. That is largely the result of housing patterns, Dr. Ritz said. Plaquemines Parish lies at the tip of Louisiana’s boot, in an area prone to flooding. The southern part of the district is at especially high risk. There, families are poorer, and students are largely Black or Hispanic. Across the country, Black and Hispanic students are most likely to attend high poverty schools, which research shows is a driving factor in the country’s wide gaps in academic achievement. That’s also the case in Plaquemines Parish, which ranks among the best in the state for student growth and achievement, but where students in the southern end of the district still post lower test scores. Dr. Ritz pointed to a number of investments the district had made to help attract qualified teachers to lower-income schools on the southern end. That includes opening day care centers for the children of employees and subsidizing apartments for teachers. “We are truly committed to every student in Plaquemines,” Dr. Ritz said. The Supreme Court endorsed the idea that schools should not be on the hook for housing segregation in a series of rulings dating to the 1970s that set off a gradual unwinding of desegregation efforts across the country. In 1974, during a period of fierce public pushback to the busing of students, the Supreme Court made its first major turn away from mandated integration. The case involved a plan to integrate students from Detroit, which was majority Black, with its surrounding suburbs, which were predominantly white. The court ruled that schools did not have to desegregate across district lines, even if the result was segregation. The case would limit efforts to integrate outside of the South, where desegregation occurred at schools within individual districts. Then in 1991, the court ruled that districts already under federal court order could be released if they had addressed segregation “as far as practicable,” though segregation may still remain as a result of private residential choices. The new efforts to roll back remaining desegregation orders may simply signal the official end of a movement that peaked long ago. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT U.S. schools have only grown more segregated in recent decades, in part because of the lifting of desegregation orders, but also because of the rise of charter schools, according to research by professors Sean Reardon of Stanford University and Ann Owens of the University of Southern California. Today, schools are more segregated than they were in the late 1980s. “The country has just sort of decided that segregation is not a problem that it wants to focus on,” Dr. Reardon said.

Judges across the country have intervened to single-handedly block some of President Trump’s most aggressive policies using nationwide injunctions, sweeping rulings that order the federal government to change its behavior across the country. Mr. Trump’s executive order to restrict birthright citizenship, which triggered three judges to issue nationwide injunctions, will be argued before the Supreme Court on Thursday. The court could use the case to set new limits on the power of federal judges to issue nationwide rulings. But the impact of nationwide injunctions on Mr. Trump’s second-term agenda extends far beyond the birthright citizenship debate. As of late March, judges had issued 17 nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. Here are some of the most consequential: A White House effort to revoke Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, which allowed them to legally work and remain in the United States, was blocked by Judge Edward Milton Chen of the Northern District of California on March 31. After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit declined to stay Judge Chen’s ruling, the government asked the Supreme Court to intervene. It has not yet done so. That means Judge Chen’s nationwide injunction remains in effect, though the Homeland Security Department says it still has “every intention” of moving forward with the initial plan “as soon as it obtains relief from the court order.” Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the District of Washington ordered the administration not to cut off billions of dollars in federal funding to the states. The Trump administration had attempted to freeze the spending under a memo issued by the Office of Budget and Management that has now been rescinded. Judge AliKhan said the funding could not be cut by that memo or any other broad directive. A similar injunction by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island was limited to the 22 states who sued. The government has appealed both rulings. In late April, three district court judges in New Hampshire, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., blocked an effort by the Trump administration to cut off funding for public schools with diversity and equity initiatives. Their orders constrain the Education Department across the country, not just in the judges’ respective districts. The government has not appealed those rulings.

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard Divinity School graduate who became a public figure as a fiery speaker at the Republican National Convention, on Thursday settled his lawsuit accusing Harvard of allowing antisemitism to fester on its campus. The terms of the settlement are confidential, but in a lengthy statement, Mr. Kestenbaum said he was “so proud to help lead the student efforts combating antisemitism within institutions of higher learning across the country, including by suing my alma mater.” He said that his lawsuit “drew the nation’s attention to the scourge of antisemitism at Harvard and other campuses, and it also caught the attention of President Trump and his Department of Education.” Harvard released a statement saying that the university “and Mr. Kestenbaum acknowledge each other’s steadfast and important efforts to combat antisemitism at Harvard and elsewhere.” It said that both sides were “pleased to have resolved the litigation.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In recent weeks, Harvard has gone to court to fight a Trump administration freeze on billions of dollars in federal research funding to the university. The freeze came after Harvard refused to comply with demands from the administration that Harvard do more to combat antisemitism — including by allowing the government to be involved in admissions, hiring and instructional decisions, among other things. The litigation and his outspokenness made Mr. Kestenbaum the face of the Republican-led campaign against antisemitism in universities, and something of a polarizing figure on Harvard’s campus. He graduated from the divinity school in May 2024, and in July he spoke at the Republican National Convention. “My problem with Harvard is not its liberalism but its illiberalism,” Mr. Kestenbaum said in his convention speech. “Too often students at Harvard are taught not how to think but what to think. I found myself immersed in a culture that is anti-Western, that is anti-American and that is antisemitic.” He has been in demand since then as a speaker for Jewish groups across the country. In his statement following the settlement, Mr. Kestenbaum said he had campaigned with Mr. Trump because the president planned to hold universities accountable.Mr. Kestenbaum, an Orthodox Jew, was a second-year divinity school student when the campus became the site of protests over the war in Gaza. Some Jewish students accused protests of veering into antisemitism, a charge that protesters, some of them Jewish themselves, have strongly denied. In January 2024, Mr. Kestenbaum and five other Jewish students sued the university, accusing it of becoming “a bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.” That case was settled the day after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Harvard agreed to take a number of steps, including adopting a strict definition of antisemitism. But Mr. Kestenbaum refused to go along with the settlement and continued to litigate on his own, culminating in Thursday’s agreement.

Across the country, students are short-circuiting their laptops at school in a new and sometimes dangerous social media trend. The “Chromebook challenge” involves students jamming objects into their laptops until they spark and smolder. Students then record the smoking laptops and share the footage on TikTok and Instagram, sometimes set to music, as viewers react with heart and thumbs-up emojis. It’s not just the expensive computers that get damaged: Floors and desks are scorched. Lessons are interrupted. Classrooms are evacuated. Fire and police departments are summoned. And some students have been suspended or even faced criminal charges, as schools work to stop the trend. Here’s what to know. How does it work? The “Chromebook challenge” involves using objects such as push pins, staples, paper clips, metallic gum wrappers and graphite, found in pencil lead. They are inserted into USB or charging ports, under keyboard keys, or near the batteries to deliberately short-circuit the devices. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Sometimes the batteries are smashed to facilitate the reaction. Students from elementary through high school have been reported doing it. “Unfortunately, we have seen instances of this dangerous behavior occurring in schools across our district,” Michael J. Testani, the superintendent of schools in Fairfield, Conn., said in a letter to families. Scott Loehr, the superintendent for the Center Joint Unified School District in Roseville, Calif., said that on May 7, a middle school student inserted a sharp metal object into his laptop’s keyboard, causing it to smoke. His teacher evacuated the classroom and doused the device with a fire extinguisher. “What we learned was the idea did come from TikTok or from this challenge,” Mr. Loehr said. Now, a search on TikTok for videos of the challenge brings up a safety message about online challenges that “can be dangerous.” TikTok said in a statement that it removes content that violates its policy on dangerous activities and challenges and is redirecting search terms and hashtags. Instagram did not reply to a request for comment.Students have been suspended and fined. School districts in Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Arizona, Virginia, Colorado, Minnesota, California and Nevada and other states have sent letters to families, pleading with them to intervene. Some have suspended students and imposed fines of hundreds of dollars for damage to property and to the school-issued Chromebooks. Some districts are also calling the police or excluding offenders from technology privileges on school grounds. In the Boulder Valley School District, which has more than 28,000 students, the first sign that something was amiss came on May 2, when a column of white smoke spewed from a Chromebook during an advisory period in a band room at Centaurus High School in Lafayette, Colo. The device was moved into a hallway, where it melted the floor. Staff members thought it had malfunctioned, said Randy Barber, the district spokesman. Then, on May 5, smoke wafted from a laptop in Broomfield Heights Middle School. On May 6, a laptop at Angevine Middle School emitted smoke. Another middle school, an elementary school and a high school reported smoking laptops on May 6 and May 7. The first few cases were referred to the information technology department. When teachers reported smoking Chromebooks, Mr. Barber said, “I.T. staff put things together, after realizing that the computers had been tampered with and had similar damage.” He said he had been hearing similar accounts from colleagues in the National School Public Relations Association. “It is something happening nationally,” Mr. Barber said.A school evacuation and felony criminal charges. On May 8, Belleville High School in Belleville, N.J., was evacuated after a student caused their Chromebook to smolder, the police, quoted by News 12, said. The student was charged with third-degree arson and criminal mischief, the police said. A 13-year old girl was arrested in Long Beach, Calif., on May 8 in a classroom at Perry Lindsey Academy, according to the Long Beach Police Department. She was booked for felony arson of property, a police spokesman said. The Los Angeles Times reported that it was related to the Chromebook challenge. In Maine, Don Rous, the Waterville Junior High School principal, told parents in a letter on May 7 that they were not allowing students to remove Chromebooks from school grounds because of concerns some could attempt the prank at home.“If the spark was large enough, there is a chance that it could catch bedding, drapes, or furniture on fire,” he wrote. “That would put everyone in the home at risk.” In Arizona on May 8, students at Bullhead City Middle School were evacuated after a Chromebook laptop began oozing smoke in a classroom. Firefighters and the police were summoned. Six Chromebooks were also vandalized at Fox Creek Junior High School, though none caught fire, the Bullhead City School District said. No one was injured. An 11-year-old male student faces a juvenile referral for charges of aggravated criminal damage and interference or disturbing an educational institution, the Bullhead City Police Department said. The district superintendent, Dr. Carolyn Stewart, said in a statement to families that parents of children who damage school property might be financially liable. “This is yet another urgent call for parents and guardians to talk to their children about social media responsibility, and the inherent dangers, and consequences that come with poor decisions,” she said. “These are not innocent pranks.” A few online challenges have been fatal. In Virginia this month, an 18-year-old was fatally shot by a resident at a house where he and his friends rang the doorbell and ran, for a ding-dong-ditch challenge. Other dares include eating detergent pods and hot peppers. The Food and Drug Administration has warned about trends encouraging participants to consume large doses of Benadryl or to cook chicken in NyQuil. Some of the challenges are not widespread. Dan Davis, the spokesman for the Carson City School District in Nevada, said administrators knew about previous viral rampages, including slapping teachers and destroying school toilets and soap dispensers. So it braced for the possible appearance of the Chromebook challenge in its nine schools, warning families last week about it and saying there is a $300 fee to replace devices that are intentionally damaged. “We came out on the front end of things to dispel any challenges and to keep our parents and families apprised of the situation,” he said. Why are students doing this? “What makes teens do this?” Mr. Barber of the Colorado school district said. “I think I would say they are super curious. It is a little bit like wanting to do a science experiment.” “Beyond that,” he said, “I don’t know.”

A coalition of doctors, lawmakers and advocates for people with autism has spent more than a decade trying to ban a medical device that is used to deliver painful electric jolts to people with severe neurodevelopmental disabilities. Last year, a federal ban on the devices finally seemed imminent. But the upheaval sweeping the federal government during the Trump administration’s early months could further delay a resolution, allowing continued use of the controversial devices. Wide-ranging cutbacks have been announced at federal health agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, whose medical devices section had been working on the lengthy and convoluted process of implementing a ban. Regulators determined that the jolts, delivered through electrodes strapped to a patient’s arms and legs, caused long-term harm and should no longer be used. Clinicians and relatives of residents at a treatment facility outside Boston defend the use of the devices, calling them a last resort for some of the facility’s most extreme cases. The uncertainty over the devices’ fate has been compounded by President Trump’s chief health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has falsely linked autism with childhood vaccines. He recently called autism a preventable epidemic that destroys families and prevents people from living a full life, a characterization described as dehumanizing by many autistic people. Rates of diagnosis for autism — a neurodevelopmental disorder that can cause difficulties with social interaction and communication — have increased nearly fivefold among children since 2000, when officials first began collecting such data. A recent report attributed some of the increase to increased screening, as well as a broader definition of the condition. Because it encompasses a broad array of traits that can vary in how they affect a person’s life, autism is often described as occurring on a spectrum. Some autistic people live independently, with demanding jobs and active social lives. Others have trouble navigating some tasks and interactions, but can manage well with accommodations.A subset of autistic people, however, need extensive day-to-day support, often beyond what their families can financially or emotionally provide. And in rare cases, the struggle to communicate or process sensory input can lead to extreme verbal and physical reactions, such as head banging or striking others. In those cases, individuals may be sent to live in a residential treatment facility, like the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center in Canton, Mass. It is the only place in the country known to use electric shocks to manage residents and prevent potentially harmful outbursts. The devices were developed in the 1980s by the center’s controversial founder, Matthew Israel. At the time, it was common for society to segregate people with neurodevelopmental disabilities and to use restraints and punishments. Today, Dr. Israel’s shock devices are approved for use on 55 adults living at the center. Some have worn the equipment — which is often locked onto them in fanny packs — for decades. Some people started receiving shocks as children, though the device is now approved for use only on adults. Critics, including Jan Nisbet, founding director of the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability, point out that the shock treatment is considered a corrective measure, not a cure. In other words, people could be wearing the equipment for the rest of their lives to deter any harmful behaviors. “If you want to decrease a behavior, you can punish them,” said Dr. Nisbet, who wrote a book on the Rotenberg Center. “But you’re going to have to keep punishing them.”Most of the center’s residents are unable to consent to wearing the devices, leaving the decision up to their relatives and a probate judge. But some former residents have spoken out against the devices, including Jennifer Msumba, 48.She testified to Massachusetts lawmakers in 2023 that the shock treatment left her with long-term trauma, including nightmares. “Every night, I wake up screaming,” she said.The strongest jolts, which can be applied via remote control by clinicians and center employees, come at 41 milliamperes. A shock of that strength is extremely painful, causing a brief loss of muscle control. An electric current of 50 milliamperes is potentially fatal, depending on the amount of time a person is exposed to it. It’s not clear what Mr. Kennedy thinks about the shock treatment, which is used both to stop violent behavior and to compel residents to follow instructions, and his office has not responded to requests for comment. But given his other views on autism, some advocates worry that an F.D.A. under his control will abandon efforts to implement a ban. “No one should look at ending the torture of disabled people as a partisan issue,” said Zoe Gross, who is autistic and an activist with the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. This is the second time that the F.D.A. has sought to ban the devices. A previous ban in 2020 was overturned by a federal court a year later, until Congress voted to clarify regulators’ authority. The debate has lingered despite near-blanket condemnation of the devices by civil rights groups, many medical research organizations and the United Nations. Usage persists in part because the Rotenberg Center spends at least a million dollars a year on lobbying, according to tax records. But there are also ardent opponents of a ban in medical and legal circles, who say that the shock devices are the only option for some patients. Among the most vocal opponents of a ban are relatives of people receiving the treatment. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Tracy Green is one of them. She says the device gave her back her “beautiful son,” Anthony Green, who is 24. He began displaying violent behavior as a teenager, she said, sometimes forcing Ms. Green to barricade him, or herself, in a bathroom to avoid being bruised or bitten during his outbursts. Mr. Green was admitted to Rotenberg after being kicked out of several treatment programs for injuring staff members, his mother said. Drugs either didn’t work or put him in a severe stupor. Now, his family can interact with him safely again, Ms. Green said. Last summer, he was able to visit a swimming pool for the first time in years. “The cruel thing,” she said, “is not giving him the treatment.”Christopher Hinton, 32, has been on the device since he was 8 years old. His mother, Cheryl Lloyd, said the shock treatment was the only way to stop Mr. Hinton, who is Black, from hurting himself or acting out in public, which she fears could get him killed by law enforcement. “If the device is removed from him, that’s the fear that I have,” she said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT It’s unclear what most residents wearing the devices think of the treatment. Many, including Mr. Green and Mr. Hinton, do not speak, or they communicate using only single words and short phrases. The center would not permit The Times to interview anyone wearing the shock devices during a visit late last year. In 2022, however, investigators from the Association for Behavior Analysis International talked to four patients receiving shocks. Three said they didn’t want it, one of whom begged to be taken away, according to their report. Even though one patient wanted the treatment, the organization disavowed it, making the group one of the last of its kind to do so. The outcry has come alongside a larger shift in society’s understanding of neurodevelopmental disabilities. There has been a growing awareness that efforts to “correct” behavior considered undesirable may traumatize people. A movement led by autistic adults and clinicians argues instead for a greater understanding from society and more support for speech therapy and other treatments. Ms. Msumba, the former Rotenberg Center resident who wore the device, calls herself proof that alternatives can work. Her new treatment facility, she told lawmakers in 2023, has given her the time to understand and cope with her disorders, and has prescribed medications that had been denied to her at Rotenberg. As a result, she said, “I have a real life now.” Glenda Crookes, the Rotenberg Center’s chief executive, said that many things changed after Dr. Israel left in 2011 as part of a deal with state officials investigating an incident when the devices were misapplied. Changes have included an expansion of other forms of treatment, Ms. Crookes said. But the facility remains committed to Dr. Israel’s values, she added, including the shock devices. “Our priority was, and always has been, to make sure that the treatment continues.”

What happened to learning as a national priority? For decades, both Republicans and Democrats strove to be seen as champions of student achievement. Politicians believed pushing for stronger reading and math skills wasn’t just a responsibility, it was potentially a winning electoral strategy. At the moment, though, it seems as though neither party, nor even a single major political figure, is vying to claim that mantle. President Trump has been fixated in his second term on imposing ideological obedience on schools. On the campaign trail, he vowed to “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system.”Since taking office, he has pursued this goal with startling energy — assaulting higher education while adopting a strategy of neglect toward the federal government’s traditional role in primary and secondary schools. He has canceled federal exams that measure student progress, and ended efforts to share knowledge with schools about which teaching strategies lead to the best results. A spokeswoman for the administration said that low test scores justify cuts in federal spending. “What we are doing right now with education is clearly not working,” she said. Mr. Trump has begun a bevy of investigations into how schools handle race and transgender issues, and has demanded that the curriculum be “patriotic” — a priority he does not have the power to enact, since curriculum is set by states and school districts.Democrats, for their part, often find themselves standing up for a status quo that seems to satisfy no one. Governors and congressional leaders are defending the Department of Education as Mr. Trump has threatened to abolish it. Liberal groups are suing to block funding cuts. When Kamala Harris was running for president last year, she spoke about student loan forgiveness and resisting right-wing book bans. But none of that amounts to an agenda on learning, either. All of this is true despite the fact that reading scores are the lowest they have been in decades, after a pandemic that devastated children by shuttering their schools and sending them deeper and deeper into the realm of screens and social media. And it is no wonder Americans are increasingly cynical about higher education. Forty percent of students who start college do not graduate, often leaving with debt and few concrete skills. “Right now, there are no education goals for the country,” said Arne Duncan, who served as President Barack Obama’s first secretary of education after running Chicago’s public school system. “There are no metrics to measure goals, there are no strategies to achieve those goals and there is no public transparency.” Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right think tank, and a former education official under President George W. Bush, agreed. “There is no talk of achievement gaps, and little talk even of upward mobility or opportunity,” he said. Editors’ Picks 36 Hours in Rome Is There a Least Bad Alcohol? Help! How Do I Make Sense of All These Trends? Vicious debates over critical race theory and D.E.I. have put education at the center of our politics. And yet, these conversations are so often indifferent to the data showing that when it comes to academic learning and social development, too many children and teenagers are suffering. But despite the lack of national direction, an energetic group of educators, parents and researchers is advancing an ambitious agenda for learning. It is centered around one big idea: The breadth, depth and quality of the curriculum matter. How Education Reform Died Many Americans will recall that on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush was in a second-grade classroom, smiling wanly as children read a book called “The Pet Goat.” What they may not remember is why Mr. Bush was there, at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., on that morning. Booker was — and is — an ordinary public school, which served mostly Black children from low-income families. The president was promoting No Child Left Behind, which he was struggling to get through Congress. It would eventually pass with bipartisan support, instituting a national program of annual standardized testing in reading and math. While Mr. Obama critiqued how N.C.L.B. was carried out, he agreed with its core vision and advanced it. States were prodded to adopt the Common Core, a set of shared curriculum standards, which brought changes like more thesis-driven writing assignments and a greater emphasis on conceptual understanding in math. In those years, Washington sought to hold educators accountable for raising students’ scores on tests linked to the new standards. Schools could be labeled “failing.” Teachers with low evaluation scores could even lose their tenure protections. It worked, at least for a time. Achievement in reading and math increased, especially among the lowest-performing students. But tying punishments to test scores led to a predictable outcome: a curriculum that, in too many schools, centered on test prep. Students practiced reading short passages and answering multiple choice questions about those passages, over and over again. And with principals focused intently on raising scores in reading and math, they whittled away time for social studies and science. All of this contributed to a potent anti-education-reform movement, led by teachers and parents. On the right, there was angry resistance to any kind of federal mandate over local schools. On the left, a vocal group of parents began to refuse standardized tests; in 2015, 20 percent of students in New York opted out of state exams.The politics of top-down school accountability had become untenable. Later that year, Mr. Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, largely unraveling his own education agenda. Bipartisan school reform was dead. Since then, Republicans have embraced a free-market vision of parental rights, in which as many tax dollars as possible are freed to help parents pay for private-school tuition, home-schooling and for-profit virtual schooling. That movement accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic, when conservative parents organized to resist school closures, mask mandates and progressive ideas about race and gender in the curriculum, picking up support from some centrists and liberals along the way. Over the past five years, the number of students using some form of private school voucher doubled, to more than 1 million. That number is expected to continue to grow quickly. Voucher advocates once argued that school choice would move children into academically superior schools, as measured by test scores. Not any more. Now, their highest goods are parental control and satisfaction. Over the same time period, Democrats drew closer to their traditional allies, the teachers’ unions. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the party had engaged in a constructive internal debate on whether to expand the number of public charter schools, an idea that Mr. Obama supported. Many charters were built around the conviction that poor children deserve an academically rigorous education — but they largely were not unionized. President Joe Biden, a staunch labor ally, marginalized the charter-school sector, despite the fact that it has created thousands of quality public schools. Instead, Democrats focused on investing in teacher pay and improving school buildings. Progressives spoke frequently about schools as community centers filled with counselors and health clinics, and less frequently about reading comprehension or algebra. Health and social supports — even nicer buildings — do help children learn. But as Democrats tried to address poverty and inequality, they sometimes minimized schools’ core functions of learning, socialization and child-care while parents work. This tendency contributed greatly to the party’s inaction in the face of the unions’ push for extended remote learning. The public schools superintendent in Seattle, Brent Jones, whose system was closed for 18 months, has framed that period as, essentially, a triumph. “I saw it as a forced opportunity to step back,” he said. “We were called upon, frankly, to expand our mission to include many other things: nutritional, social, emotional, mental health. There was a cry for support. Schools stepped into that gap.” Maximizing Learning In one classroom, in northeast Louisiana, you can see several ideas that have emerged far from the spotlight of national politics. One recent afternoon at Highland Elementary School, where 70 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, a diverse group of fifth-graders sat, rapt, as their teacher, Lauren Cascio, introduced a key insight: that the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution and the Reformation all occurred during the same period of human history. Ms. Cascio reviewed vocabulary words that students would need: heretic, rational, skepticism, heliocentric. Then, over the course of an hour, 10- and 11-year-olds broke into groups to discuss why Leonardo da Vinci was interested in human anatomy. They wrote about how the ideas of Copernicus and Galileo differed from those of the ancient Greeks. Unlike in many elementary-school classrooms, the students did not have computers or tablets on their desks. They had open books, which they were avidly marking up with highlighters and pencils. The work in Louisiana has been celebrated by the Knowledge Matters Campaign, an effort led by Barbara Davidson, a policy advocate and veteran of the Department of Education under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Ms. Davidson supported the goals of No Child Left Behind. That is why she feels a responsibility now to correct for that era’s excesses. Knowledge Matters tries to draw attention to schools that demonstrate strong reading results, often through teaching a notably rigorous, history-heavy curriculum to elementary school students. Ms. Davidson has worked to amplify the ideas of a loosely organized network of educators, curriculum-writers, parents and local policymakers who are rejecting ideological approaches to education, and instead, are focused on how to maximize learning.It starts with reading. One positive development of the past decade has been a shift toward a research-backed focus on structured phonics in the early grades — to successful effect. But now, some of the attention has shifted to additional aspects of literacy instruction that are backed by cognitive science, and crucial for turning beginning readers into proficient ones; namely, the finding that to become a good reader, and thus a well-educated worker and citizen, children need a strong vocabulary and knowledge about the world. The subjects that best build vocabulary and knowledge are social studies and science — the exact subjects that the Bush-Obama reforms often stripped from the school day. But students face an additional challenge that didn’t exist during the education battles of the 2000s: ubiquitous screens. Children cannot learn to focus their attention on books or anything else if they are constantly distracted by addictive technology. The push to ban phones in schools transcends partisanship, and parent activism has helped a dozen states ban or limit cellphones in schools. Still, many educators say that screens remain a problem. About 90 percent of schools now provide a computer or tablet for every student, up from 45 percent before the pandemic. It is common for children as young as 8 to spend an hour or more of the school day staring at screens. Some teachers are moving in-class reading and writing back to paper. Among them is Jon Gold, a middle school history teacher in Providence, R.I., who frequently writes on how to enrich the curriculum and use technology in smarter ways. He now requires his students to close their laptops and read on paper. “Their reading comprehension is stronger,” he said. The push to emphasize learning is not just about the liberal arts, though. Developing a mature attention span is also crucial for work. The previous generation of education reformers sought to enroll as many students as possible in four-year colleges. In many ways, the standard-bearer was the KIPP network of charter schools, whose mantra was “college starts in kindergarten.” The bachelor’s degree still accelerates lifetime earnings, and KIPP leaders still encourage students to strive for it. But given the persistence of high college dropout rates and the burden of student debt, KIPP teachers and counselors are increasingly open to students pursuing remunerative career paths that do not require a four-year degree — think electrical installation, HVAC specialists and radiography technicians. High schools need much more help on this from employers and government, many educators say — establishing apprenticeships that allow teenagers to learn in real work places, and collecting data on what types of vocational programs are most rigorous, as measured by a track record of landing graduates in decently paid jobs. The Politics of Learning Satisfaction with public education is at a quarter-century low, and enrollment in public schools has declined since the pandemic. According to polls, concerns about the curriculum are one reason. But large majorities of voters are enthusiastic about schools doing a better job at teaching the core academic subjects and civics, as well as introducing more work force training. So why aren’t politicians responding to voters’ concerns when it comes to learning? Some elected officials — especially younger ones — are.Jake Auchincloss, a House Democrat from the Boston suburbs, has urged his party to apologize for pandemic school closures. He has advanced a number of proposals to more heavily regulate and tax social media companies, and has said the money should be used to provide every public school student in America one-on-one tutoring. On the Republican side, Senator Tom Cotton, like Mr. Trump, wants to tax elite university endowments, which he argues are not serving most American students. He envisions using the money to finance a $9,000 voucher for high school graduates pursuing workplace apprenticeships, and to offer incentives to companies to hire those trainees into permanent jobs. The country is deeply polarized. But a survey of some of the most exciting work happening in schools shows that educators and parents have the ability to embrace new ideas and come together around the goal of giving the next generation a quality education. It could even be the beginning of a political platform.

Harvard University became the leader of academia’s resistance to the Trump administration — and soaked in acclaim from the White House’s critics — when it refused a roster of intrusive demands and took the government to court last month. Legal experts saw a strong case, built by a team of elite conservative lawyers, to win back billions of research dollars that the government had stripped away. Supporters cheered on Harvard’s unusually sharp public tone. “Congratulations to Harvard for refusing to relinquish its constitutional rights to Trump’s authoritarianism,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont wrote on social media last month. But behind the scenes, several senior officials at Harvard and on its top governing board believe that the university is confronting a crisis that could last until President Trump is out of power, according to three people involved in the discussions. Even if Harvard’s legal case is successful, these officials say, the school will still face enormous troubles that may force the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university to rethink its identity and scale. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Any outcome seems likely to lead to significant cuts to Harvard’s research and work force and undermine its pre-eminence for years. Without its sprawling research apparatus, there is a fear that it could become more like a small, teaching-focused liberal arts college. University leaders believe the only clear options are either working with Mr. Trump or somehow securing huge sums of money quickly, perhaps from private donors, the three people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to discuss school officials’ private deliberations. The crosscurrents are unlike any that the university has faced in its modern history. For centuries, Harvard has cherished its independence, its swaggering pride and its record of academic excellence. But Mr. Trump has reveled in unleashing chaos that many believe will be difficult to contain as long as he sees the university as a target. On Monday, the Trump administration intensified the clash and threatened to choke off grant money to Harvard indefinitely. “They can make your life unpleasant, even if they’re violating the law and a court ultimately determines they’re violating the law,” said Samuel R. Bagenstos, who was general counsel of the Health and Human Services Department during the Biden administration.Harvard declined to comment on Thursday. But the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard’s largest division, acknowledged the scale of the university’s problems during a faculty meeting this week. “These federal actions have set in motion changes that will not be undone, at least not in the foreseeable future,” said the dean, Hopi E. Hoekstra, according to the campus newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. “While Harvard is challenging the funding freeze in court, we can’t assume that resolution will be reached quickly, or, even if Harvard prevails, that the funds will be returned in full,” Dr. Hoekstra said. Mr. Trump and the executive branch have immense leverage over the school. The education secretary, Linda McMahon, said on Monday that the federal government would stop issuing grants and contracts to Harvard going forward, or at least try. Harvard received about $687 million in federal research money during its 2024 fiscal year, making the federal government its largest revenue source for a portfolio of projects that range from tuberculosis to space travel research. Harvard recently issued $750 million in bonds, and its endowment is valued at more than $53 billion. But most of the endowment money is restricted, meaning that it cannot be spent at will. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Harvard has already imposed a hiring freeze and started layoffs. Dean Hoekstra’s division has an internal group, now known as the Research Continuity Committee, studying how the university can use a far smaller pot of research money that does not come from the federal government. For now, the Harvard Corporation, the board that oversees the university, has decided to stay the course and keep fighting. Board members are acutely sensitive to the uproar that followed when Columbia University and major law firms like Paul, Weiss cut deals with Mr. Trump, according to two of the three people involved in the discussions. But some officials have wondered whether the school might face less blowback for a deal, since Harvard leaders could frame any agreement as a successful settlement to the muscular litigation they brought. That lawsuit was in response to a list of demands that the government sent in April, requiring the university to submit to new audits, alter its admissions and hiring practices, dilute faculty influence and establish “viewpoint diversity.” The corporation has told the school’s lawyers not to engage with the Trump administration, according to the two people involved in discussions. Complicating matters is whether the White House will honor a deal. Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard president, said in an interview that it was difficult to judge any potential settlement before its terms became public. But, he said, “It would be a tragedy if Harvard resolved this in a way that gave support and encouragement to the idea of extralegal extortion.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Harvard is almost uniquely well positioned — much better than any individual law firm or any individual company or almost any other institution — to resist unlawful extortion because of its resources, because of its prestige, because of the breadth of its network,” he said. The Trump administration has encouraged the university to negotiate. Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said last month that Harvard’s aggressive response to the administration’s demands was “showboating.” He added: “They know more than anyone that not playing ball is going to hurt their team.” The Trump administration this week reiterated its aim to inflict as much damage as possible, when Ms. McMahon fired off a letter telling Harvard that it would not receive future federal grants. Although experts on government contracts and grants scoffed at the missive, the government can essentially blacklist contractors through a process called debarment. Debarment is not an overnight procedure, and it can be challenged. But a victory for Harvard could be a hollow one since the Trump administration could still try to manipulate the grant-making process away from the school, academics said in interviews this week. Dr. Daniel W. Jones, a former University of Mississippi chancellor who also led the medical school there, said federal agencies had substantial sway over funding decisions, even when peer review was involved. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “They could find a reason,” said Dr. Jones, a former president of the American Heart Association who often consults on grants. “So much has been turned upside down.” Litigation can last months or years. Harvard is seeking a speedy end to its pending case against the government, but the next hearing is not until July. Appeals could extend the battle, too, stripping Harvard of money and time. Dr. Jones has also noted that researchers “can’t just stop science and pick it back up.” Even if Harvard ultimately wins in court, funding disruptions could have already upended or compromised carefully structured projects. “Harvard is in a really bad spot,” Mr. Bagenstos, the Biden official, said. All of higher education, he added, “is in a really bad spot here.” Aside from the research funding, there will be nothing to stop the administration from saddling the school with more onerous and potentially costly investigations, like the ones currently being conducted by at least five different departments and agencies, including the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Some university officials fear those investigations, which so far appear to be only civil matters, could swell into full-blown criminal inquiries in the coming months.