Students at North Carolina’s public universities can no longer be required to take classes related to diversity, equity and inclusion to graduate. The University of Akron, citing changing state and federal guidance, will no longer host its “Rethinking Race” forum that it had held annually for more than two decades. The University of Colorado took down its main D.E.I. webpage, and posted a new page for an Office of Collaboration. Around the country, dozens of universities and colleges have begun to scrub websites and change programming in response to President Trump’s widening crusade against diversity and inclusion. But much remains unclear about the legality and reach of President Trump’s new orders. So some schools are simply watching and waiting. “It’s meant to create chaos in higher education, and in that it’s been successful,” said Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, of the attempts by President Trump to end D.E.I. activity on campuses. “The responses are all over the map.” The president has signed several executive orders seeking to ban diversity practices across the federal government, educational institutions and private companies. The orders are sweeping in their language and scope. One demands that agencies and schools terminate D.E.I. offices, positions, action plans, grants and contracts. Another bans “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology” and threatens to withhold federal funding from schools that do not promote “patriotic” education. Already, some orders have been challenged in court, and it remains to be seen how broadly the government will pursue institutions that it believes are using “illegal” preferences that “discriminate, exclude, or divide individuals based on race or sex.” An education secretary has not yet been confirmed; Linda McMahon, the nominee, will appear before a Senate committee on Thursday. Administrators of K-12 institutions — which are more financially insulated — are making their own calculations. But in higher education, hundreds of millions in funding are on the line. University administrators are debating whether to freeze existing programs, stand on principle and resist, or try to fly below the radar while they see if the executive orders hold up in the courts.At Princeton, for example, the president, Christopher Eisgruber, urged the community to “Keep Calm and Carry On,” until the legal status of the executive orders becomes more clear.Meanwhile its athletics department posted a modified transgender athlete participation policy to comply with new N.C.A.A. rules, which changed because of President Trump’s order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports. Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania also removed references to transgender inclusion from their athletics websites. At the University of Akron, administrators said that declining attendance and enthusiasm were additional reasons the school had stopped funding its Rethinking Race forum, which has been held every year since 1997. But programs for Black history month would continue, they said. The American Association of University Professors is one of several organizations that has sued in federal court in an effort to block two executive orders related to diversity and inclusion. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The lawsuit charges that the executive orders violate the due process clause of the Constitution by failing to define terms like “D.E.I.,” “equity” and “illegal D.E.I.A.” The orders, it argues, also violate free speech and the separation of powers protections. Still, the ambiguity in what diversity, equity and inclusion means has led some colleges to take a broad view as they seek to comply. The University of North Carolina’s campus in Asheville, for example, had designated certain courses as “diversity intensive,” which meant they could be used to meet a diversity graduation requirement. On the list of classes that met the requirement were Appalachian Literature, Global Business, Developmental Psychology and Cultural Anthropology. They will still be offered, but will no longer be part of a requirement, said Brian Hart, a spokesman for the university. Andy Wallace, a spokesman for the North Carolina system, said the system was assessing federal policy changes to ensure it would still receive funding. “This does not affect any course content,” he said. “It suspends any requirements for D.E.I.-focused courses as a condition of graduation.” Beth Moracco, chair of the faculty at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said the university’s actions were worrisome. “My concern is that these types of directives and memos will have a chilling effect in terms of discussions in the classroom and faculty developing new courses,” she said, “even if there’s not a direct effect of eliminating courses at this time.” At Michigan State, administrators canceled a Lunar New Year lunch, and then apologized for the overreaction and rescheduled it, according to emails from the school posted online by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit news source. A university spokeswoman said that its College of Communication Arts and Sciences canceled the event without consulting the broader university; about 70 people showed up for the rescheduled event on Tuesday. Mr. Trump’s orders follow a yearslong push by state level Republicans to roll back diversity programs. Twelve states, including Texas and Florida, have passed laws targeting D.E.I., and legislation has been considered or introduced in more than a dozen other states. More than 240 colleges in 36 states have eliminated some aspects of their programming, including diversity offices or race-based affinity groups, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, which has been tracking changes in diversity policies since January 2023. Most of those moves happened before Mr. Trump’s recent order, however, and it remains unclear how the flurry of action during his first weeks in office will affect schools over the long term, especially in K-12 districts. So far, few public schools seem to be rushing to change their practices. School districts are less reliant on federal funds than universities are, with 90 percent of their funding coming from state and local taxes. And the nation’s 13,000 districts have always had broad autonomy to set their own curriculum and teaching policies. The Trump administration has launched investigations into at least two K-12 districts — Denver Public Schools and the Ithaca City School District in New York. Denver is under investigation for transforming one girl’s bathroom at a high school into a nonbinary bathroom, according to the Education Department. Ithaca is under investigation for hosting a series of conferences for students of color, some of which may not have been open for white students to attend, according to the Equal Protection Project, an advocacy group that filed a federal civil rights complaint against the school system. Yet Denver is still directing educators to a detailed “L.G.B.T.Q.+ Tool Kit” that lays out policies for affirming students who are questioning their gender identities, giving those students access to the bathrooms of their choice and helping them change their names in the district’s computer systems. And in Ithaca, despite scrutiny on the district’s practices around race, the school system’s website continues to feature a page touting an “anti-marginalization” curriculum. It is intended to aid students “in their development of anti-racist understandings and practices” — language that could run afoul of the president’s executive orders. Ithaca City Schools did not respond to interview requests. In a written statement, a spokesman for Denver’s public schools said that before making any “final decisions” about policy changes, the district was awaiting further federal guidance. He added that the district “remains committed to our values including providing a safe and inclusive learning environment to all students.” Some Democratic education leaders have bluntly stated that they did not intend to change their practices in response to Mr. Trump. When it comes to issues of gender and sexual orientation, “California law is unaffected by recent changes to federal policy,” said Tony Thurmond, the state schools superintendent. In New York, the state education department released a statement calling Mr. Trump’s actions “ineffective” and “antithetical” to the history of federal education policy, which has traditionally sought to protect racial minorities, sexual minorities, students with disabilities and other groups. “We denounce the intolerant rhetoric of these orders,” the state agency said. “Our children cannot thrive in an environment of chaos; they need steady and stable leadership that we will endeavor to provide.” Perhaps the biggest impact in education has occurred in the schools that the federal government controls more directly: those for children who live on military bases and the military’s officer academies. The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has declared that official celebrations of events like Black History Month are no longer welcome. The defense department’s K-12 schools have ended some clubs, options for children to use the bathrooms that align with their gender identities and are combing shelves for books with themes related to diversity, according to reporting by Stars and Stripes. The United States Military Academy at West Point disbanded 12 student affinity groups while investigating whether they complied with the administration’s D.E.I. directives. Paulette Granberry Russell, president and chief executive of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, which is also suing the Trump administration to overturn the D.E.I. orders, said the new policies would most likely have a broad chilling effect, despite their ambiguity. “And that chilling effect is, I think, extending whether you are in a red state, a blue state, in anything in between,” she said. “No institution wants to become a target.”

It was a dream come true for Philadelphia children when the Eagles soared to a Super Bowl victory Sunday against the Kansas City Chiefs. Now they’re getting a second wish granted: a day off school to celebrate with the champions at the city’s Super Bowl parade. The School District of Philadelphia said on Tuesday that it would close all of its schools on Friday, freeing up nearly 200,000 students to join what is expected to be a million-strong crowd flooding the city’s streets. Nearly 20,000 school staff members will also get the day off. “We look forward to joyfully celebrating the Eagles’ victory as a community,” the district announced, in what might be a formal way of saying, “Go Birds!” The parade will travel through Center City, starting at 11 a.m. at Lincoln Financial Field, heading north past City Hall and ending by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, according to the city’s map of the route. Parents face the decision of whether to bring their children to a parade that could involve, in some sections, standing shoulder to shoulder with strangers in temperatures expecting to hover in the 30s. Others might opt to take an impromptu vacation, as Philadelphia schools will also be closed on Monday for Presidents’ Day, giving students a four-day weekend. Social media was buzzing with opinions and recommendations about the parade, ranging from optimists booking Airbnbs near the stadium to cautious parents advising others to leave their children at home with a sitter. Philadelphia’s public safety officials issued some precautions for parents who planned to bring children to the parade: make sure they are wearing bright colors; snap a photo of them before leaving; and write their phone number on a bracelet, on their wrist or on a piece of paper in their pocket, in case child and parent get separated. Other educational institutions around Philadelphia jumped on the bandwagon: Temple University and nearby school districts like Gloucester City School District, in South Jersey, and Ridley School District, in Delaware County, all canceled classes. The Archdiocese of Philadelphia Schools, which oversees Catholic schools in the city and its suburbs, also announced that its high schools, parish and regional elementary schools would be closed. Transit officials said that there would be limited train service starting from early morning and congestion in the roads because of the street closures. City officials also said that government offices, city daytime centers and courts would also be shut. The timing of the parade, falling on Valentine’s Day, drew some grumbling from restaurant and flower shop owners in the city, some of whom complained the parade would affect their dinner service and deliveries. Mayor Cherelle Parker of Philadelphia sought to calm those concerns at a news conference on Tuesday. “To all in our restaurant community, we want you to know that we will be prepared,” she told reporters. “Nothing will interfere with our restaurant reservations on that evening. We will be done well before you are to appear for dinner. So don’t you dare touch any of those reservations.” Philadelphia’s school district also closed in 2018 for the celebration of the Eagles’ first Super Bowl victory, against the New England Patriots. Schools were closed during last year’s Super Bowl parade, in Kansas City, Mo., after Kansas City won against the San Francisco 49ers. A shooting at that parade left one person dead and about two dozen others wounded, including nine children.

Republicans in Congress have responded to President Trump’s unilateral moves to freeze federal spending, dismantle programs and fire civil servants with a collective shrug, staying mostly silent and even praising him as he circumvents the legislative branch. But in recent days, as his slash-and-burn campaign to remake the government has begun to affect their states and districts, some Republicans have tried to push back in subtle ways. They have sought carve outs and special consideration for agriculture programs, scientific research and more, even as they cheered on Mr. Trump’s overall approach. Their swift and quiet moves to protect their own pieces of the federal spending pie without critiquing Mr. Trump are an early indication of the political realities that could pose obstacles to the president’s push. Many programs he has targeted for cost-cutting have entrenched constituencies in Congress built up by Republicans over many years. It is one reason that shrinking the size of the federal government will be a mammoth task, despite the G.O.P.’s posture of maximum deference to Mr. Trump. Take Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, the successor to Senator Richard C. Shelby, who retired in 2022 at age 88 as one of the last big-time pork barrel legends in Congress. Mr. Shelby, Ms. Britt’s former boss, was renowned for his record of steering billions of dollars in federal spending to his state over a 36-year career. Ms. Britt was one of the first Republicans to raise concerns at home soon after the Trump administration directed the National Institutes of Health to slash $4 billion in overhead costs for medical research grantees, a move that has since been paused by a federal judge. Ms. Britt, whose state has received more than $518 million in N.I.H. grants for projects currently active there, told a local news outlet that she would press administration officials to take a “smart, targeted approach” to cuts so as to “not hinder lifesaving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions” such as the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In the House, a group of Republicans from farm states and districts introduced legislation this week that aims to salvage a foreign aid program targeted for extinction by Mr. Trump as part of his effort to wipe out the U.S. Agency for International Development. The bill would transfer oversight of the Food for Peace program, which purchases crops at market price from American farmers and distributes them to hungry people abroad, from U.S.A.I.D. to the Agriculture Department. The lawmakers argued that their legislation fulfills the spirit of what Mr. Trump calls his “mandate” to slim down the federal bureaucracy and make it more efficient. “By moving Food for Peace to U.S.D.A., the program can continue to equip American producers to serve hungry people while providing more transparency and efficiency as to how taxpayer dollars are stewarded,” Representative Tracey Mann, Republican of Kansas and the lead sponsor of the House bill, said in a statement on Tuesday. After Mr. Trump ordered a 90-day freeze of foreign aid shipments, Senator Jerry Moran, also of Kansas, was among the only Republicans who publicly urged Secretary of State Marco Rubio to quickly resume foreign food aid shipments abroad so American growers, including sorghum farmers in his state, would not lose out on a major market for their surplus product.American growers sold about $713 million of goods to Food for Peace program in the 2023 fiscal year. And in a letter last week to the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget by Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the chairwoman of the Indian Affairs Committee, she asked the Trump administration to direct federal agencies not to apply any funding restrictions from Mr. Trump’s executive order targeting diversity programs to American Indian tribes. Not all Republicans are pushing back on Mr. Trump’s efforts to slash federal spending, even when those cuts hit programs in their states. Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio, whose state has received more than $1 billion in N.I.H. research grants, said he supported the move to cut overhead costs, arguing that taxpayer money should not be used to cover expenses like lighting, heating and building maintenance. “If you ask the average American, ‘We’re spending a billion dollars to cure childhood cancer, how much of a billion dollars should go toward curing childhood cancer?’ They’d probably say a billion,” Mr. Moreno said. “The idea that 60 percent goes toward indirect costs, overhead, is insane.” The N.I.H. said that less than half of that, about 26 percent of grant dollars it distributed last year, went to such costs. The G.O.P. lawmakers seeking reprieves from Mr. Trump’s cuts are quick to embrace his message that federal spending is out of control, while arguing that their state’s or district’s slice of government funding is critical. Ms. Britt said in an interview that she had recently talked to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mr. Trump’s nominee to be health secretary, to impress upon him the importance of protecting vital medical research taking place in Alabama that she said “ultimately saves lives.” “He said he absolutely understood that we need to keep both research and innovation alive and well, and you know that you have to have the best technology and laboratory facilities to be able to do that,” Ms. Britt said, speaking of Mr. Kennedy. “He committed to continuing that conversation and working to make sure that we find a real solution moving forward.” Senator Ted Budd of North Carolina, whose state includes two of the largest recipients of N.I.H. grants in Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said he agreed with the Trump administration’s move to limit the amount of taxpayer money used for overhead costs. But he conceded that the universities would likely need time to adjust to their new financial reality. “There’s great research being done by all of our institutions; we need to protect that,” Mr. Budd said. “I think the White House wants to protect that.” Still, Democrats are working to capitalize on the potential political impact of Mr. Trump’s spending cuts by attacking Republicans in Congress, especially those from competitive districts, for swallowing moves that harm their constituents. House Majority PAC, the House Democrats’ main political action group, sent out a message this week titled, “Vulnerable House Republicans Hang Farmers Out To Dry,” which noted how the funding freeze was hitting farmers around the country and singled out several Republican lawmakers by name, including Representatives David Valadao of California, Zach Nunn of Iowa and Don Bacon of Nebraska.

Danielle R. Sassoon shot like a laser through the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, with stints fighting violent crime and securities fraud as well as handling appeals before she was elevated, at age 38, to be its interim head. There, just weeks into her tenure running the country’s most prestigious federal prosecutor’s office, she encountered an obstacle that threatened to stall her rapid rise: the desire of President Trump’s administration to drop corruption charges against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams. On Thursday, Ms. Sassoon resigned rather than carry out the order, setting off several other resignations within the Department of Justice and standing up for the independence that has defined her Manhattan office for decades. “I cannot fulfill my obligations, effectively lead my office in carrying out the department’s priorities, or credibly represent the government before the courts, if I seek to dismiss the Adams case,” she wrote in a letter to the attorney general the day before her departure. Given her experience — and bulletproof conservative credentials as a member of the Federalist Society — Ms. Sassoon seemed ready to lead an office that saw tumultuous times during Mr. Trump’s first term, when he fired two of its U.S. attorneys. In recent days, prosecutors had been watching Ms. Sassoon anxiously to see how she might respond to the Justice Department’s demand that she drop the Adams case, which she had supported in a court filing. Through a spokesman, Ms. Sassoon declined to comment for this article. Before the Adams case vaulted her into the spotlight, Ms. Sassoon’s life had been characterized by achievement that was noteworthy even in environments where achievement is the norm. Born and raised in New York City, she attended Ramaz, a modern Orthodox Jewish school on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where she was first in her class and received awards for academic excellence. In high school, she spent hours each day studying the Talmud, an effort that she has said prepared her to study law. Rebecca Kaden, a close friend who met Ms. Sassoon right before they began their freshman year at Harvard University, said she always knew Ms. Sassoon would be a lawyer. The future U.S. attorney was cerebral, a dynamic thinker eager to discuss and debate ideas.She wrote columns about Middle East politics for the student newspaper, one of them in her role as press secretary of Harvard Students for Israel, as well as a soft-focus profile of a classmate for “Scene,” a friend’s magazine project. One of her classes, “Justice,” was taught by the professor Michael J. Sandel, in a packed auditorium of hundreds of students, some of whose comments received enthusiastic applause. In that class, Ms. Sassoon stood and delivered an outspoken argument against race-based affirmative action. “You could argue that affirmative action perpetuates divisions between the races, rather than achieving the ultimate goal of race being an irrelevant factor in our society,” she said. There was no applause when she finished. But if she was unafraid to speak frankly with her peers, Ms. Sassoon could be soft-spoken with the mentors on campus. A family friend introduced her to the law professor Alan Dershowitz, who soon brought her on as a research assistant. Mr. Dershowitz said that Ms. Sassoon understood “all sides of all arguments” but recalled her as “diffident, reserved” and “shy.” “She’ll very politely and very gently challenge you,” Mr. Dershowitz said, adding, “She was always interested in public service.” After graduating from Harvard magna cum laude in 2008, Ms. Sassoon attended Yale Law School, known for its focus on public interest law. She graduated in 2011 and served in consecutive clerkships for conservative judges. The first, J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the federal appeals court for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., recalled Ms. Sassoon as whip-smart and versatile — equally at home in the higher precincts of appellate law and before a jury. He said he would not comment “in any way, shape or form” on decisions that Ms. Sassoon faced in the Adams case or in others. He added: “All I would say is that Danielle is someone who’s very principled and rigorously honest and plays it straight.” She later clerked on the Supreme Court for Justice Antonin Scalia, a giant of the conservative legal movement. In an essay after his death in 2016, she wrote, “Justice Scalia was my kind of feminist. “He spared me no argumentative punches and demanded rigor from my work,” she added. “He taught me how to fire a pistol and a rifle, and made me feel like I had grit. He thickened my skin, which was the best preparation for a career in a male-dominated field.” Ms. Sassoon cited her obligation to both Judge Wilkinson and Justice Scalia in her letter to the attorney general, Pam Bondi.The year that she wrote the essay about Justice Scalia, Ms. Sassoon, a registered Republican, began working as a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office, where political neutrality is a paramount value. Hired into the Southern District of New York under Preet Bharara, who had been appointed by President Barack Obama, she whisked through the general crimes and narcotics units before focusing on violent crime and securities fraud. She handled eight trials, including two murder cases. In one trial, she won the conviction of Lawrence V. Ray on charges of extortion and sex trafficking related to his abuse of Sarah Lawrence College students. He received 60 years in prison. She was best known for the fraud prosecution of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Ms. Sassoon grilled Mr. Bankman-Fried in a four-hour cross-examination, skewering him with a rat-a-tat line of questioning that contrasted his public statements with his private conduct. The columnist Joe Nocera, after observing the back and forth, wrote in The Free Press that Mr. Bankman-Fried was “a dead man walking.” He was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 2023, under the U.S. attorney at the time, Damian Williams, Ms. Sassoon was promoted to co-chief of the criminal appeals unit, where she most likely would have reviewed the legal particulars of some of the office’s highest-profile cases — including its prosecution of Mayor Adams. That was the position she held last month when the Trump administration elevated her to temporarily lead the office. Her tenure was expected to be relatively brief. She has a baby due in mid-March, and Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the office permanently, Jay Clayton, is expected to sail through the Senate confirmation process. She has been an active leader, attending social gatherings held by the office’s units and recently appearing in court to observe the sentencing of Robert Menendez, the former Democratic senator from New Jersey, on corruption charges. He received 11 years in prison. Shortly after being named the interim U.S. attorney last month, Ms. Sassoon became involved in conversations about the case against Mayor Adams. On Jan. 31, she traveled to Washington, D.C., for an in-person meeting at the Justice Department to discuss the possibility of dropping the charges. To friends, she seemed unfazed: Two days after the meeting, she and her husband, Adam Katz, threw a birthday party for her young daughter. (Mr. Katz is co-founder of the investment firm Irenic Capital Management.) This week, the department’s acting No. 2 official, Emil Bove III, ordered Ms. Sassoon to drop the case in a memo, directing that she dismiss the pending charges “as soon as is practicable.”Ms. Sassoon could not have dismissed the charges herself. She — or a prosecutor in her office — would have had to ask the judge overseeing the case to do so. After Mr. Bove’s memo became public, veterans of the office quickly began to discuss among themselves how Ms. Sassoon might respond. On Thursday, they received an answer. This month, Ms. Sassoon published an essay in The Wall Street Journal in which she criticized President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 “supposedly nonviolent offenders” without consulting the prosecutors or judges involved. Ms. Sassoon wrote: “The lack of a considered decision-making process exhibited a disregard for the work and knowledge of prosecutors and judges. “At this time of transition,” Ms. Sassoon added, “I look forward to doing my part to ensure that prosecutors can resume their noble work unimpeded, outside the limelight and in service of the public.”

To many Chinese, DeepSeek’s success is a victory for China’s education system, proof that it equals that of the United States or has even surpassed it. The core team of developers and scientists behind DeepSeek, the Chinese start-up that has jolted the A.I. world, all attended university in China, according to the company’s founder. That’s a contrast with many Chinese tech companies, which have often sought talent educated abroad. As Chinese commenters online basked in Americans’ shocked reactions, some pointed to the high number of science Ph.D.s that China produces annually. “DeepSeek’s success proves that our education is awesome,” read one blog post’s headline. Acclaim has even poured in from overseas. Pavel Durov, the founder of the messaging platform Telegram, said last month that fierce competition in Chinese schools had fueled the country’s successes in artificial intelligence. “If the U.S. doesn’t reform its education system, it risks ceding tech leadership to China,” he wrote online. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The reality is more complicated. Yes, China has invested heavily in education, especially in science and technology, which has helped nurture a significant pool of talent, key to its ambition of becoming a world leader in A.I. by 2025. But outside of the classroom, those graduates must also contend with obstacles that include a grinding corporate culture and the political whims of the ruling Communist Party. Under its current top leader, Xi Jinping, the party has emphasized control, rather than economic growth, and has been willing to crack down on tech firms it deems too influential. DeepSeek has managed to evade many of those pressures, in part because it kept a low profile and its founder declared his commitment to intellectual exploration, rather than quick profits. It remains to be seen, though, how long it can continue doing so. “There are many young, energetic and talented researchers and engineers inside China. I don’t think there’s a big gap in terms of education between China and the U.S. in that perspective, especially in A.I.,” said Yiran Chen, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Duke University. “But the constraint is really from other parts.” For many in China, the strength of its education system is closely tied to the nation’s global status. The government has invested heavily in higher education, and the number of university graduates each year, once minuscule, has grown more than 14-fold in the past two decades. Several Chinese universities now rank among the world’s best. Still, for decades, China’s best and brightest students have gone abroad, and many have stayed there. By some metrics, that is starting to change.China produced more than four times as many STEM graduates in 2020 as the United States. Specifically in A.I., it has added more than 2,300 undergraduate programs since 2018, according to research by MacroPolo, a Chicago-based research group that studies China. By 2022, nearly half of the world’s top A.I. researchers came from Chinese undergraduate institutions, as opposed to about 18 percent from American ones, MacroPolo found. And while the majority of those top researchers still work in the United States, a growing number are working in China. “You’re churning out all this talent over the last few years. They’ve got to go somewhere,” said Damien Ma, MacroPolo’s founder. Washington has also made it harder for Chinese students in certain fields, including A.I., to obtain visas to the United States, citing national security concerns. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “If they’re not going to go abroad, they’re going to start some company” or work for a Chinese one, Mr. Ma said. Some have criticized China’s educational system as overly exam-oriented and stifling to creativity and innovation. The expansion of China’s A.I. education has been uneven, and not every program is producing top-tier talent, Mr. Ma acknowledged. But China’s top schools, such as Tsinghua University and Peking University, are world-class; many of DeepSeek’s employees studied there. The Chinese government has also helped foster more robust ties between academia and enterprises than in the West, said Marina Zhang, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney who studies Chinese innovation. It has poured money into research projects and encouraged academics to contribute to national A.I. initiatives. Yet government involvement is also one of the biggest potential threats to Chinese innovation. Beijing has blessed the A.I. sector — for now. But in 2020, after deciding that it had too little control over major companies like Alibaba, it launched a sweeping, yearslong crackdown on the Chinese tech industry. (DeepSeek’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, pivoted to A.I. from his previous focus on speculative trading, in part because of a separate government crackdown there.) The resulting layoffs at tech companies, combined with the uncertainty of the sector’s future, helped diminish the appeal of a sector that once attracted many of China’s top students. Record numbers of young people have opted instead to compete for civil service jobs, which are low-paying but stable. A.I. has been somewhat shielded from the brain drain so far, in part because of its political imprimatur, said Yanbo Wang, a professor at the University of Hong Kong who studies China’s tech entrepreneurship. He added that he expected more successful Chinese A.I. start-ups to emerge soon, driven by young people. But it is impossible to say what China’s A.I. landscape would have looked like if Beijing had been more tolerant toward big tech companies in recent years, he added. “China’s long-term A.I. competitiveness hinges not only on its STEM education system, but also on its handling of private investors, entrepreneurs and for-profit companies,” he added.Even within private companies, employees often must contend with a focus on quick results. That has led to a widely accepted stereotype, including within China, that Chinese engineers are better at improving on other people’s innovations than at coming up with their own. Mr. Liang, DeepSeek’s founder, has lamented as much, noting last year that “top talents in China are underestimated. Because there’s so little hard-core innovation happening at the societal level, they don’t have the opportunity to be recognized.” DeepSeek’s success may hinge as much on how it differed from other Chinese tech companies as on how it shared their strengths. It was financed by the profits from its parent hedge fund. And Mr. Liang has described hiring humanities graduates in addition to computer scientists, in the spirit of fostering a freewheeling intellectual atmosphere. Since DeepSeek’s breakout success, some voices have urged more Chinese firms to emulate its model. An online commentary from the Communist Party committee of Zhejiang Province, where DeepSeek has its headquarters, declared the need to “trust in young talent” and give leading companies “greater control over innovation resources.” But the best way for China to capitalize on its well-educated, ambitious A.I. work force may be for the government to get out of the way. “Innovation requires as little intervention and management as possible,” Mr. Liang said in another interview. “Innovation often comes by itself, not as something deliberately planned, let alone taught.”

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is an independent, 162-year-old nongovernmental agency tasked with investigating and reporting on a wide range of subjects. In recent years, diversity, equity and inclusion — collectively known as D.E.I. — have been central to its agenda. But the Academies’ priorities changed abruptly on Jan. 31. Shortly after receiving a “stop work” order from the Trump administration, the institute closed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion, removed prominent links to its work on D.E.I. from its website’s homepage and paused projects on related themes. Now the website highlights the Academies’ interest in artificial intelligence and “our work to build a robust economy.” The quick about-face reflects the widespread impact that President Trump’s executive order on D.E.I. is having on scientific institutions across the nation, both governmental and private. The crackdown is altering scientific exploration and research agendas across a broad swath of fields. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT NASA cut requirements for inclusivity from several of its programs. The National Institutes of Health removed the application for its new Environmental Justice Scholars Program. National laboratories under the Department of Energy took down web pages that had expressed a commitment to diversity, while the department suspended its promotion of inclusive and equitable research. None of these federal agencies responded to requests for comment. Many organizations initiated D.E.I. programs as a way to correct historical underrepresentation in the sciences. According to one report, in 2021, just 35 percent of STEM employees were women, 9 percent were Black and less than 1 percent were Indigenous. “If we want to be the best country for the world in terms of science, we need to leverage our entire population to do so,” said Julie Posselt, an associate dean at the University of Southern California. D.E.I. programs, she added, “have ensured that the diverse population we have can make its way into the scientific work force.”Federal frenzy One NASA program affected is FarmFlux, a research initiative on agricultural emissions that redacted plans to recruit from “diverse student groups” for its team. Mentions of another, called Here to Observe, which partners with smaller academic institutions to expose historically underrepresented students to planetary science, have been removed from the space agency’s website. Peter Eley, a dean at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University who, in 2023, worked as a liaison for minority-serving institutions in NASA’s Office of STEM, noted that such programs often support students from lower-income rural communities, regardless of their racial background.Many of these students “don’t know what’s out there,” Dr. Eley said. “They don’t have the opportunity to see what is possible.” At the National Science Foundation, or N.S.F., an agencywide review of current awards supporting D.E.I. initiatives is underway. Part of the agency’s grant criteria includes “broader impacts,” defined as the potential to benefit society. That encompasses, but is not limited to, efforts to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in science.According to a program director at the foundation, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, a software algorithm flagged grants that included words and phrases often associated with D.E.I., including “activism” and “equal opportunity.” Other words it searched for were more nebulous — “institutional,” “underappreciated” and “women” — or can mean something else in scientific research, like “bias” and “polarization.” N.S.F. officials were instructed to manually review grants flagged by the algorithm. Some staff members, including the N.S.F. program director, made a point of removing the flag from most awards. “I’ll probably get in trouble for doing that,” she said. “But I’m not in the business of McCarthyism.” The N.S.F. did not answer questions sent by The New York Times regarding its ongoing review of awards. Scientists funded by the agency whose research has D.E.I. components said that they had not received enough information about how to comply with the executive order. “Do you drop what you’re supposed to do as part of your N.S.F. proposal, or do you risk being noncompliant with this very vague guidance?” asked Adrian Fraser, a physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder. Diana Macias, an N.S.F.-funded forest ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, worried that her involvement in recruiting people from tribal communities to manage the local environment would end. Threats to the forest “require a broad coalition of people” to mitigate, she said, adding that the executive order would have ramifications on the landscape. ‘Obeying in advance’ Several scientists expressed concern that organizations within the federal sphere seem to be overcomplying, prompting confusion and resentment. “They’re obeying in advance, they’re going beyond what the executive order says,” said Christine Nattrass, a physicist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who conducts research at Brookhaven National Laboratory and emphasized that she was not speaking on behalf of her institutions. According to Dr. Nattrass, internal documents at the lab are being scrubbed of references related to D.E.I. efforts. At least one code of conduct, which outlines expected professional behavior within research collaborations — such as treating others with respect and being mindful of cultural differences — has been taken down. The community of people involved with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory — a worldwide group that includes independent scientists, data managers and other workers — noticed last week that private Slack channels set up for L.G.B.T.Q. members were quietly being retired. At Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, researchers noticed that a prominent rainbow Pride flag had been removed from inside the lab’s main building. Scientists at all three federal facilities were left uncertain whether the executive order actually extended to internal documents, internal communication channels or flags. “It was devastating,” said Samantha Abbott, a physics graduate student who conducts research at Fermilab. To Ms. Abbott, who is transgender, the flag represented years’ worth of advocacy efforts at the lab. “And it’s just all gone in a matter of days.” Neither the observatory nor the labs responded to requests for comment.That sense of compliance appeared to extend beyond federal institutions. Two decades ago, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, or NASEM, helped to highlight the issue of racial disparities in health care, with a landmark report recommending that minorities be better represented in health professions. More recently, NASEM participated in an ambitious effort to root out the use of race in clinical algorithms that guide medical treatment. The quick retreat this week from a core mission stunned many NASEM employees. “D.E.I. has been at the center of what the institution has focused on for the last decade,” said one staff member, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “It shows up in everything we do.” The Academies are privately operated, but they receive a majority of their support from government contracts. Fifty-eight percent of their program expenditures came from federal government contracts last year, according to Dana Korsen, a spokesperson for the institute. The independent Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the largest basic biomedical research philanthropies in the world, recently canceled a $60 million program called Inclusive Excellence that aimed to boost inclusivity in STEM education. A spokeswoman for the institute, Alyssa Tomlinson, said the institute “remains committed to supporting outstanding scientists and talented students training to become scientists” through other programs. Ms. Tomlinson declined to explain why the institution had cut off the funding. Scientists abroad also worried about the D.E.I. rollbacks. One American working in Canada was concerned how his grant applications, which describe research that will be conducted on U.S. soil, would be received by Canadian funding agencies in light of the federal changes. “With tariff threats, America first and no more D.E.I., there’s a lot less incentive for the Canadian feds to fund anything in the U.S.,” said the scientist, who asked not to be identified. “And then there goes 95 percent of my research program.” Johan Bonilla Castro, a nonbinary Latinx physicist at Northeastern University who emphasized that they were not speaking for their employer, has decided to continue their D.E.I. initiatives, which involve promoting particle physics research in Costa Rica. They also have chosen to continue writing about their racial and gender identity in grant proposals, even if it ultimately results in being denied funding. “I will continue to say it and have it rejected,” Dr. Bonilla Castro said. “I can sterilize my research, sure. But that impacts my dignity.”

Vincent Vu helped found the Vietnamese-American Cadet Association at the United States Military Academy at West Point while he was a cadet, in 2015. West Point’s culture could be difficult for someone like him, who did not come from a military background, he recalled this week. And the academy’s affinity groups were far from discriminatory, he said. Rather, they helped people like him assimilate into the ranks of West Point cadets and the Army, and made him a better officer. “West Point was probably the first place where I had a supportive environment for my identity and who I am,” said Mr. Vu, a former air defense artillery officer and now a second-year law student at Wake Forest University. Now affinity groups having to do with race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation at West Point are under assault by an executive order signed by President Trump on his first day in office. The order called for an end to diversity, equity and inclusion policies in the federal government and in federally funded projects, as Mr. Trump promised to forge a “colorblind and merit-based” society. His administration has moved aggressively against people who are perceived as promoters of such policies. In an attempt to comply, the academy said on Tuesday that it was disbanding 12 affinity groups immediately, including the one serving Vietnamese American cadets, and reviewing others. The move met with a tide of criticism, and on Thursday, the academy suggested it might try to reinstate at least some of the clubs, if not all of them. Military historians have noted that the military has often been ahead of the rest of society in pushing for racial equality, and that removing the tools for what is now called D.E.I. threatens that progress. “You’re going to have a much more effective military when the demographics of the military represent the demographics of society,” Diane M. Ryan, a retired Army colonel, now an associate dean at Tufts University, said. Dr. Ryan taught psychology at West Point and was the officer in charge of the Corbin Forum, a club to promote female leadership, for many years. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The federal government has argued that same point in recent years, to fend off legal challenges to the academy’s consideration of race in admissions. The government said the system was necessary for recruitment and to build a diverse officer corps that reflects the troops they command.The conservative majority in the Supreme Court found that argument so compelling that it carved out an exception for the military academies in its 2023 decision striking down affirmative action admissions at colleges across the country. The decision said the academies might have “potentially distinct interests” in considering the race of their applicants, and it left that question to be decided by future litigation. But the landscape appears to have shifted quickly under the new administration. Within 24 hours of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, Adm. Linda L. Fagan, the first female officer to lead a branch of the armed forces, was fired. On the list of reasons the administration gave for her termination was a claim that she had an “excessive focus” on diversity, equity and inclusion.Mr. Trump ordered the termination of all government D.E.I. offices in a January executive order, rolling back policies carried out by the Biden administration to prevent discrimination and promote diversity and equity within the government. Days after the order, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in a memo, called D.E.I. policies “incompatible” with Department of Defense values. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Hegseth directed the creation of a task force dedicated to eradicating the department’s D.E.I. offices “and any vestiges of such offices that subvert meritocracy, perpetuate unconstitutional discrimination and promote radical ideologies related to systemic racism and gender fluidity.” Mr. Hegseth in January also declared identity months — such as Black History Month and Women’s History Month — “dead” at the Defense Department. He prohibited the use of official resources for cultural awareness months, a move that also applied to the 160 or so schools that serve children of military families around the world. Department of Defense schools, a high-performing school system run by the Pentagon that serves 67,000 students from preschool to high school on military bases in the United States and internationally, will no longer celebrate cultural awareness months in accordance with the secretary’s guidance, a spokesman said Friday. The news was earlier reported by Stars and Stripes. The agency that runs the schools was also assessing how student groups and clubs may be affected by new Trump administration orders and reviewing library books for potential violations. The Naval Academy said it was reviewing clubs, but had not disbanded any. It was unclear whether the other military academies had taken similar steps. After news got out about West Point’s move to close the groups down, the academy scrambled to do damage control. The West Point deputy commandant who signed the order, Chad Foster, wrote in social media posts that the academy was working on changing the charters of the clubs or placing them within academic departments so they could continue operating. “Of course, I’ve enjoyed being called a Nazi and the death threats during this typical internet feeding frenzy,” he wrote, adding, “Rest assured that we are establishing a process for deliberate review and possible re-establishment of these organizations.” The dozen clubs were singled out because they were directly affiliated with the office of diversity, equity and inclusion, before it was shut down last year, he said. Many of the clubs hosted luncheons, lecture series and off-campus trips. Though the clubs were focused on different groups, participation was open to every cadet, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or sexuality. Men often made up about 20 percent of the audience for Corbin Forum events, Dr. Ryan said. Colonel Foster’s memo, dated Feb. 4, said the clubs were “hereby disbanded,” and were not authorized to continue even informal activities using government time, resources or facilities.Background information provided by West Point’s communications office said that in keeping with Department of Defense guidance, the Department of the Army would not use official resources for cultural observances or awareness events. It said that cadets could still participate in such events in an unofficial capacity outside of duty hours. The official list of 12 banned clubs included the Asian-Pacific Forum Club, the Contemporary Cultural Affairs Seminar Club, the Latin Cultural Club and the National Society of Black Engineers Club. The academy said that more than 100 clubs remained available to its cadets, and that religious programs or activities were not affected. Alex Morey, vice president of campus advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group, said her group was monitoring orders like the one at West Point to see if they violated students’ First Amendment right to express personal views. Molly Shannon, a 2016 West Point graduate, said she had found mentors through the West Point chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. Ms. Shannon said she was devastated when she saw it was on the list to be cut, “because I know how important that community was to me.” The Corbin Forum was also shuttered. The group has historic resonance for female cadets, because it was created with the first class of women to be appointed to West Point, in 1976. Dr. Ryan was the officer in charge of the group from 2008 to 2017. “The way this has been politicized is, ‘We can’t do these things because it’s divisive,’” Dr. Ryan said. “And I argue that it is actually the opposite of divisive. We are not calling people out. We are calling people in.” Dr. Ryan said she had entered the military through the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps because she did not know that women could go to West Point at that time, in the early 1980s. “Hence, representation matters,” she said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT As for West Point officials, they were taking a somewhat apologetic stance. Colonel Foster said they were “working hard to get things properly aligned” so cadets would have professional and personal opportunities. “No one enjoys telling young people bad news, trust me,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point has ordered 12 officially sanctioned clubs for women and ethnic or racial groups to shut down immediately, in a drive to comply with the Trump administration’s directives on diversity, equity and inclusion, the academy said on Wednesday. In a memo dated Tuesday, the academy’s deputy commandant, Chad R. Foster, said that the clubs were being disbanded “in accordance with recent presidential executive orders, department of defense guidance and department of the Army guidance.” The dozen clubs that are being disbanded right away include the Corbin Forum, a group to promote female leaders, founded in 1976 when women were first admitted to West Point; the Latin Cultural Club; the National Society of Black Engineers Club; the Vietnamese-American Cadet Association; Spectrum, for L.G.B.T.Q. cadets; and the Society of Women Engineers Club. The academy is also reviewing other groups on campus, the memo said. All of the clubs named in the memo were ordered to “unpublish, deactivate, archive or otherwise remove all public-facing content.” On Wednesday, the National Society of Black Engineers Club home page had an error message on it saying “Oops!” in large letters. Drew Fitzsimmons, a West Point alumnus who founded the organization Spectrum while on campus in 2012, said he was “frustrated and disappointed with the decision.” Mr. Fitzsimmons said the group held weekly meetings that built a camaraderie among the cadets and prepared them for leadership. “Affinity groups like this provide a safe space for people of similar backgrounds,” said Mr. Fitzsimmons, who is currently the executive director of a nonprofit organization called Knights Out, which provides support for L.G.B.T.Q. service members and their families. The memo said the directive canceled all trips, meetings, events and other activities associated with the clubs, which were no longer authorized to conduct informal activities using government time, resources or facilities. The U.S. Military Academy Communications Office confirmed the closings in a statement released on Wednesday. “In accordance with recent guidance, the U.S. Military Academy is reviewing programs and activities affiliated with our former office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” the statement said. “The clubs disbanded yesterday were sponsored by that office.” On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order to end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives within the federal government and supported by federal funds, promising to “forge a society that is colorblind and merit-based.” Since then, federal agencies have put dozens of officials associated with D.E.I. programs on leave, including some who appeared to be distantly connected to diversity initiatives. The order also called for the U.S. attorney general and the education department to issue guidance for institutions to comply with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision ending race-based admissions in colleges and universities. That decision did not apply to West Point and the other military academies, which are now the focus of separate lawsuits challenging their use of affirmative action.

In Boonton, N.J., Linda Mauriello helps young people with disabilities prepare to enter the work force after they leave school. They learn to set career goals, create resumes and build relationships at work. Sometimes they get help finding internships and receive support on the job, too. One student with multiple disabilities trained at a school cafeteria, got hired and is still working there five years later. A student with autism trained at the local Walgreens, learning time management and working with customers. He was hired and is now in charge of opening up the store. Ms. Mauriello is a big fan of the program. “My students have really benefited from it,” she said. But hundreds of thousands of students with disabilities who are eligible for similar assistance do not receive it. The federal and state governments spend about half a billion dollars each year for such services, but most parents — and even some school officials — don’t even know the program exists. In 2023, New Jersey had the nation’s lowest proportion — roughly 2 percent — of eligible students getting help, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of government data. For 10 years, New Jersey’s program has languished. And the state’s decentralized school governance system has hampered efforts to get the services into schools. Interviews with dozens of advocates, educators and parents depict a confusing bureaucratic maze, one that leaves tens of thousands of students without services. New Jersey officials acknowledge the problem. “We know that there’s not enough people who are fully aware of all of our services,” said Charyl Yarbrough, assistant commissioner of employment accessibility services at New Jersey’s Department of Labor and interim director of the state’s Division of Vocational Rehabilitation Services. “Nobody wants to be a best-kept secret.” Across the country, only 40 percent of people with disabilities ages 16 to 64 are employed, even though experts say most are capable of holding jobs. Congress created the school-age job training program a decade ago, funneling money to the states. But only about 295,000 students received some form of services — out of an estimated 3.1 million who are eligible — in 2023, the most recent year for which national data is available. In New Jersey last year, that number was 1,370, out of more than 80,000 eligible students. New York State has not been much more successful: It is serving about 5 percent of its eligible students. When job training programs do reach students with disabilities, advocates say they are often inadequate, and states face little accountability for their shortcomings. “If young people have an opportunity to be exposed to the world of work, and they get services ahead of time, they can work independently in the community,” said Maureen McGuire-Kuletz, co-director of the George Washington University Center for Rehabilitation Counseling Research and Education. “That was the hope. If you got in early, then some challenges later on would not exist.” While officials at the U.S. Department of Education acknowledge that so-called pre-employment transition services must be made available to all students with disabilities, they note that the law does not mandate that they all access the services. Not all students choose to receive them, and some may be getting the help they need from their schools, Danté Q. Allen, the commissioner of the department’s Rehabilitation Services Administration until last month, said in an email. In New Jersey, the state government usually uses outside contractors — mostly nonprofit organizations and universities — to provide such training. It spent $14.6 million in federal and state funds on this training in 2023, the last year for which complete data is available. But many parents are unaware of what their children are eligible for and how to get it. Bridgette Breece’s son did well with the hands-on work at his high school in Burlington County, N.J., but his disabilities made reading difficult, and he struggled with textbook-based exams. Worried about his future, Ms. Breece tried to get him some career help before graduation. She saw a Facebook post about the state vocational rehabilitation agency, which serves exactly that purpose. But she says a counselor there told her that her son wasn’t eligible until he turned 18 — which was untrue. After he graduated last spring, he found a job as a tow-truck driver, which he was good at and enjoyed. But the company required all employees to take turns periodically being on call for overnight emergencies. His anxiety disability made him terrified that he would miss a call, so he didn’t sleep for several nights in a row and had to quit. Pre-employment training, which he could have received during high school, could have taught him how to request an accommodation or how to explore jobs that fit his abilities and interests. But he never received that. His mother — like most parents in New Jersey — had no idea the program existed. She has now applied for Social Security benefits for him, something neither of them ever wanted. “He’s embarrassed,” she said. “My heart breaks for the kid. He wants to work, he wants to do good. I just wish we could have gotten help while he was still in high school.” Maureen Piccoli Kerne, who started a transition program at a high school in Ridgefield, N.J., says counseling before job placement is crucial. “It’s important because then they know what they like to do,” she said. “They know what their strengths are. They know how to ask for accommodations at work.” She recently worked with a young woman who loves libraries. Her developmental disability prevented her from attending a traditional college, but she took courses online to become a librarian’s assistant and got a job at a public library on Long Island. “She was so excited about the courses,” said Ms. Kerne. “She has a job she loves and she’s being productive, and that’s what can happen when you work with young people early.” For more than 30 years, federal education law has required schools to help students with disabilities plan for their transition out of high school. But there’s often a gap between what a school can provide and the kind of training or counseling a student needs. That’s where the pre-employment services are supposed to help. Before 2014, state vocational rehabilitation agencies primarily worked with adults. That changed when Congress directed the agencies to offer services geared toward employment to all students with disabilities, starting as early as age 14. Most New Jersey students never get the option. Local teachers say it is difficult to reach overburdened state job-training counselors and, when they do, delays leave parents and students waiting for months for services. Some counselors say it is difficult for them to reach school staff members — and that some local schools claim they are already providing everything their students need. Some New Jersey schools have forged good relationships with state counselors, who help students find trial work experiences. And some schools provide high-quality transition services on their own, without the help of the state’s vocational rehabilitation agency. But in most cases, that disjointed system is broken. Ten years after the federal program was put in place, “everybody’s still struggling,” said Gwen Orlowski, executive director of Disability Rights New Jersey. “It’s just dysfunctional.” The law mandated that vocational rehabilitation agencies spend at least 15 percent of their federal money on employment services for young people. But many states balked at being asked to offer services to thousands of additional people without a budget increase. There are few consequences for the massive gaps in access to services; policy advocates blame a lack of oversight by state and federal agencies. The Rehabilitation Services Administration conducts annual reviews of vocational rehabilitation agencies, but some states go years without fixing problems. “We’ve been wanting greater oversight,” said Julie Christensen, executive director of the Association of People Supporting Employment First. “It shouldn’t be the Wild Wild West.” Federal education officials say that existing oversight mechanisms are leading to improvement. In 2021, 23 states were spending less than the 15 percent required by law. That number dropped to 10 states in 2022, the most recent year for which data is available.Zoe Sullivan, a senior at Collingswood High School who has Down syndrome, had been saying since she was in ninth grade that she wanted to go to a four-year residential college program, but her mother, Kim Brooks, said no one at school really listened. “I want to go to a college,” said Zoe, sitting at a cafe near her home. “I want to take classes and learn to be independent.” Last spring, Ms. Brooks found out, very much by accident, about a nonprofit college prep program for students with developmental disabilities — she saw it on a friend’s Instagram post. She has scrambled to submit applications to programs that she and Zoe have found only through word of mouth and hours of research. “It’s like a secret society,” said Ms. Brooks. “You don’t know what you don’t know. We really missed a lot of years.”

The opening weeks of President Trump’s second term have cast America’s campuses into turmoil, with upheaval that threatens to erode the financial foundation of higher education in the United States. As the administration orders the end of diversity programs and imposes cuts to foreign aid, university presidents and their lawyers fear that millions of dollars in federal funding could ultimately vanish. Some research projects, including many connected to the U.S. Agency for International Development, have been suspended, and program directors have made plans for layoffs. But universities have largely been quiet. Professors and administrators alike seem wary of provoking a president who has glorified retribution and has already started to tighten the funding spigot. Staying out of the spotlight, some reason, is prudent. Those who have spoken have often relied on carefully calibrated letters and statements, noting that they are watching but hardly offering any overt opposition. In some instances, researchers and campus leaders have been pressured into silence by a government that has demanded they not speak to reporters as money remains bottled up. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “It’s a hard time and it’s an uncertain time and the combination is nearly paralyzing,” said Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, which counts more than 1,600 colleges and universities in its membership. The uncertainty, Dr. Mitchell said, has created “reluctance to speak out for fear of repercussions,” a phenomenon he described as “a rational fear.” The White House’s threat last week to freeze trillions of dollars in federal grants and loans posed a major risk to universities, though the plan’s legal fate has been thrown into doubt. Other orders, like ones suspending foreign aid and insisting that federal money not go toward diversity, equity and inclusion work, are still convulsing campuses.On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump and others now in his administration crusaded against a cadre of pre-eminent schools, despite the president being an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania and Vice President JD Vance holding a law degree from Yale. But the early policy pushes are striking at campuses far beyond the Ivy League. That includes public research universities that are the pride of many state systems and that are, in some cases, integral to the Feed the Future initiative at U.S.A.I.D. The project, whose website has been offline for days, promotes global food access. But it is built around “innovation labs” at universities in the United States, many of them juggernauts in red states, like the University of Georgia and Mississippi State University.The program, which has spent billions over the years, has effectively been on hiatus as Trump administration officials conduct a broad examination of American aid abroad. “Reviewing and realigning foreign assistance on behalf of hardworking taxpayers is not just the right thing to do, it is a moral imperative,” Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokeswoman, said in a statement announcing the pause. The department claimed last week that it had already “prevented” at least $1 billion in “spending not aligned with an America First agenda.” As the administration trumpets the closing of the nation’s checkbook, universities have hardly harnessed their own bully pulpits. Despite outrage over campus protests, tuition levels and particular professors and courses buffeting the higher education industry, many individual universities retain enormous sway and good-will in their communities and states. For now, though, schools seem to be reluctant to try to tap into that. Mississippi State, which leads a Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish under a $15 million grant, declined to comment. A spokesman for the state’s higher education board said officials were “aware of the temporary pause” and would “continue to monitor this directive.” And the University of Georgia, home to the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Peanut, similarly referred an inquiry about the pause in aid to the state’s higher education system. The system, led by Sonny Perdue, Mr. Trump’s agriculture secretary during his first administration, did not respond to an interview request.An inquiry to U.S.A.I.D. about claims that it had directed researchers to avoid speaking to the news media went unanswered. The agency, founded in 1961, has itself become a cauldron of worry as top officials have been placed on leave and Elon Musk, who is seeking to cut $1 trillion in federal spending, declared that the administration would close it. (It is not clear whether Mr. Trump or Mr. Musk have such authority.) On Monday, after agency employees assigned to the Washington headquarters were told to stay home from work, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that he was serving as the agency’s acting administrator. Some of the silence and hesitancy from campuses stems from confusion. In recent days, university lawyers have scrambled to decipher terse stop-work orders, in part to determine whether schools can use their own money to continue research projects that had been receiving federal support. If legal, such an option might be financially feasible for only some universities. Federal dollars are seen as the only practical, long-term option for most projects that have relied on backing from Washington. In the 2023 fiscal year, the federal government gave universities almost $60 billion for research. During a Faculty Senate meeting that was streamed online on Monday, Jennifer L. Mnookin, the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, urged professors to “hold off” on optional expenses so the university could help ensure that “you’re making smart choices.” “The transition has created for us an enormous amount of uncertainty, combined with fast-moving and changing information,” she said. “It’s generated some potentially quite significant threats to important aspects of our mission, as is true for our peer institutions nationally.” Universities across the country are for now using a subtle playbook to try to stave off funding losses: beseeching their congressional delegations to intervene, and sometimes deploying Republican-aligned lobbyists across Washington. “These are different times,” said former Senator Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican who became a lobbyist after he left the congressional leadership. “I’m sure everybody is trying to figure out how it’s going to play out and what they need to do. Different team in town and people are going to have to figure out how to deal with it.” Schools braced for changes after Mr. Trump’s election, including to the nation’s academic research landscape. The first weeks of the new administration have nevertheless been jarring, said Jeffrey P. Gold, the president of the University of Nebraska. “The abruptness and the scale of the messaging have been the largest elements of surprise,” he said in an interview, adding that the outcomes of many projects could be harmed if more delays and cuts materialize. Some critics of Mr. Trump’s budget-cutting ambitions have tried to borrow language from the administration’s rhetoric to make their points. Mark Becker, the president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, said the possible end of U.S.A.I.D. support for research risked the nation’s stature and competitiveness abroad. “We urge the administration to resume the critical work of U.S.A.I.D. to assure American prosperity and security,” he said. “It is by empowering our nation’s scientists to tackle global challenges that we will secure U.S. leadership for decades to come.” Mr. Becker is one of the few academic leaders applying such explicit public pressure against a specific set of potential cuts. But congressional Democrats have assailed the chaos that they say the administration has unleashed in higher education. Representative Nikki Budzinski, a Democrat whose district includes the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said she had been “in regular contact with the university since the freeze and, now, the miscommunication about the freeze.” “It’s really, truly creating panic across the board,” she added. In a statement, the university said its Soybean Innovation Lab, which works to improve agriculture in 31 countries, was notified recently that funding had been paused. It has received more $50 million since 2013. Republicans expect that voters, especially in conservative states, will have some tolerance even for cuts that affect their communities. “Probably most Nebraskans are in favor of looking for greater efficiencies,” said Tom Osborne, a Republican who coached the University of Nebraska’s football team to three national championships and later served three terms in Congress. “But sometimes it can pinch a little bit here and there.” Mr. Osborne predicted that changes to some programs would probably go unnoticed by many voters. “Looking at the papers and talking to people here,” he said, “I have not heard a whole lot of conversation about it.” But the consequences already feel acute at some campus offices. At Iowa State University, the compensation of at least 11 people is tied, to some degree, to a U.S.A.I.D. grant that promotes curriculum modernization in Kosovo and that grew out of a decade-old “sister-state” partnership between Iowa and Kosovo. “We are not to put forth any efforts on these activities,” said Curtis R. Youngs, a professor in the Department of Animal Science who works on the project. The grant is worth $4 million over five years. “By U.S.A.I.D. standards, that’s not a huge grant,” Dr. Youngs said. “But it’s a sizable grant from our perspective.”