In the three years since Ron DeSantis set out to rid Florida’s universities of woke ideology, my campus changed significantly. Professors suddenly worried about what they could say and teach. Some started avoiding terms like “racism.” One student recently told me that when someone used “intersectional” in class, the instructor told her not to use that word. Soon this could be the case in schools across the country. We’ve all heard stories of elite institutions cowering before President Trump’s assault on higher education. Take it from someone who knows: It could get worse — far worse. Mr. Trump has been watching what’s transpired in Florida. The architect of Project 2025’s education policies has said that Florida is “leading the way” on university overhauls. Already, Mr. Trump has threatened to pull funding from colleges that don’t purge language he considers woke. He’s demanded new oversight of certain regional studies departments. Next he could try to ban, as Florida has, “political or social activism.” He could weaken the protections provided by tenure and faculty unions. I saw this happen on my campus, and I know the toll it took. If the Trump administration has its way, my experience could offer a preview of what’s coming for other universities. Before Mr. DeSantis began targeting higher education, Florida faculty members could be confident that the administrators supported our professional judgments about how to teach our students. We had open, complex discussions without fearing for our careers. In a conversation in one of my classes, female students expressed the fear that catcalling provoked, and their male peers responded thoughtfully, reflecting on their own behavior — a learning experience for everyone. Today that conversation would, I fear, violate a Florida law that prohibits teaching male students that they must feel guilt for the actions of other men. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Since Mr. DeSantis’s crackdown, I’ve seen my colleagues harassed and investigated for addressing topical issues, even outside the classroom. The climate of fear gives the government precisely the result it wants. Administrators and faculty members alike practice anticipatory obedience to avoid even the appearance of wokeness, stifling the sort of open and civil discussions that lead students to develop their own views.One colleague told me that he stopped assigning an article about lynching and white evangelicalism for fear that those terms could raise red flags. Another said she was censoring her language not just in class and on campus but also on personal social media. Several professors have been subjected to efforts at entrapment. Last year a man posing as a student tried to encourage Muslim faculty members to criticize Mr. DeSantis and Israel. A similar incident happened to me. In October 2024 my department chair called me into his office to tell me that someone claiming to be a student in my Religion and Science class had complained that I spent 20 minutes talking about specific candidates, including who I was voting for and why. I was stunned. That never happened in that class or any other; it is antithetical to the way I teach. Fortunately, the dean’s office assured me that a single, unsubstantiated accusation was not grounds for disciplinary action. Far worse than the fear of investigation was the way the accusation shook the trust I thought I had with my students. Did one of them hate me so much that one would lie to get me in trouble? In the end, I am convinced that the person making the complaint was not a student in my class but a provocateur. (It was probably not a coincidence that the allegation was lodged shortly after my name appeared in a Politico article about changes to our campus.) That incident shattered my conviction that if I did my job well and followed the rules, I would be safe. In over 30 years at the University of Florida, I have taught thousands of students, written hundreds of recommendation letters and advised countless research projects. I have published a dozen books and scores of articles, won research and teaching awards and served on numerous college and university committees. But the state doesn’t trust me to do my job.How can I challenge my students to ask hard questions, to follow the research wherever it goes, when I am worried about what might happen to me if I do that? And how can I follow the rules when even university administrators are not always sure of how to interpret them? Teaching is, above all, the creation of a community in the classroom, a web of trust and curiosity that binds students and instructors in a shared intellectual project. Mistrust, fear and self-censorship make that project impossible. With Mr. Trump’s recent actions, the campus atmosphere has grown more tense. His orders threaten not only the humanities and social sciences but also research funding for STEM. And as immigration agents detain and deport international students, noncitizen students on campus (and even some students who are naturalized citizens) are keeping their heads down even more. Like Mr. DeSantis and Richard Nixon before him, Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance believe that the professors are the enemy. They want ordinary Americans to mistrust college instructors, to think of us as intolerant militants driven only by political ideology. Teaching college students has been the greatest gift of my professional life. I love my university and my students, and I do good work. I have no desire to indoctrinate anyone. The same is true of my colleagues. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT For those who think that professors are the enemy, I invite you to spend some time in our classrooms. You might discover that we are, in the end, all on the same side.

Three college presidents apologized for not acting more aggressively to curb antisemitism on their campuses during a House committee hearing on Wednesday, in what Republicans billed as an effort to examine colleges beyond the Ivy League. “I am sorry that my actions and my leadership let you down,” Wendy Raymond, the president of Haverford College, a Quaker college outside Philadelphia, said she would like her Jewish students to know. “I am committed to getting this right.” The House Committee on Education and the Workforce has held a number of hearings with schools since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed. In many ways the hearing echoed the first and most dramatic of them, in December 2023, which led to the resignations of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and of Harvard. During the hearing on Wednesday, the Republican majority threatened to withhold federal funding from uncooperative schools. The Democratic minority accused Republicans of tolerating antisemitism in their own party while using it as a political weapon against others. And university leaders tried to walk a delicate line between showing contrition and not antagonizing the committee, while not undermining academic freedom. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But it was also a very different moment for higher education and its relationship with the federal government. The hearing looked back mostly to events from a year ago, when campuses across the country were reeling from protest encampments and mass arrests. The war continues, but protests have largely faded, with some notable exceptions. One protest at the University of Washington drew widespread attention this week, but the university quickly cleared demonstrators, to praise from the government. And at Columbia on Wednesday, dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters, wearing masks and kaffiyehs, occupied the main room of Butler Library. Meanwhile, the Republican onslaught against universities has only intensified. The Trump administration has opened investigations at dozens of universities over accusations of antisemitism, and stripped hundreds of millions of dollars from others it says have not done enough to respond to issues raised by the protests, most of them in Democrat-leaning states. President Trump and his officials have focused especially on the schools in the Ivy League. The congressional hearing on Wednesday was titled “Beyond the Ivies.” “Bottom line, we are trying to highlight that this is a problem affecting schools across America, not just the Ivy League,” Audra McGeorge, a committee spokeswoman, said.The hearing focused on schools that received F grades from the Anti-Defamation League. This time around, the three presidents, of Haverford, DePaul University in Chicago, and California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo knew what questions to expect and were able largely to finesse them. (Cal Poly recently raised its grade to a D.) But after refusing to provide statistics on disciplinary cases against protesters, Haverford’s president, Dr. Raymond, came in for especially dogged questioning from Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican. Her harsh interrogations were largely responsible for the damage that helped drive other university presidents to resign. Ms. Stefanik questioned Dr. Raymond about a student group that called for dismantling the state of Israel “by all means necessary,” asking: “What does by ‘all means necessary’ mean to you?” “Invoking that kind of terminology is repugnant because of what it can mean,” Dr. Raymond replied, stressing the word “can.” “Does that depend on the context?” Ms. Stefanik interrupted. Dr. Raymond had been forewarned by the experiences of the presidents of Harvard and Penn. Both gave noncommittal answers to questions about whether they would discipline students who called for the genocide of Jews. Both said that doing so would depend on the context. Dr. Raymond evaded the “context” question, saying that she would not talk about individual cases. To which Ms. Stefanik threatened: “Many people have sat in this position who are no longer in the positions as presidents of universities for their failure to answer straightforward questions.” In the year and a half since that December 2023 hearing, many university leaders appear to have been attentive to the complaints from students, faculty and lawmakers, and to the fate of their peers. Many schools have tightened rules related to protests, locked campus gates to outsiders and issued harsher punishments for participants. The moves may help explain why protests were less frequent and widespread this spring. Many universities have also banned or suspended the most militant pro-Palestinian activist groups. “Both as a university president and a human being, this is a matter I take particularly seriously,” Jeffrey D. Armstrong, president of Cal Poly, told the committee. “We have to do better.” He ticked off plans like endowing a chair in Jewish studies and establishing a task force to increase awareness of antisemitism. On Wednesday, Republicans followed what has become a favored playbook, pushing schools to respond to their complaints by threatening to withhold federal funding. Ryan Mackenzie, a Pennsylvania Republican, demanded that Dr. Raymond collect information about the punishment of students and professors at Haverford and deliver it to the committee or else risk losing federal funding. “You do receive federal money, do you not?” he said. “We do, in a wonderful partnership with the federal government,” Dr. Raymond replied. “Well, that partnership may be in jeopardy,” Mr. Mackenzie said. When her turn to question the presidents came, Representative Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, dismissed the hearing as a performance. Ms. Bonamici said that as a synagogue-going Jew, “I can no longer pretend that this is a good-faith effort to root out antisemitism, especially when the Trump administration and the majority party are regularly undermining Jewish values.” David Cole, a former national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, testified along with the presidents. He compared the committee’s activities to the Communist-hunting of the 1950s. “They are not an attempt to find out what happened but an attempt to chill protected speech,” he said. Mr. Cole also said that the Trump administration had gutted the government’s ability to investigate discrimination complaints by cutting the staff of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. The Trump administration has, nonetheless, promised over 60 investigations into schools over complaints they have allowed antisemitism to fester on their campuses. On Wednesday night, the University of Washington said it had received notice that a federal task force to combat antisemitism, formed by President Trump, was starting a review of the university’s federal grants and contracts. The review came after demonstrators occupied an engineering building for several hours on Monday, damaging the building and setting dumpster fires outside, according to the university. The police arrested 34 people, including 21 students, who have been suspended and banned from campus, the university said. In its most recent fiscal year, about 18 percent of the university’s revenues came from grants and contracts, with most of those dollars coming from the federal government.

Of all the contenders to be the next pope, Danny Kind might not be an obvious choice. His shaggy hair is tinted green, and the other day he was wearing a Korn T-shirt under his ceremonial robes. “I’m an Ashkenazi Jew from Orlando, so I’m not very Catholic,” he said. There’s also that. None of this is disqualifying in a class at the University of Chicago called “The Italian Renaissance: Dante, Machiavelli, and the Wars of Popes and Kings,” better known by students as “pope class” or “pope LARP” (as in live-action role play). The centerpiece of the class is a simulation of the conclave of 1492, an historical gathering rife with accusations of scandal and corruption. This is the 15th year since Prof. Ada Palmer began running the simulation, but the first time that it has been interrupted by the death of an actual pope. Pope Francis died on April 21, the same day that the students were set to vote in their own conclave.The class arrived that day at Rockefeller Chapel, a Gothic Revival structure on campus that stands in for the Sistine Chapel, with a surreal sense of the weight of their decision. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “I’m a Catholic so it kind of sucked for me, but there was a lot of excitement,” said Joseph DePaula, 21, a third-year student who took the class two years ago and returned this year as a volunteer. When Mr. Kind from Orlando — Cardinal Ascanio Sforza in the simulation — was elected on the fifth ballot, volunteers waved white flags from a balcony, symbolizing the smoke that billows from the Sistine Chapel when the cardinals have chosen a new pope. Dr. Palmer, a historian and novelist, compared the class to the history version of a language immersion class. And the approach does more than help students recall names and dates. It is also a lesson in “plural power,” where anyone can change the course of history. In the simulation, “everybody has power but nobody has control,” Dr. Palmer said. “Even the most powerful people don’t actually manage to control things enough to get the outcome they want, and even the least powerful people, when they work at it, can affect and influence what happens in the end.”By last week, the final stretch of the simulation, some students had a hard time differentiating their real lives from their 15th-century identities. Elsa Cukierman, who portrayed the nobleman Franceschetto Cybo, said she once accidentally called her real-life boyfriend by the name of her character’s wife. Others frantically responded to reports of a rival’s treachery on their phones at a nightclub at 3 a.m. “Don’t eat, don’t speak, just pope,” said Julia Morales, who painted her nails baby blue to match the dress she wore as Lucrezia Borgia, the illegitimate daughter of the real Pope Alexander VI. (Events evolved differently in this year’s simulation.)“We’re great friends in real life,” chimed in Emily Curran, dressed in the red robes of Cardinal Ardicino della Porta Jr., who opposed the Borgia family’s aspirations. “We just haven’t been able to hang out because we can’t talk about anything else but pope class.” On April 30, the final day of the simulation, the students arrived in a bustle of excitement. They rifled through the racks of clothing that Dr. Palmer has procured over the years from sources like Renaissance fairs and the BBC’s costume department. She has alerts on Etsy and eBay for the phrase “used Shakespeare costume.” The pope opened the proceedings with a moment of silence. At one point he assented to a petition to give an Italian cardinal control over a town in Bologna with an enthusiastic “hell, yeah!”A duel broke out between Michael Tarchaniota Marullus and Pandolfo IV Malatesta. Then the pope himself threw off his robes to initiate his own duel with Cesare Borgia. (Borgia immediately surrendered, to the pope’s apparent disappointment.) In real life, the 1492 conclave ended with the selection of Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI, an outcome so heavily influenced by bribery that it inspired new rules against simony, or the selling of church offices. But the class is a simulation, not a re-enactment, Dr. Palmer explained. That means that while students portray (mostly) real-life historical figures, they are set loose to make their own decisions. Thus the 2025 election of Ascanio Sforza, a figure who did exist, as Pope Ambrose, who did not. The recent success of the movie “Conclave” added to the feeling that the simulation was relevant to the real world this year. One group went to the theater in cardinal costumes, on loan from Dr. Palmer. As for the real conclave in Rome this week, Mr. Kind and several others said they were rooting for Cardinal Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, a contender from the Philippines who is often called the “Asian Francis.”At the end of the final simulation, students bought art and made hasty marriage arrangements, rushing to fulfill as many of their characters’ objectives as possible. Then they took off their costumes and made their way to a classroom, where they debriefed and revealed various schemes and misunderstandings. Cesare Borgia arrived toting a skateboard. Mr. Kind opened up his laptop and put on a playlist including Joy Division and Modest Mouse. A cluster of gods and angels snacked on Oreos. For Mr. Kind, his election as Pope Ambrose was the culmination of years of dreaming. He heard about the class from a high-school history teacher, and wrote his admissions essay to the university about his desire to participate. Right before the vote, he kissed his grandfather’s small silver mezuza, which he wears around his neck. Mr. Kind is not the first Jewish pope, Dr. Palmer said. There have also been two Muslim popes and a transgender Catholic pope. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Kind broke down in tears when he removed his red cardinal vestments to don the white and gold robes of the Vicar of Christ. The experience was almost intoxicating. “Last Monday I got to excommunicate a guy,” he recounted. And given the circumstances swirling outside campus, it was hard not to muse about the possibility of real power. “As far as I know, I’m the only person in the world claiming to be the pope right now,” Mr. Kind said. “I think that technically makes me pope.”

This spring brought the annual wave of prospective students to colleges nationwide, with young people and their parents eager to learn about majors and campus life. Unfortunately, the most important issue of all — the cost of college — was too often omitted from those conversations. Confusion about what a college education will cost any given family is creating a disheartening landscape, especially for working- and middle-class families who may not have been made aware of how much financial aid they could be eligible for. This challenge is compounded by renewed efforts from the Trump administration to tax endowments and cut research funding, restricting revenue sources that help make college more affordable. Headlines often spotlight $100,000 sticker prices at elite private colleges. But even flagship public universities are increasingly — and understandably — seen as financially out of reach. “Everyone I went to high school with either went to Tech or UFS,” one rural Arkansas student told a researcher, referring to Arkansas Tech University and the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. “Nobody really went to Fayetteville because they thought, ‘I can’t afford that. I’m not uppity.’” For many families, the actual price of a college education remains unclear, buried beneath complex formulas and inconsistent messaging. As doubts about affordability grow, so too does the sense that the lofty promise of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 Higher Education Act — to make college broadly accessible through meaningful financial aid — has fallen short. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT A 2025 survey by the Lumina Foundation, which is focused on accessibility in higher education, in partnership with Gallup, found that a mere 18 percent of Americans without a college degree believe four-year college tuition is “fair.” Nearly a third of Americans think college “isn’t worth the cost,” and another 47 percent believe it is worth the cost only if a student does not need any loans, according to the Pew Research Center.This growing skepticism is reshaping where — and whether — students apply and enroll, and it underscores the urgent need for action. Thankfully, some progress is already underway. In recent decades, many universities have expanded need-based aid, determined by household income and family assets, to all admitted students. Still, these efforts are often overshadowed by the universities’ high sticker prices.Most colleges offer cost calculators to help students and families estimate their aid package. But they are often confusing and ask for detailed financial information that many parents — let alone 17-year-olds — don’t have on hand. And because colleges use different calculators, trying to compare schools quickly turns time-consuming. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT As part of our ongoing effort to clarify and improve public understanding of higher education, we created a graphic — a template any college can use — that more accurately reflects the true cost of attending the University of Pennsylvania. It illustrates that the widely cited $100,000 sticker price is not what most students will ultimately pay.At some of the nation’s most selective and high-cost institutions — including the University of Pennsylvania — students from families earning $75,000 or less annually often pay nothing at all. Financial aid packages comprised entirely of grants cover not only tuition but also room, board, books, fees, essential supplies such as a computer and travel expenses. While eligibility thresholds and cost calculations vary by school, elite colleges including Harvard, M.I.T., Princeton, Dartmouth and the University of Chicago offer similar levels of support to low- and middle-income families. For middle-income families — those earning between $75,000 and $200,000 per year, typically with additional consideration for those with multiple children in college at the same time — not only is college tuition frequently fully paid for, but students often receive additional aid. As a result, these families can access some of the most selective colleges at a significant discount — at least 66 percent off full sticker price at Penn, a representative example. Large university endowments often draw criticism, but they play a crucial role in expanding access to higher education. Endowment returns are used to cover faculty salaries and other expenses. But a 2024 study by NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments, that analyzes college endowment performance and spending, showed that nearly half of the money earned from endowment returns went to financial aid. At schools with total annual costs nearing $92,000, it takes roughly $2 million in endowed funds for the return to fully support just one student. It is true that between 2006 and 2024 average in-state tuition and fees have risen from $9,040 to $11,610, but when you factor in grant aid (excluding loans) fees have dropped from $3,940 to $2,480, according to a College Board study. Even though students still face costs for housing, food and books, they are paying less for their education today than they did two decades ago. The trend holds true at community colleges as well. In 35 states, tuition at two-year institutions is now free for many low-income students, and overall tuition costs at community colleges have declined.But just as progress is being made — not only in expanding financial aid but improving transparency around who qualifies for it — the Trump administration now threatens to reverse that momentum. Deep cuts to federal research funding could force universities to scale back budgets, eliminate undergraduate programs and reduce financial aid. In addition, efforts to restrict international enrollment risk slashing tuition revenue — losses that institutions may offset by raising costs for domestic students. And now, Republican lawmakers are pushing to expand the endowment tax and increase its rate — a move that may sound like accountability, but in reality would penalize students in need of support. At Penn, the existing $10 million endowment tax already diverts an amount that could fully cover tuition and expenses for roughly 110 low-income students. Current proposals would raise that tax tenfold, potentially shutting out more than 1,100 students. Is that really the direction we want to go in — making it harder for talented students to access the opportunities they’ve earned? A high-quality education isn’t only for the wealthiest Americans. It can be for everyone — if we commit to providing robust financial aid, clearly communicating real costs and protecting institutional resources like endowments that are meant to open doors, not be taxed shut.

A former assistant admissions director at Emmanuel College in Boston was arrested Friday and accused of soliciting an underage applicant for sex, the Justice Department said. Prosecutors charged the director, Jacob Henriques, 29, with one count of attempted sex trafficking of a minor after he used his position to gain access to the personal information of admitted and prospective students, and tried to solicit them for sex, according to a news release from the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Massachusetts. In a statement, Emmanuel College said that it fired Mr. Henriques after contacting law enforcement and starting an investigation. “Emmanuel College is saddened, angered and shocked by these serious federal allegations,” it said. Whether Mr. Henriques had legal representation was not immediately clear. On April 25, Mr. Henriques found the personal information of at least three of the students after meeting with several, prosecutors said. He then contacted and offered to “pay them for some fun,” the authorities added, and sent pornographic videos or images in some cases. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The same day, he began contacting a fourth victim after she committed to attending the college, according to prosecutors. One of the victims, a 17-year-old, toured the college with Mr. Henriques on April 25, prosecutors said. Mr. Henriques asked her what grade she was in, and hours after the tour, he began texting the victim on the phone number on her admissions form, prosecutors said. He offered to pay her $400 for “some fun” and told her that he had pornographic videos and pictures for her, prosecutors said. He continued to contact her that night, refusing to tell her his identity or how he had her number, they added. Mr. Henriques then sent the prospective student five pornographic videos and asked whether she wanted to engage in sexual acts with him, prosecutors said. After her multiple refusals, Mr. Henriques continued to text her, saying “he would buy her anything she wanted” if she changed her mind, prosecutors said. Over the following days, he went into her admissions profile nearly 50 times, according to the Justice Department. Mr. Henriques contacted the student through email after she blocked his number, prosecutors said. A profile of Mr. Henriques that had been on Emmanuel College’s website said that he graduated in 2021 and was an “avid Boston sports fan,” and that his favorite thing about the college was its small classes, which allowed students “to connect with peers and faculty.” If Mr. Henriques is convicted, he could receive from 10 years to life in prison, the Justice Department said. He is scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Boston on Monday.

He urged the audience of college students not to think they were too young to accomplish great things, before waxing on about tariffs. “Don’t try to be someone else,” he implored them, after attacking due process for unauthorized immigrants. And he told them not to think of themselves as victims, before diverting into how the 2020 election was “rigged” against him. On Thursday night, President Trump addressed the 2025 graduates of the University of Alabama, vacillating between campaign rally material and a commencement speech as he used his past political grievances to encourage students to fight for their futures. Addressing the students at Coleman Coliseum in Tuscaloosa, flanked by signs that read “The American Dream Is Back,” Mr. Trump told students they were “the first graduating class of the golden age of America,” and used his comeback story to encourage the students to trust their instincts and be ambitious as they navigate the world. “In recent years, too many of our young people have really been taught to think of themselves as victims, and blame people, and be angry,” he said. “But in America, we reject that idea that anyone is born a victim. Our heroes are the ones who take charge of their own destiny, make their own luck and determine their own fate, despite the odds.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT At points in the address, the president rattled off familiar advice for college graduates. But Mr. Trump — who acknowledged that he did not use his teleprompter for much of the speech — veered off into various rants that echoed the blitz of political appearances he has put in this week to celebrate his 100th day in office. The largely receptive crowd often cheered at the scattershot injection of issues from the price of eggs to transgender rights, a microcosm of an era when even the pablum of a graduation speech cannot escape the politics of the moment. Some of Mr. Trump’s stories focused on how he himself had been victimized throughout his political career, from being counted out by other politicians who never thought he could become president to potentially facing down another impeachment. He also reveled in his victories, recounting his election results, including his commanding victory in Alabama, which he said felt like “home” when he was starting out as a candidate in 2015. A big rally he held in the state was among the first signs that Mr. Trump might have something beyond coastal appeal.“So never let anyone tell you that something is impossible,” he said. “Ever, ever, ever. In America, the impossible is what we all do best. There’s nothing you cannot do if you’re willing to fight for it.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Fight, fight, fight,” he added, invoking a slogan spurred by a failed assassination attempt on him on the campaign trail last year. Mr. Trump told the graduates that they had to “break the system a little bit and follow your own instincts,” seemingly describing his breakneck, flood-the zone strategy that has plunged the federal government into chaos and the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. “Change is never easy, and the closer you get to success, the more ferociously those who have a vested interest in the past will resist you,” he said. Mr. Trump also gloated about how he faced far less resistance in his second term, citing “internet people” and others who now bow down to him. “They all hated me in my first term,” he said, adding with an expletive that they were now kissing up to him. Even in a college town, Mr. Trump was in relatively friendly territory in the heavily Republican state, which he carried easily in all three of his presidential bids. But there were protests, and a petition from the University of Alabama Democrats and the local chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. against Mr. Trump’s appearance drew more than 26,000 signatures. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Americans are once again waking up to the fact that this wannabe monarch wants to rule over us like a king,” Braden Vick, the president of the University of Alabama Democrats, said in a statement announcing the protest. About two miles from Coleman Coliseum, the university’s Democrats held a protest joined by former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas and former Senator Doug Jones of Alabama. “We’ve got to show up to where the fight is, and that includes places like Alabama, which has just been written off by the Democratic Party for far too long,” Mr. O’Rourke said in an interview after the protest. “And the message was: The people have the power. And when folks show up, as they did at the protest today or the marches or these no-show town halls, it really begins to move the rest of the country.”“He is the president of all people, and yet he has failed every citizen miserably with his divisive, destructive policies, while inflicting horror on our Hispanic, Latino and other communities,” he said in a statement opposing his visit. “Wallace’s infamous words can still be heard today, ‘Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever.’” But Mr. Trump was enthusiastically received by the thousands of attendees at Coleman Coliseum. Mr. Trump’s address was part of a “special ceremony” before 6,000 students begin attending formal graduation ceremonies on Friday. The pre-commencement ceremony was optional for students, and tickets were opened to guests. Despite Mr. Trump’s falling approval ratings, the commencement offered a window into the resilience of much of his support outside Washington, and a gauge on the culture shift in the country that got him elected. There were at least as many red “Make America Great Again” hats in the crowd as there were special red graduation hats signifying a graduate’s 4.0 grade point average. The crowd broke into chants of “U.S.A.,” reveled in Mr. Trump’s extensive praise of its sports teams and roared when he talked about the “clean shores of the Gulf of America.” They cheered when he talked about keeping transgender women from playing on women’s sports teams, and some laughed when Mr. Trump spent several minutes mocking matchups that involve transgender players. Mr. Trump’s warm reception came as he is waging an assault on the higher education system. While the administration so far has taken aim largely at the nation’s most elite colleges, the University of Alabama has not been spared. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Last month, a doctoral student at the University of Alabama was detained by federal immigration authorities, amid the administration’s campaign to deport noncitizen college students for engaging in forms of protest. Alireza Doroudi, an Iranian citizen, was legally in the United States and detained in Louisiana. Mr. Trump used the address to take shots at Harvard, which has stood up to him in the administration’s effort to overhaul institutions it sees as too liberal and powerful. Mr. Trump bragged that his administration is withholding billions from Harvard, and pitted the two universities against each other — as if forecasting a battle. “It is clear to see the next chapter of the American story will not be written by the Harvard Crimson,” he said. “It will be written by you, the Crimson Tide.”

Dr. Alan Garber, president of Harvard, disagrees with President Trump about many things. He is fighting Mr. Trump as the federal government tries to strip Harvard of billions of dollars in research funding and its nonprofit tax status. But Dr. Garber agrees with Mr. Trump on one point. In one of the rare interviews he has given since Harvard began its battle with the federal government, Dr. Garber said this week that Harvard has a campus culture problem that needs urgent fixing. Harvard has often shut out voices that many liberals disagree with, he said, and it has allowed antisemitism to go unchecked. “The issue for me was not principally whether we had problems that we needed to address,” Dr. Garber said in a lengthy interview in Washington. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The problem is the Trump administration’s methods, which are growing more aggressive by the day. Last month, Trump officials said they would cut more than $2 billion in federal funds intended for the university, to force it to comply with a series of demands Harvard says violate the First Amendment. On Friday, Mr. Trump escalated the attack, saying the Internal Revenue Service would take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status, threatening many millions more. To Dr. Garber, defending and reforming Harvard is not a provincial matter. Americans are questioning a higher education system that many see as disconnected from their values. He believes deep funding cuts would impair the kind of innovative work that has made American research universities the global engine for scientific discovery since World War II. “This is genuinely unprecedented,” Dr. Garber said in the interview. “We have so many challenges ahead and we also have so many opportunities,” he said, adding, “this is a time when we should be doubling down on our investments in research, particularly in science.” An Unlikely Resistance Leader Dr. Garber earned three degrees from Harvard before moving to California to study to become a medical doctor at Stanford University. He was there for a quarter-century, studying health policy, raising four children and serving as a physician at the nearby Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Medical Center.He never planned to be a college administrator, or to leave California. Now Dr. Garber is Harvard’s president during an unprecedented crisis. And some Democrats, frustrated and forlorn at a lack of leadership in their own ranks, have embraced him as a hero. They celebrated when Dr. Garber penned an aggressive rebuttal to an intrusive list of Trump administration demands last month and then sued the administration.In a recent message to the Harvard community, Dr. Garber vowed to keep fighting federal intrusion. But all along, Dr. Garber has been clear — subtly but insistently — that he shares some of the same concerns about Harvard the Trump administration has. “We still have much work to do,” he has written. The White House has said Harvard should not receive federal money if Jewish students are targeted and harassed on its campus. “The gravy train of federal assistance to institutions like Harvard, which enrich their grossly overpaid bureaucrats with tax dollars from struggling American families, is coming to an end,” a White House spokesman, Harrison Fields, said last month. In the eyes of Mr. Trump and many Republicans, Harvard and other elite American universities have become echo chambers — places where students develop intolerance for political perspectives different from their own and shield themselves from ideas they find objectionable. University leaders often say that criticism exaggerates the issue, claiming that critics want to perpetuate “woke” caricatures of university culture in order to win elections. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT But at the same time, many university leaders also worry that Americans have lost trust in academia and no longer see as much value in a college education as they once did. About a third of Americans have little or no confidence in higher education, according to a Gallup poll published last year, up from 10 percent a decade earlier. Some of Dr. Garber’s most notable decisions during the 16 months he has led the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university have focused on shifting that culture. Under his leadership, Harvard changed how it handles student discipline, manages protests, hires faculty members, challenges antisemitism and weighs in on public controversies. Dr. Garber has called antisemitism a “serious problem” at Harvard. “It is present on our campus,” he said in March and added that, as a Jew, he had experienced it himself.In recent days, he also rolled back policies related to diversity and race, for example, ending university support of graduation celebrations for various student groups, including Black, Latino and L.G.B.T.Q. students. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “The last few years have been a wake-up call,” said Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychology professor who has warned that his university and other elite institutions have devalued intellectual and ideological diversity at considerable cost to their reputations. He praised Dr. Garber for recognizing what many other academic leaders have not — at least in public: The Trump administration had not made “an unreasonable request” when it said Harvard must consistently enforce its rules against disruptive demonstrations and swiftly punish antisemitic harassment. “He’s got principles and courage, to say something about an issue that had not been adequately confronted before,” Dr. Pinker said. As he has moved to make more changes, he has also faced pushback. Harvard students, writing in an essay in the campus newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, suggested the changes to diversity programs “might be politically expedient for now.” “But it will not solve Harvard’s public relations crisis,” they went on, adding, “The way to win against authoritarian attacks isn’t by prioritizing optics — it’s by standing up for our values.” Fixing Broken Systems As a health care economist, Dr. Garber focused on some of the American health care system’s most stubborn problems, publishing 129 papers in 25 years. His questions were probing. And he was unbothered by delivering answers people might not like. Why does the federal government allow companies to charge what they want for drugs discovered and developed with research paid for by the federal government? Why can’t we know what our medical bill will be before it arrives? It’s like going to a restaurant and getting a menu without prices, he said. A fast runner, Dr. Garber trained for and raced in marathons. Once, he spent hours recovering from an injury by running in a pool, listening to “War and Peace” for entertainment. Four months later, he ran a marathon with a time of 3 hours 36 minutes.In 2011, Harvard’s president, Drew Gilpin Faust, wanted Dr. Garber to be her new provost, the university’s chief academic officer. She had seen him interact on a medical school committee and was impressed by his ability to retain a quiet equanimity and bring about consensus. It was a trait that would serve him well, colleagues said, as the person responsible for interacting with Harvard deans, department heads and professors on a daily basis. “He had a calm, ethical voice,” Dr. Faust said in an interview. Repeatedly, she asked him to be provost. Repeatedly, he said no. He relented after he inquired about the job and heard something that appealed to him: It would focus on helping others succeed. “It’s like this lightbulb went off, and I thought, you know, I’m at a stage in my career where I get much more pleasure out of seeing the people I mentor succeed than me getting another honor or paper accepted,” he said. He discovered he really liked the job. “You’re deeply embedded in the academic life of the university, ” Dr. Garber said. “And I love that.” Twelve and a half years passed by, periods of political and social upheaval that transformed higher education, including a Black Lives Matter movement that brought new attention to diversity on campus and a fight over affirmative action that took Harvard to the Supreme Court.Even before the protests over the war in Gaza, people who have worked with Dr. Garber at Harvard said that he had expressed disappointment with a political climate on campus that could be intolerant of dissent. “I think that troubled him a lot, actually,” said Robert E. Rubin, a former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton and a former long-serving member of the Harvard Corporation, the university’s powerful governing body. “Because he felt that universities should be a place for exchanging all views, as opposed to a place where people exclude certain views. And I happen to agree with that.” Mr. Rubin recalled one conversation in which Dr. Garber stressed the importance of ideological diversity in higher education. “He said he believed that one of the problems we faced was a conformity of views, and the tendency on the part of some people to suppress contrary views,” Mr. Rubin said. The Presidency in a Time of War After over a dozen years as provost, Dr. Garber had decided it was time to return to teaching. A new president, Claudine Gay, took over in 2023. Dr. Garber hoped to leave administrative work by the end of the year. But within months, Dr. Gay was forced out over her handling of accusations of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus. Dr. Garber had to change his plans. “The provost is basically a partner to the president, and I probably knew about as much about the job as a person could know without being president,” he said in the interview. He thought he would stay only until Harvard found a permanent president and would then take a sabbatical. But the list of problems confronting him was long, and growing.He wanted to clarify rules around protests, and when the university should make public statements, for example. Harvard did not often speak out on issues beyond the campus, “but the policy had not been consistently followed,” he explained. Yet, he added, “we were getting demands from groups in every direction to make statements.” Prominent faculty members and alumni were also concerned that Harvard had become a “national joke,” as Dr. Pinker, the psychology professor, put it. The number of early admissions applicants to Harvard had plummeted. Donors were skittish and angry, and vocal about their frustration with the university. And one influential free speech advocacy organization ranked Harvard last in its annual survey of 200 institutions. That spring, Harvard began unraveling policies that Dr. Garber and others believed had fueled some of its political problems. It adopted a policy stating that the university would not issue official statements about issues that did not affect its core functions. Its largest academic division said it would no longer require job applicants to attest in writing their commitment to diversity. Summer came, and students went home. The tent city that pro-Palestinian students had erected in the Harvard Yard came down after Dr. Garber helped bring about a peaceful end to weeks of student demonstrations. But many in academia worried that protests would strike up again in the fall. And the list of changes that Dr. Garber wanted to see through was still quite long. “At some point, all of us in leadership and the corporation decided that this was a lot for an interim president to do,” Dr. Garber said. On Aug. 2, 2024, the Harvard corporation made Dr. Garber the president through the 2026-27 academic year. Trump Strikes During Mr. Trump’s first term as president, education had often seemed like an afterthought. Soon after he returned to office in January, it became clear his second term would be focused on bringing academia to heel. Initially, Dr. Garber tried not to antagonize the new president. After the Trump administration said in March that it was reviewing $9 billion in grants and contracts because Harvard had not done enough to stop antisemitism on campus, Dr. Garber’s response was hardly a manifesto of Trump resistance. He noted in a message to the Harvard community the steps the university was taking to address the administration’s concerns. He also vowed to cooperate with the federal task force on antisemitism. On campus, many were pushing him to be more aggressive, and not to negotiate. He was doing no such thing, he said in the interview. He had simply offered to explain all that Harvard had been doing already, and what else it had planned. But the administration’s next sally shocked him. It came in the form of an email that arrived late on April 11. It had a list of demands, including allowing the federal government to review hiring decisions, examine admissions decisions and audit the student body, the faculty and the staff to be sure they represented a variety of viewpoints. Three days later, Harvard published a scathing letter written by Dr. Garber. “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue,” he wrote. With that Friday night letter, Dr. Garber added, “they had gone too far.” “We don’t question appropriate regulation,” he said in the interview. But this appeared to violate the Constitution. Saving the University Since that moment, Dr. Garber has been hailed as a defender of academic independence. He has led Harvard in a lawsuit that claims the Trump administration has no legal authority to demand such sweeping changes to the way the university operates. Not everyone sees his resistance as heroic. “What this celebration has missed,” two Harvard Ph.D. students wrote in an article for The Nation, “is that Harvard has been quietly complying with Trump’s agenda for weeks.” In recent days, Dr. Garber released a report outlining problems with both antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus, apologized for both issues and promised more changes. He has also gone beyond the focus on antisemitism, taking on the hotly contested issue of race and diversity. Three years ago, Harvard fought all the way to the Supreme Court to maintain an admissions system that considered students’ racial backgrounds, arguing that admitting students of different backgrounds and experiences was essential to providing a well-rounded education. Last month, Dr. Garber wrote in a public message that Harvard was “adopting important adjustments to the ways we build community,” suggesting that the university “focus on individuals and their unique characteristics rather than their race.” In a speech, Caleb Thompson, one of Harvard’s two undergraduate student body presidents, criticized the university’s decision to eliminate graduation celebrations for affinity groups. “To the Garber administration for the decision that was made to shut down affinity graduations and attack affinity spaces here on campus, my message is this: ‘This was not what you promised when you said you would stand up against the Trump administration,’” Mr. Thompson said. Dr. Garber’s defenders say he is making moves to preserve the integrity of the university. “He really is doing this as the servant leader,” Dr. Faust said. “This is not about Alan’s greater glory.” Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, said that he believed Dr. Garber understood the high stakes involved — not just for Harvard but for all of American higher education. “I believe he is aware of the moment in time,” he said. “He is aware of what needs to be done. He is aware of his important role in getting those things done. He has a huge fraction of the community behind him.” Dr. Garber’s approach — trying to reform the university while protecting it from attack — is not without risk. But as the Trump administration turns up the pressure on Harvard, many on campus seem to have looked past their differences, more united than they have been in years as they face the threat outside their gates. Asked about the end game, Dr. Garber said his goal was not specific to Harvard. It is, he said, “to ensure that universities in the U.S. can contribute to the nation in the ways we’ve always intended to.”

The Trump administration is seeking to exert extraordinary influence over American universities by withholding the kind of federal financial support that has flowed to campuses for decades. President Trump and his allies contend that some schools, especially a handful of elite universities, have become bastions of antisemitism and ideological indoctrination. Though the higher education industry has acknowledged shortcomings and failures, especially since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, it has warned that reducing schools’ federal funding could backfire on American society as a whole. University leaders fear that by threatening to withhold funding, or suspending it with little or no warning, the government is trying to stamp out academic freedom, a cornerstone of the American education system. The Trump administration has given broad reasons for the cuts, often involving claims that the schools tolerate antisemitism. But the choice of schools it has targeted and even some of its demands have sometimes confused educators and experts. Northwestern University, for example, recently released a lists of steps it had taken to combat antisemitism that closely tracked with a list of demands the Trump administration had given to Columbia University. Northwestern was targeted several days later, nonetheless. The issue is revealing the dollars-and-cents consequences of the tensions between campus leaders and the Trump administration. But the outcome of the underlying debate — over the very purpose of higher education — could shape the country for years to come. Which schools have been targeted? So far, seven universities have been singled out for punitive funding cuts or have been explicitly notified that their funding is in serious jeopardy. They are: Harvard University, which has approximately $9 billion at stake. The government has already canceled more than $2.2 billion in retaliation after Harvard publicly rebuffed the Trump administration’s demands. Harvard quickly sued the administration, and the case is pending. The president has also threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status. Brown University, which the Trump administration said stood to lose $510 million. Columbia, which is hoping to regain about $400 million in canceled grants and contracts after it bowed to a list of demands from the federal government. Cornell University, the target of a cut of at least $1 billion. Northwestern, which Trump administration officials said would be stripped of $790 million. The University of Pennsylvania, which saw $175 million in federal funding suspended in response to its approach to a transgender athlete’s sports participation in 2022. Princeton University, which said “dozens” of grants had been suspended. The White House indicated that $210 million was at risk. Officials at some of the universities have been puzzled by the cuts, which they have sometimes learned about through social media, and insisted that they had taken action to combat antisemitism. Dozens of other schools are under also scrutiny, largely by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, and are aware that some of their federal funding is imperiled. But much of the focus is on 10 schools that have been identified for particular attention by a Trump administration task force that says it is devoted to rooting out antisemitism: Columbia; George Washington University; Harvard; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Minnesota; and the University of Southern California. Critics of the administration have not hesitated to point out that all of these schools are in states, or, in George Washington’s case, a federal district, that voted for the Democratic ticket in 2024. Why are the schools being criticized? The administration has frequently claimed that the targeted schools harbor antisemitism. When a protest movement against Israel’s war in Gaza swept college campuses around the country in 2024, for example, some of the most volatile scenes unfolded at Columbia. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? But the administration’s hostility toward major colleges and universities has deeper roots than the turmoil tied to that war alone. Conservatives have looked askance at the elite echelons of higher education for decades, disturbed by affirmative action admissions programs, high tuition costs, the views of liberal professors and the proliferation of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on campuses. Many conservatives say their views have been marginalized in lecture halls, and regard top schools as incubators of so-called wokeness. They have said they want universities to emphasize academic programs that will lead students to the kind of jobs that are essential to the economy. A list of Trump administration demands made at Harvard appeared to touch on a variety of conservative complaints with academia, including a lack of diverse political viewpoints among faculty members and a disdain for diversity, equity and inclusion programs. How much money is at stake? So far, the government has pulled, or threatened to pull, more than $12 billion. Most of that money is tied to Harvard and its affiliates, like its hospitals. Universities have said little about which specific programs were in jeopardy. But Penn, for example, said that researchers in at least seven of its schools were affected. “These contracts include research on preventing hospital-acquired infections, drug screening against deadly viruses, quantum computing, protections against chemical warfare, and student loan programs,” J. Larry Jameson, Penn’s president, said in an open letter. How have schools responded? Beyond statements of frustration and concern, they have generally not done much publicly. But there are two enormous exceptions. In March, Columbia agreed to comply with demands from the administration so it could enter negotiations over the future of the $400 million the government had struck. Some of the most important concessions included agreeing to place the university’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under new oversight; strengthening its campus security force; and toughening its disciplinary and protest policies. Columbia’s capitulation alarmed higher education leaders across the country. On April 14, Harvard tried a different strategy. It rejected proposals from the federal government, including one for the use of an outsider “to audit those programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.” The government also wanted Harvard to curb the power of its faculty and report international students who committed conduct violations. Harvard refused, and its president, Alan M. Garber, said that the university “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” The university filed a lawsuit a week later. To many veterans of academia, Harvard’s choice to fight the Trump administration marked a potential turning point. Lee C. Bollinger, a former Columbia president, said Harvard’s resistance was “precisely what has been needed.” The university’s pushback, he said, amounted to “a major institution willing to defend the fundamental values at stake, not only with universities but also with other institutions and organizations vital to American democracy.” These schools are rich. Why is the government funding them in the first place? Since around the time of World War II, the U.S. government has leaned on academic institutions to conduct research projects whose findings will trickle into the public and private sectors. Federally funded research has almost always had bipartisan support, though there have been occasional complaints (and sometimes outright mockery) surrounding particular projects. In their scramble to counter the Trump administration’s recent moves, universities have tried to tell elected officials and the public that they make important contributions to the country’s health and prosperity. They have also sought to frame university-based research as imperative to the nation’s future, especially amid China’s rise. Can’t schools just tap their endowments? Many big schools do indeed have substantial endowments. Every endowment is different, though, and university leaders note that many donors put restrictions on how their money may be used. Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, have openly discussed raising the excise tax on the largest endowments. Harvard has an endowment worth about $53 billion, far more than any other American university. Even so, a few days after the Trump administration announced a review of Harvard’s federal funding, the university announced a plan to issue $750 million in bonds. Proceeds would give the school, which has been engaged in contingency planning, some financial breathing room.

Harvard, like many American colleges and charities, enjoys a federal tax exemption, a status granted by the Internal Revenue Service that allows the wealthy Ivy League university to forgo paying perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars a year in taxes. The I.R.S. is now weighing whether to revoke Harvard’s tax exemption, according to three people familiar with the matter, as the Trump administration demands that the university make changes to its hiring, admissions and curriculum policies. President Trump has called publicly for Harvard to pay taxes, and his administration cut $2.2 billion in federal funding to the university after it refused to submit to the administration’s pressure campaign. He raised the issue again on Friday, posting on his social media site: “We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” He did not offer details. Here’s what to know about tax-exempt status: What is tax-exempt status? Tax-exempt status allows an organization not to pay federal income and property taxes under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, which means that donations to the institution are tax-deductible. Eligible organizations include those whose purpose is “charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition and preventing cruelty to children or animals,” according to the I.R.S. The I.R.S. places a number of restrictions on any organization claiming tax-exempt status. Under the Internal Revenue Code, none of the organization’s earnings can go to a private shareholder or individual; the organization is limited in its ability to influence legislation and it cannot participate in a campaign or support political candidates. Why do Harvard and other universities claim it? Simply put, tax-exempt status saves money and can boost credibility. It can also help attract wealthy individuals seeking to donate large sums. Institutions must apply to the I.R.S. for tax exemption, and a vast majority of universities do so, according to the Association of American Universities. This is because of their educational purpose, which “the federal government has long recognized as fundamental to fostering the productive and civic capacities of citizens,” the association says.Can the I.R.S. revoke tax-exempt status? The I.R.S. determines which organizations meet the criteria for tax-exempt status. The agency has at times revoked tax-exempt status, including after audits that found political or commercial activities that violated the terms of eligibility. Editors’ Picks His Life Savings Were Mailed to Him by Paper Check. Now, It’s Gone. Timothée Chalamet Is Living a Knicks Fan’s Dream It’s Time to Put Away Your Winter Clothes. Here’s How to Store Them Safely. In the past, the I.R.S. has challenged the tax exemptions of educational and other institutions under both Republican and Democratic administrations, according to Gowri Krishna, a professor at Fordham University School of Law who specializes in nonprofit law. In one well-known example, Bob Jones University in South Carolina, a fundamentalist Christian institution that had banned interracial dating, lost its tax-exempt status over its discriminatory policies in a case that the Supreme Court ruled on in 1983. The university had claimed that the I.R.S. had violated its religious liberty. The university lifted the ban in 2000, and said in 2017 that it had regained its tax-exempt status. But it is rare for the I.R.S. to revoke the tax-exempt status of an educational institution. Tax laws also provide organizations the right to appeal an adverse decision by the agency. The agency says that it receives complaints claiming abuse of tax-exempt status every year from the public, members of Congress, state and federal government agencies and internal sources. But federal law bars the president or other senior officials of the executive branch from directly or indirectly requesting that the I.R.S. investigate or audit specific organizations. Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said that the I.R.S. began scrutinizing Harvard before the president’s public call for Harvard to pay taxes. In a statement issued in April, Harvard said that there was no legal basis for rescinding its tax status. Any attempt to take away Harvard’s tax exemption would be likely to face a legal challenge, which tax and legal experts expect would be successful. “Harvard would argue there’s a violation of its free speech and academic freedom,” Ms. Krishna said. “I think it would be highly, highly unlikely that the government would win.” What would happen if Harvard lost its tax-exempt status? Harvard has said that losing its tax exemption would result in the reduction of financial aid for students, the abandonment of important medical research and the loss of other opportunities for innovation. Bloomberg News estimated in an analysis that Harvard’s tax benefits totaled at least $465 million in 2023. The university also indirectly benefits from the tax deduction that its donors receive from making contributions. In the 2024 fiscal year, Harvard reported that it had collected more than $525 million in donations that could be used immediately. Rescinding Harvard’s tax exemption would also have “grave consequences” for higher education in general, the university said. And an attempt to change Harvard’s tax-exempt status amid its dispute with the Trump administration would amount to a severe breach of the independence of the I.R.S., which was established to be insulated from political pressure.

When President Trump swept back into office, his dejected opponents watched as his return was greeted not with mass resistance but with a sense of resignation. Protesters stayed home. Corporations and executives rushed to curry favor. Even some Democrats made overtures to Mr. Trump, as he and his allies boasted that they had popular opinion on their side. But just over 100 days into his second term, seeds of dissent to Mr. Trump’s agenda, governing style and expansion of executive power have grown in fits and starts across the country. The opposition is sturdier than it once appeared. Demonstrations have increased in size and frequency. Town halls have become unruly and combative, pushing many Republican lawmakers to avoid facing voters altogether. And collective efforts by universities, nonprofit groups, unions and even some law firms have slowly started to push back against the administration. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “There is a momentum developing,” said Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat who first ran for office in 2018 because of his revulsion to Mr. Trump’s first term. “Now, I feel like there are people standing up and speaking out and taking up and seeing that this is the right thing to do, that it’s going to get worse before it gets better.” A national movement has not yet flowered: The opposition lacks a leader, a central message or shared goals beyond a rejection of Mr. Trump. Even as some Democrats become more aggressive, their deeply unpopular party is struggling to articulate a unified line of attack — or much of a strategy at all, apart from hoping the president’s approval ratings continue to fall. Vanita Gupta, who was associate attorney general during the Biden administration, said Democrats in Congress were largely following, rather than leading, the opposition to Mr. Trump. “There was a feeling of despair early on that he had all the levers and nobody was standing up, but that momentum has changed,” she said. “People may not understand what members of Congress are doing, but lawyers, advocates and regular people are challenging the administration.” Still, many of Mr. Trump’s opponents worry that what is happening is not nearly enough to stop what they fear is a slide toward authoritarianism.“We seem to be facing the destruction of the United States,” said Jason Stanley, a Yale professor and an expert on fascism. “I don’t see anyone articulating that this is an attack on what it means to be American, on the very idea of America, and it’s an emergency.”Mr. Trump is still barreling ahead. He has reshaped foreign and domestic policy, threatened open defiance of the courts, ripped apart the federal government and retaliated against perceived enemies. White House aides dismissed the opposition against him as coming from Democrats and “superficial paid ‘detractors.’” “They are losing everywhere, and they will never match the organic enthusiasm behind his movement,” said Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman. “While Democrats throw attacks at the wall to see what sticks, President Trump is quickly delivering on his campaign promises with over 140 executive orders to date.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Those orders are being met with a historic flood of lawsuits, more than 350 in all. As of this week, at least 123 court rulings have paused some of the administration’s moves, according to a New York Times analysis. “You’re seeing the courts really hold as a front line in the rule of law,” said Skye Perryman, the chief executive of Democracy Forward, a liberal-leaning legal group that has filed 59 challenges to the Trump administration. The plaintiffs, Ms. Perryman said, include public school districts, religious groups, small-business owners, doctors and even Republicans fired by the president. The pushback, she said, “is transcending typical politics.” Beyond the courts, Mr. Trump’s opponents have limited options. Republicans control Congress and have abandoned their role as a check on Mr. Trump. Democrats have full power over just 15 state governments, versus 23 for Republicans. Unlike in Mr. Trump’s first term, he is now using his official powers to reach deep into American life and culture, targeting universities, law firms, nonprofit groups and broadcast networks. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT His divide-and-conquer strategy has won key successes: Some targets, including top law firms and Columbia University, have given in to his demands. Others, like the Democratic fund-raising platform ActBlue, have been consumed by chaos. But sectors that fear being targeted have begun pursuing a more collective approach. Nonprofit groups and charitable foundations have formed organizations to share best practices for legal defense and protecting their finances. More than 400 higher education leaders have signed a letter condemning “political interference” in universities. “The people who are going to lead the next steps in the resistance movement and opposition to Trump are not the ones trying to get the band back together from 2017,” said Cole Leiter, the executive director of Americans Against Government Censorship, a new group of progressive organizations and labor unions opposing Mr. Trump. “We are setting up new coalitions.” Colleges grew much more willing to oppose Mr. Trump openly after Harvard sued his administration, according to Michael S. Roth, the president of Wesleyan University. “At first, I think everybody was pretty shocked at the scale and the rapidity of this assault on basic American freedoms,” he said. “Now, I think people don’t want to be left off that list. They don’t want be seen as collaborators with authoritarianism.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT A Newly Skeptical Public Mr. Trump’s aggressive pursuit of his agenda has come at a political cost. Polls show that his approval rating is historically low for a president so early in a term, with majorities of voters saying he has “gone too far” and is overreaching with his powers. Some of the frustration is also economic: His ever-shifting tariffs have raised expectations of a recession and tanked consumer confidence. And in Wisconsin, conservatives were dealt a major defeat in a court election. His administration’s actions are also trickling into personal areas of voters’ lives. Dr. Susan J. Kressly, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said Mr. Trump’s far-reaching spending cuts and proposals were having an extraordinary effect on children, their parents and the country’s pediatric system. Fears of a government-led autism registry have also made some families more reluctant to attend doctors’ appointments, she said. Others are worried that their children’s mental health care plans could be threatened. And as the country confronts deadly measles cases, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic, is serving as health secretary. “What we’re seeing in the exam room is that every single appointment is taking longer because parents are confused and anxious,” Dr. Kressly said. “There’s a degree of anxiety, and that’s overlying even what used to be straightforward well-child visits.”Democrats have yet to capitalize fully on those worries. But in recent days, several candidates in competitive races have toughened their language against the president, reflecting liberal voters’ desire for a fight. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, a Democrat who faces re-election next year, said at a town hall last Friday that the president’s conduct “has already exceeded any prior standard for impeachment.” Three days later, Representative Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat running for governor of New Jersey, wrote in an opinion essay that Democrats must “play hardball” and “disrupt norms and institutions” to combat Mr. Trump. Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the party’s most recent nominee for vice president, noted that no single Democrat was championing the resistance to Mr. Trump. “The desire for leadership is a natural human thing, but I think people are leading this,” he said. “I don’t think any one person can actually do it right now. It’s pretty difficult to lead the party.” Mr. Walz predicted without a hint of humor that Mr. Trump would soon begin dressing in a military uniform and said it was “only a matter of time” before he arrested a Democratic political rival. Asked if he saw himself at risk, Mr. Walz said, “It wouldn’t surprise me.”But other Democrats say their constituents increasingly want more from liberal leaders than simply opposing the administration. “If I just woke up every day as mayor to protest Donald Trump, I would not get re-elected,” said Mayor Justin M. Bibb of Cleveland, the head of the Democratic Mayors Association, who said his city was struggling to respond to tariffs and cuts to federal grants. “People don’t give a damn if I’m protesting every day. They want to see me deliver results.” The real-world effects of Mr. Trump’s moves are still being processed by many Americans. Last Sunday at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington, about 30 parishioners gathered for a session to help process their collective grief over what the president had done to their lives. They shared stories about losing their jobs and watching their life’s work be dismantled by a hostile administration. Julie Murphy, a parent coach who helped lead the session, said that while it took place three blocks from the Capitol, where many of the parishioners have worked, it could have been held anywhere in America. “The response is coming,” she said. “It is empowering to think that I am not alone.”