For generations, students and researchers from around the world have flocked to Boston, drawn not just to a college or university but to a region where high-minded intellectual life was part of its brand. The Boston area has thrived from their presence, its many schools and top-ranked research hospitals keeping its economy strong and its living standard largely unmatched in the United States. “It’s the densest concentration of academic talent in the world,” said Lawrence S. Bacow, who served as president of Harvard University from 2018 to 2023 and as president of Tufts University from 2001 to 2011. “Universities and teaching hospitals are to Boston what cars are to Detroit, what energy is to Houston or finance is to New York.” Now, though, the city is seized with anxiety. The Trump administration’s assault on funding for higher education poses a bigger threat to Boston and the surrounding region than perhaps anywhere else in the country. Harvard is facing a government review of $9 billion in federal grants and contracts, several universities are freezing hiring and rescinding admissions offers, research labs are closing, and international students are being targeted for deportation. And Boston is confronting a once-implausible question: Will its core identity survive? “Boston is the target in this fight,” Mayor Michelle Wu said in her State of the City speech last month. “We were built on the values this federal administration seeks to tear down.”There has rarely been cause to question that key component of the city’s identity, since John Harvard donated some 800 pounds of sterling, and his library of 400 books, to the fledgling college that would bear his name, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. The first public school in the country, Boston Latin, was founded in Boston a year earlier; the state’s constitution required every town to establish grammar schools. In the centuries since, that formative focus on education has shaped nearly every aspect of the city and state — Massachusetts consistently ranks near the top in national test scores and health measures — contributing to its politically liberal identity, and an ingrained sense of superiority that has long been a target of anti-elitist fervor. Beyond the bragging rights they afforded the city, colleges and universities brought enduring economic stability. Enormous investments in research by the federal government, going back to its collaboration with university scientists who helped develop weapons during World War II, fueled decades of technological and biomedical advances, and steady growth in Boston’s educational and medical sectors, where federal research funding built a bedrock foundation. In the last fiscal year, Harvard alone received $686 million in federal research grants, while as a group, Massachusetts universities took in more than $2 billion. That does not include separate funding for Boston’s research hospitals: In fiscal 2024, Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham took in more than $1 billion from the National Institutes of Health. Altogether, Massachusetts receives more federal research funding per capita than any other state.Research discoveries have spurred private investments that define the city’s landscape, in flourishing neighborhoods like Kendall Square in Cambridge, where the biotech company Biogen has long been an anchor, and in Boston’s Seaport District, where Vertex Pharmaceuticals built its headquarters. In recent weeks, the jolting disruption to complex funding cycles has caused growing concern about a wave of departures by academic researchers, who may choose to seek more stable funding and job prospects in the corporate world, or at universities abroad. “Some will leave their science behind, and it will end — after a huge investment, it just falls off a cliff,” said Dr. Wendy Chung, chief of pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital. “The instability is very hard for people who are so hard-working and dedicated to their mission — they can only be pushed so far before they break.” Detainments and deportations of international students from campuses including Tufts and Harvard have sent another surge of fear through a statewide education ecosystem in which 80,000 students, and as much as a third of the faculty on some campuses, have international backgrounds. Fewer may come in the future; others may return home sooner than planned.“It makes no sense,” said Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, of the federal crackdown. In a statement, she cited negative impacts for cancer and Alzheimer’s patients, and for the country’s competitiveness, “with tens of thousands of international students second-guessing coming to school here, and China and other countries recruiting our talented faculty and researchers.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT On Friday, Massachusetts led a coalition of 16 states in suing the Trump administration “over its unlawful attempt to disrupt grant funding issued by the National Institutes of Health.” The Trump administration has said that to keep their funding, universities must move aggressively to curb campus antisemitism. In a letter to Harvard, officials demanded that the university review programs that “fuel antisemitic harassment” and “commit to full cooperation” with the Department of Homeland Security. Hundreds of Harvard faculty have signed a letter urging the university to resist the demands. Vice President JD Vance, a graduate of Yale Law School, has praised the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, for aggressively using funding cuts to stamp out certain curriculums and rein in “left wing domination” of universities. “We should be really aggressively reforming them in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas,” Mr. Vance said in an interview last year. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT As deeply felt as the cuts could be in Massachusetts, where colleges provide 320,000 jobs and $70 billion in annual economic impact, the pain would extend far beyond New England, city and campus leaders said. Patients around the world would wait longer for lifesaving medical breakthroughs, they warned; towns around the country would lose opportunities to manufacture products invented in Boston and neighboring Cambridge. At M.I.T., for example, years of groundbreaking research into fusion energy led to recently announced plans to build the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Va., an investment of billions. “It matters to us here because it’s our economy and employment, but it benefits everyone, in red states and blue states,” Mayor Wu said in an interview. Ms. Wu, a progressive Democrat, is among the high-achieving Boston transplants who came to the city because of its colleges: The valedictorian of her high school class in Chicago, she enrolled at Harvard to study economics, then returned to attend Harvard Law School. In Harvard Yard on a recent Saturday, there was little outward sign of the turmoil behind the scenes, as tourists waited in a long line to pose for photos with a statue of John Harvard. The university attracts 650,000 visitors each year, a boon to local tourism; one study found that all the college commencements held across the state each spring deliver a combined economic boost roughly equivalent to two Super Bowls. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Thrust into uncertainty, scientific researchers around the city said their ability to plan ahead has been decimated. Dr. David Corey, a Harvard neurobiologist seeking treatments for Usher syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes blindness and deafness, said he had been making rapid progress, and aiming to launch clinical trials of new therapies, when the funding shake-up began. “Now, we don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Every day the news is different. I have to pay people who work in my lab, so if I don’t know if a grant is coming, do I let people go? I have people who have been with me for 25 years, 10 years. There’s institutional memory there that is important.”Dr. Chung, of Boston Children’s, has already felt the brunt of the cuts. A former Columbia University faculty member who came to Boston two years ago, she lost a major funding source for her long-term autism research last month when the Trump administration canceled $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia, alleging that the school had failed to adequately fight antisemitism. Dr. Brittany Charlton, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, started the LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence a year ago to research health disparities. She has lost nearly all of her funding to federal cuts, and said she has terminated staff, given up her salary and may have to shut down the center, based at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute in partnership with Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A plaintiff in a separate lawsuit challenging the cuts, she said the damage will ripple forward for years to come, as early-career scientists reconsider their options. “Some of the brightest minds may abandon their work,” she said. Growing up in a small town in Alaska, Alyssa Connell had dreamed of a career as a doctor and researcher in Boston. She cried when an email arrived in December, offering her a coveted spot in a dual degree program at the UMass Chan Medical School, an hour west of the city. Ms. Connell cried again last month when another email upended her plans: The university was rescinding all offers of admission to Ph.D. programs for this fall “due to ongoing uncertainties related to federal funding of biomedical research.” “It was a gut punch,” said Ms. Connell, 23, a teaching assistant and research technologist at Penn State University, where her work is focused on neurodegenerative disease. So far, only her Ph.D. program acceptance has been rescinded, so she still plans to enroll this fall at the UMass medical school. But her financial aid package, which would have covered the cost of both degrees, was canceled, she said. “I don’t know how I’m going to pay rent, but hopefully I’ll figure it out, and still find a way to participate in research,” she said. “I’m still very excited about moving to Boston.”

The Supreme Court on Friday let the Trump administration temporarily suspend $65 million in teacher-training grants that the government contends would promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, an early victory for the administration in front of the justices. The court’s order was unsigned, which is typical when the justices act on emergency applications. The temporary pause will remain in effect while the case is appealed. The decision was 5 to 4, with five of the court’s conservatives — Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil M. Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Brett M. Kavanaugh — in the majority. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted with the court’s three liberal justices in dissent. The order came in response to one of a series of emergency requests by the Trump administration asking the justices to intervene and overturn lower court rulings that have temporarily blocked parts of President Trump’s agenda. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The grants at issue in the case helped place teachers in poor and rural areas and aimed to recruit a diverse work force reflecting the communities it served. In February, the Education Department sent grant recipients boilerplate form letters ending the funding, saying the programs “fail to serve the best interests of the United States” by taking account of factors other than “merit, fairness and excellence,” and by allowing waste and fraud. Eight states, including California and New York, sued to stop the cuts, arguing that they would undermine both urban and rural school districts, requiring them to hire “long-term substitutes, teachers with emergency credentials and unlicensed teachers on waivers.” Judge Myong J. Joun of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts temporarily ordered the grants to remain available while he considered the lawsuit. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, rejected a request from the Trump administration to undo Judge Joun’s order, saying the government’s arguments were based on “speculation and hyperbole.” In temporarily blocking the cancellation of the grants, Judge Joun said that he sought to maintain the status quo. He wrote that if he failed to do so, “dozens of programs upon which public schools, public universities, students, teachers and faculty rely will be gutted.” On the other hand, he reasoned, if he did pause the Trump administration action, the groups would merely continue to receive funds that had been appropriated by Congress.In its brief order, the court said that the challengers had “not refuted” the Trump administration’s claim that “it is unlikely to recover the grant funds once they are disbursed.” By contrast, the order stated, “the government compellingly argues that respondents would not suffer irreparable harm” while the grants are paused. The court said it had relied on statements by the challengers that “they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running.”In a dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, countered that allowing the grants to be terminated would “inflict significant harm on grantees — a fact that the government barely contests.” She added: “Worse still, the government does not even deign to defend the lawfulness of its actions.” In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the teacher training efforts would be harmed by the court’s action. “States have consistently represented that the loss of these grants will force them — indeed, has already forced them — to curtail teacher training programs,” she wrote. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT When the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene, Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general, wrote in an emergency application that Judge Joun’s order was one of many lower-court rulings thwarting government initiatives. “The aim is clear: to stop the executive branch in its tracks and prevent the administration from changing direction on hundreds of billions of dollars of government largesse that the executive branch considers contrary to the United States’ interests and fiscal health,” she wrote. She added: “Only this court can right the ship — and the time to do so is now.” In response, the states said that the justices should decide one dispute at a time. The brief added that the cancellation of the grants had not been accompanied by reasoning specific to each grant. The boilerplate letters, it said, “did not explain how the grant-funded programs engaged in any of the purportedly disqualifying activities.”

The New York State Education Department on Friday issued a defiant response to the Trump administration’s threats to pull federal funding from public schools over certain diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a remarkable departure from the conciliatory approach of other institutions in recent weeks. Daniel Morton-Bentley, the deputy commissioner for legal affairs at the state education agency in New York, wrote in a letter to federal education officials that “we understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion.’” “But there are no federal or state laws prohibiting the principles of D.E.I.,” Mr. Morton-Bentley wrote, adding that the federal government has not defined what practices it believes violate civil rights protections. The stern letter was sent one day after the federal government issued a memo to education officials across the nation, asking them to confirm the elimination of all programs it argues unfairly promote diversity, equity and inclusion. Title I funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students was at risk pending compliance, federal officials said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT New York’s stance differed from the muted and often deferential responses across academia and other major institutions to the Trump administration’s threats. Some universities have quietly scrubbed diversity websites and canceled events to comply with executive orders — and to avoid the ire of the White House. A divide emerged last spring as the presidents of several universities, including Harvard and Columbia, adopted cautious responses when confronted by House Republicans at congressional hearings regarding antisemitism. In contrast, K-12 leaders, including David C. Banks, chancellor of New York City’s public schools at the time, took a combative approach. The latest wave of pushback is spreading. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat, told reporters on Friday that the city would take the Trump administration to court if it snatched away funding, according to The Chicago Tribune. “We’re not going to be intimidated by these threats,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s just that simple. So whatever it is that this tyrant is trying to do to this city, we’re going to fight back.” Unlike universities that rely on federal funding for medical and scientific research, public school districts are more insulated from threats to their bottom line because 90 percent of their funding comes from state and local taxes.The Trump administration’s memo used a broad interpretation of a Supreme Court decision in 2023 that declared race-based affirmative action programs were unlawful at colleges and universities. That ruling did not address issues involving K-12 schools. The expansive reasoning did not sit well with New York. The state’s letter argued that the case did “not have the totemic significance that you have assigned it” — and that federal officials were free to make policy pronouncements, but “cannot conflate policy with law.” Mr. Morton-Bentley also called out what he described as an about-face within the top ranks of the administration. He pointed out that the education secretary in President Trump’s first term, Betsy DeVos, once told staff that “diversity and inclusion are the cornerstones of high organizational performance.” She also said that “diversity and inclusion are key elements for success” for “building strong teams,” he wrote. “This is an abrupt shift,” Mr. Morton-Bentley said, adding that the federal government has “provided no explanation for how and why it changed positions.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Trump administration’s memo included a certification letter confirming compliance that officials must sign and return to the Education Department within 10 days. New York indicated that it would treat the demand as a request rather than a requirement. “No further certification will be forthcoming,” the state’s letter said.

A federal judge permanently barred the Trump administration on Friday from limiting funding from the National Institutes of Health that supports research at universities and academic medical centers, restoring billions of dollars in grant money but setting up an almost certain appeal. The ruling by Judge Angel Kelley, of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, made an earlier temporary order by her permanent and was one of the first final decisions in the barrage of lawsuits against the Trump administration. But it came about in an unusual way: The government asked the court to enter that very verdict earlier on Friday so it could move ahead with an appeal. The decision nonetheless was an initial win for a diverse assortment of institutions that conduct medical research. After the Trump administration announced the policy change in February, scores of research hospitals and universities issued dire warnings that the proposal threatened to kneecap American scientific prowess and innovation, estimating that the change could force those institutions to collectively cover a nearly $4 billion shortfall. Under the Trump administration’s plan, the National Institutes of Health could cap the funding it provides to cover the “indirect costs” of research — for things like maintenance of buildings, utilities and support staff — at 15 percent in the grants it hands out. Historically, when the agency awarded grants, it could allocate close to 50 percent in some cases to cover the indirect costs associated with a given study. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The Trump administration said it had conceived of the policy as a way of freeing up more federal dollars to pay for research directly — covering scientists’ salaries or buying necessary equipment — as opposed to the many tangential costs that hospitals and laboratories incur in maintaining their facilities and other overhead expenses. But critics described that reasoning as disingenuous, as the changes the administration had proposed would paradoxically force institutions to cover the bill, and most likely shed staff and scale down research projects in the process. During hearings in February, lawyers described a dizzying array of laboratories under construction and clinical drug trials underway that institutions would be forced to abandon if they had to cover overhead costs on their own, more or less overnight. Judge Kelley had consistently agreed, ruling repeatedly that the policy appeared unnecessarily reckless and would inflict serious harm on important medical research. After initially barring the Trump administration from implementing the change in February, she extended her order twice while the lawsuit played out. The government wrote that the case presented “dispositive legal issues” that it would address more fully when the case reached a court of appeals. 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. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The decision also came as the scientific and research community was grappling with even more dire threats to its work from the avalanche of cuts recently to the Department of Health and Human Services. Many of the grant officers at the National Institutes of Health and other divisions appeared to have been swept up in those layoffs. Earlier on Friday, a coalition of 16 states sued the Trump administration over the withholding of grants that cover the direct costs of medical research, arguing that those, too, had been suspended, leaving research in those states in more explicit jeopardy.

America is at risk of losing a generation of scientists. Amid sweeping cuts to federal research funding by the Trump administration, job opportunities for young scientists are being rescinded, postdoctoral positions eliminated and fellowships folded as labs struggle to afford new researchers. As countless scientific projects come to a halt, the researchers who will suffer the most are those just beginning their careers. Times Opinion has heard from more than 100 readers who have shared stories of how they’ve been affected. Kristen Gram is a 22-year-old graduate student researching the type of materials and hardware that might one day help reduce the enormous amount of energy new computer processing technologies use to function. Her adviser recently warned her that federal funding cuts made it unlikely she’d secure a fellowship she needed to finish her degree. Melanie Reuter is a 29-year-old graduate student whose work focuses on how the gut microbiome shapes human health and chronic diseases like Type 2 diabetes. She wants to find more effective ways to treat diseases, with fewer side effects. She hoped to secure federal funding to cover her education and provide a livable stipend so she could concentrate on her research. But her application for a National Institutes of Health grant meant to support diverse candidates was pulled, without explanation, in February, just days before it was scheduled for review. Francesca Walsh, 28, is in the last six months of earning her Ph.D. in neuroscience and behavior. She wants to study how the brain functions when making economic decisions, in an effort to protect economic markets and consumers from financial harm. The postdoctoral jobs she planned to apply for have suddenly disappeared. “I felt the door of an entire sector of jobs, including federal research jobs, slam overnight,” she said. “It’s very disheartening, and sometimes I wish I just became an accountant.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Most American scientists understood a second Trump term was unlikely to be friendly to their kind, but few anticipated such a rapid bulldozing. The N.I.H. — the largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world — announced it would slash funding to universities for overhead, or indirect, costs, which often covers laboratories’ operational needs. Though legal challenges have stalled enforcement, federal grant money remains withheld in many cases. Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency team has also turned its hatchet on the N.I.H. The agency has lost nearly one-fourth of its 18,000 employees because of job cuts, buyouts and some employees’ choosing early retirement, according to reporting by NPR. Many research grants overseen by the N.I.H., the National Science Foundation, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies are frozen or canceled. When federal money for scientific research disappears, so do the university labs that young scientists rely on as steppingstones of essential training and experience they can later apply toward projects of their own. Those actions could mean America’s demise as the most powerful force for innovation in science, health and technology for the 21st century. Competitors like China will be able to usurp that position, and other countries are already making concerted efforts to recruit American scientists.Many young researchers say they are having to choose between staying in the United States and staying in science. America shouldn’t take scientific progress in medicine, artificial intelligence, energy and more for granted. If the youngest, brightest minds aren’t soon reassured that the United States can support their work — and that scientific inquiry will be protected from political interference — they will walk away. *** American science has been a beacon for aspiring researchers since the end of World War II, when a rivalry with the Soviet Union spurred the United States to make huge investments in science and technology research and recruit the most brilliant thinkers from abroad. Scientists saw the United States as a kind of nationwide laboratory for pursuing work under the best conditions possible — a remarkable combination of positive pressure and competition that pushed them to their best work, paired with support that provided the time, space and resources needed to realize that work’s full potential. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT This American brain trust has resulted in over 400 Nobel laureates, more than any other country in the world. As of 2023, an estimated 1.2 million people around the world held a Ph.D. in science, engineering or health earned at an American institution. The United States accounts for 27 percent of the world’s total research and development activity — the most of any nation — though China, at 22 percent, is closing in. This is still far ahead of the next largest players: Japan (7 percent), Germany (6 percent) and South Korea (4 percent). This investment has been essential to our economy. More than 408,000 jobs are supported by N.I.H. grants. It’s estimated that every dollar of N.I.H. funding produces $2.56 in economic activity. So much of that success is due to the U.S. government’s willingness to support the kind of basic science work that takes years, even generations, before resulting in monumental breakthroughs. Hundreds of millions of federal dollars established the groundwork for key breakthroughs in mRNA technology before the Covid-19 pandemic, which helped set up Operation Warp Speed for success. Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs were inspired in part by N.I.H.-supported research into Gila monster venom in the 1980s; without that work, we might not have had the current weight-loss revolution. Fifty years ago, fewer than 60 percent of children diagnosed with pediatric cancer survived after five years. Now, thanks to treatments funded and spearheaded by the N.I.H., that survival rate is 85 percent. America had also been an attractive destination for science because of its express support for free inquiry — the ability of researchers to study what mattered most to them, even if there wasn’t a straight path to success and profit. That commitment appears to be crumbling. “I mourn a world in which science must defend itself through its end products, rather than its underlying search for truth and beauty,” said Daniel Bauman, a 25-year-old Stanford University graduate student studying evolution. “When efficiency is mandated, current and future careers are lost or abandoned. If science funding is made contingent on immediately beneficial results, who will be left to tell the story of nature? Will anyone even be listening?” Young scientists’ careers are inextricably tied to the grant application cycle. Carole LaBonne, a molecular biologist at Northwestern University, recently told the podcast “Odd Lots” to think of labs as small businesses that run on very tight operating margins. A grant that provides funding for, say, four years would need to be renewed in the third year. And if they can’t do that, people must be let go quickly — which almost always means junior members of the lab. Peter Jacobs, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is unsure whether Department of Energy and National Science Foundation grants that help fund his program will be renewed; he’s not certain he can keep on his three postdocs, all of whom are already looking at other positions, including in Europe or Asia. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT It’s already hard enough to establish oneself as a young scientist. The average age for researchers to receive a first N.I.H. grant has increased since 1995 and is now over 40 years. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds will find it especially challenging to make a career in science work, now that grants meant to help them are being dissolved. At Fort Lewis College in Colorado, where nearly 40 percent of the student population identifies as Native American, one researcher said he and his colleagues were told not to bother submitting a renewal application for an N.I.H.-associated grant that funds increased representation in the biomedical sciences and that has helped at least a dozen Native Americans earn Ph.D.s in the past 15 years. The Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University was expecting $7 million in National Science Foundation funding meant to train scientists and engineers with autism, but those awards have been rejected or are in limbo. “It is heartbreaking having to tell these students — who have persisted through challenges throughout their lives for the opportunity to apply their talents for their own careers but also for their country — that they aren’t so valued after all,” said Keivan Stassun, an astrophysics professor and the center’s founding director. *** “I grow ever more skeptical of a bright future for young scientists,” said Patrick Payne, 28, a data scientist at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine. He recently decided to forgo pursuing an M.D. and a Ph.D. in favor of pursuing a medical degree exclusively. “This loss of a generation and of diversity makes me question research funding overall and has pushed me away from pursuing a permanent career in research.” Of 1,200 U.S. scientists who responded to a poll conducted by the journal Nature, 75 percent said they were considering leaving the country. Countries like France, China and the Netherlands are courting them. Those who are already abroad are considering staying there, like Atticus Cummings, a 24-year-old graduate student in Barcelona who is exploring how to make buildings out of carbon-reducing materials. He’d prefer to return to the United States and build sustainable, affordable housing in his home state, Montana, but wonders if that will be feasible by the time he graduates. “My heart is in the mountains at home,” he said. The Trump administration is squandering what was a real opportunity to improve the system around federally funded science. Critics have long suggested that some labs, particularly at very prestigious institutions, are awarded too much funding that could go elsewhere and that the process behind grant applications and approvals could use more streamlining and scrutiny. But the bulldozer approach of the past several weeks means people are hatching escape plans. Unfreezing the grant process and presenting a more thoughtful plan for improving federal funding for science may assuage young people’s fears that their lives are about to be upended permanently. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Early-career scientists cannot simply migrate to the private sector. Many scientists who work at private labs got their start in academic ones, often supported by federal grants. Private donors are highly unlikely to make up the funding shortfall caused by cuts to federal grants, and the private sector isn’t designed to completely support the kind of basic research that provides young scientists with essential education and training. *** A lot of people perceive scientific research as prestigious — the smartest minds working under pristine conditions with seemingly limitless resources. In reality, it’s grueling work fueled almost entirely by devotion. When I spent a semester working as an undergraduate researcher in an immunology lab at Virginia Tech, I watched the graduate students and postdocs I worked alongside spend up to 70 hours a week toiling on projects. They spent most of the day on their feet, paying meticulous attention to their experiments and trudging from one time-consuming task to another — calibrating delicate instruments to measure faint traces of chemicals, setting up and running bacteria culture experiments governed by rigid safety protocols, cleaning supplies and lugging heavy equipment from location to location, preparing reagents the entire lab needed, analyzing data and simply keeping the laboratory clean and organized. Experiments run into obstacles and failure all the time, and researchers must devote weeks, months or even years trying to troubleshoot what went wrong so they can move to the next step. They build resilience not just against seemingly constant discouragements but also against the pressure testing of their ideas by mentors, peers and outside scientists. Success sometimes feels hardly more likely than winning the lottery. That’s why Mike Gallagher, who has worked as a research scientist for 17 years, compares the work to a blue-collar job. “You roll up your sleeves, try to make or discover something useful and then let the scientific community try to punch holes in your work to make sure that it’s sound,” he said. Young scientists stick it out because they believe deep down that the work they’re doing could make a material difference in the real world if they’re allowed to see it all the way through. And that impulse can be nurtured when they have leadership and processes that provide encouragement in spite of setbacks. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT “Being an early-career academic scientist does not pay very much, requires a very tough-minded attitude and generally is only worth it for people if they truly just love doing science to better understand the world and improve the quality of life for all people,” said Mr. Gallagher. In mid-February, he traveled to interview for a dream position as a tenure-tracked faculty member at a university where he’d get to lead a lab dedicated to understanding Alzheimer’s disease. When he returned home, however, he learned that amid the current funding turmoil, the hiring process had been put on hold. I couldn’t cut it as a researcher. And that’s precisely what the system is meant to do — weed out the individuals who don’t have the motivation to meet the challenges and keep competing with others. Young scientists are driven by a passion to imagine what is possible, by dreams of turning very idiosyncratic obsessions into something that stands some glimmer of a chance to change the world or, at the very least, contributes to that goal. Though that passion has been fractured, it still lives in America’s young scientists. They want to imagine a better world, and they want to pursue that dream here in the United States. If the country’s leadership continues with its plans, however, we will see the brightest minds of the next generation disappear with their dreams.

he Trump administration threatened on Thursday to withhold federal funding from public schools unless state education officials verified the elimination of all programs that it said unfairly promoted diversity, equity and inclusion. In a memo sent to top public education officials across the country, the Education Department said that funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students, known as Title I funding, was at risk pending compliance with the administration’s directive. The memo included a certification letter that state and local school officials must sign and return to the department within 10 days, even as the administration has struggled to define which programs would violate its interpretation of civil rights laws. The move is the latest in a series of Education Department directives aimed at carrying out President Trump’s political agenda in the nation’s schools. At her confirmation hearing in February, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said schools should be allowed to celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But she was more circumspect when asked whether classes that focused on Black history ran afoul of Mr. Trump’s agenda and should be banned. “I’m not quite certain,” Ms. McMahon said, “and I’d like to look into it further.” More recently, the Education Department said that an “assessment of school policies and programs depends on the facts and circumstances of each case.” Programs aimed at recognizing historical events and contributions and promoting awareness would not violate the law “so long as they do not engage in racial exclusion or discrimination,” the department wrote. “However, schools must consider whether any school programming discourages members of all races from attending, either by excluding or discouraging students of a particular race or races, or by creating hostile environments based on race for students who do participate,” the Education Department said. It also noted that the Justice Department could sue for breach of contract if it found that federal funds were spent while violating civil rights laws. The administration’s view of those laws, including anti-discrimination requirements, was first raised as a potential condition for public school funding in a letter from the department on Feb. 14, two weeks before Ms. McMahon was confirmed. 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. The letter indicated that the administration plans to enforce a Supreme Court decision in 2023 that declared race-based affirmative action programs were unlawful. That ruling did not address related issues in K-12 schools, but the department made clear in the letter that the administration was interpreting the Supreme Court’s decision “more broadly.” “At its core, the test is simple,” wrote Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the Education Department. “If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.” His letter drew on a lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers, the American Sociological Association and Democracy Forward, a liberal legal group, that has asked a federal judge to pre-emptively block the administration from withholding funding from schools. The plaintiffs argued that the threats in the letter would violate the academic freedom protected by the First Amendment and was so vague that it would breach the Fifth Amendment’s right to due process. “No one’s life is being made better by these unlawful and unprecedented threats against America’s public education system, its educators and students,” said Skye Perryman, president and chief executive officer of Democracy Forward, said on Thursday of the lawsuit. “Threatening teachers and sowing chaos in schools throughout America is part of Trump’s war on education.” Government-downsizing efforts led by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a top adviser to Mr. Trump, has said that it canceled 70 grants in the Education Department for D.E.I. training programs worth $373 million. In its first 11 weeks, the Trump administration has begun civil rights investigations into Denver Public Schools over an all-gender restroom in one high school, and into the state public education systems in California and Maine over policies aimed at prioritizing the safety of transgender students over requirements from unwanted disclosures to their parents. Simultaneously, Mr. Trump has insisted that the decisions about educating the nation’s schoolchildren are best left to the states. Mr. Trump has signed an executive order to begin dismantling the Education Department, which has drawn multiple lawsuits citing federal law that only Congress can shutter the agency. The federal government accounts for about 8 percent of local school funding, but the amounts vary widely. In Mississippi, for example, about 23 percent of school funding comes from federal sources, while just 7 percent of school funding in New York comes from Washington, according to the Pew Research Center. Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government, called for transferring Title I programs to the Department of Health and Human Services and phasing out the federal funding stream over a 10-year period. “Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” Mr. Trainor, said in a statement. “When state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to abide by federal anti-discrimination requirements.”

Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts student detained for pro-Palestinian activity, asked a federal judge in Boston on Thursday to have her case moved to Massachusetts, where she lives and was picked up by federal agents, from Louisiana, where she is being held in an immigration detention facility. Her lawyer, Adriana Lafaille, argued that after detaining Ms. Ozturk, the government deliberately moved her to a location where it could expect a more sympathetic hearing for its case against her. The transfer was so furtive that not even the government’s own lawyers knew where she was, Ms. Lafaille, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the court. Ms. Ozturk, a doctoral candidate, was detained on March 25 near her apartment in Somerville, Mass., by federal agents in plain clothes who surrounded her, cuffed her and drove her away in an unmarked S.U.V. Footage of the encounter, captured by a surveillance camera, was viewed by millions of people, and generated outrage that Ms. Ozturk, a Turkish citizen on a student visa, had been picked up off the street even though there were no charges against her. The government was “secretly whisking her away and making sure that no one would know where she was until she was in Louisiana,” Ms. Lafaille said, adding that she believed the government was “forum shopping” a location for the trial. (Louisiana is home to one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country.) Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT She added that it was “quite unusual that even the government’s own lawyers” were not told where Ms. Ozturk was. A lawyer for the government said that Ms. Ozturk was moved out of state because there was no “bed space” at a detention center in Massachusetts to accommodate a female detainee. Mark Sauter, an assistant U.S. attorney, said she was first driven to Vermont, and then put on a 5 a.m. flight to Louisiana, an arrangement that was decided before she was picked up. “There was no attempt to manipulate jurisdiction,” Mr. Sauter said, adding that Ms. Ozturk’s lawyer learned where she was within 24 hours. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who detained her, were not trying to be deceptive, Mr. Sauter said. Her lawyer not knowing where she was, he said, was “not the same thing as ICE not being forthcoming about her location.”Ms. Ozturk’s lawyer told the judge, Denise Casper, that a case might also be made for moving the jurisdiction to Vermont, since she had first been transferred there. Ms. Ozturk is one of many international students whom the Trump administration has threatened to deport, as part of a crackdown on antisemitism at campuses across the country. The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, confirmed that her visa was revoked, saying, “We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.” The government has not made clear what evidence it has against her. She is included on a website, Canary Mission, run by an anonymous group that says it is dedicated to fighting antisemitism on campus. Pro-Palestinian activists say the group is harassing them. The website links to an opinion essay written by Ms. Ozturk and others and published in the student newspaper, urging Tufts to divest from Israel and citing “plausible” evidence that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. The president of Tufts, Sunil Kumar, supported Ms. Ozturk in a statement on Wednesday. He said she was a student in good standing whose research focused on how young adults could use social media in a positive way. “The university has no information to support the allegations that she was engaged in activities at Tufts that warrant her arrest and detention,” the statement said, adding that she was a “valued member of the community.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Mr. Kumar went on to say that Ms. Ozturk’s opinion piece did not violate any university policies and was consistent with its rules governing freedom of speech. As far as school officials knew, no complaints about it had been lodged inside or outside the university. In other high-profile cases, Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and permanent resident, was picked up by federal agents in his apartment building near the campus and likewise detained in Louisiana. On Tuesday, a New Jersey federal judge ruled that Mr. Khalil’s case would remain in New Jersey, where he was being held when his lawyers filed their habeas corpus petition demanding his release. The government is also seeking to deport Yunseo Chung, a Columbia undergraduate and permanent resident who immigrated from South Korea when she was a child. Human Rights Watch denounced the campaign to deport students on Thursday, saying it was “creating a climate of fear on campuses across the country.”

Almost all the employees of the Wilson Center, a prominent nonpartisan foreign policy think tank in Washington, were placed on leave on Thursday and blocked from their work email accounts as Elon Musk’s task force quickly shut down most of the center. About 130 employees received orders telling them not to return to the office after the end of the day, according to an email reviewed by The New York Times and people with direct knowledge of the actions. The Wilson Center employees are to be paid while on leave but will be fired soon, in line with what has happened at other institutions that Mr. Musk’s workers have dismantled in recent weeks. Only five employees will remain — a president, two federal employees and two researchers on fellowships. Those positions are mandated in the center’s congressional charter. The cuts align with an executive order President Trump signed in March. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Private donations to the center will be returned to the donors, according to a person familiar with the center who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. It was not clear what would be done with the center’s endowment. On Thursday afternoon, dozens of employees carried boxes and bags filled with papers, plants and posters out of the center’s offices in the Ronald Reagan Building, which houses several government agency offices. Tears glistened on the face of one woman as she departed. Workers wheeled out carts full of documents. It was not clear on Thursday how the offices will be used, but the center’s charter requires the space to be part of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial. On Monday, four members of the Musk team entered the center’s offices and began taking over its systems. The next day, the center’s president, Mark Green, resigned.The Trump White House fired the center’s board members in recent weeks, one person briefed on the events said. Mr. Green, a former Republican congressman and ambassador, was told this week he would be fired if he did not resign, another person said. The White House declined to comment. Mr. Musk’s government-overhauling workers have gutted several other institutions in Washington, including the United States Agency for International Development. They have shut down centers that receive federal funding but that have done independent research for decades with the goal of giving nonideological expert assessments to policymakers, lawmakers and people outside government. The Wilson Center, created in 1968 as a working memorial to honor the 28th president, Woodrow Wilson, receives about 30 percent of its funding from Congress; the rest comes from private donations. The center has been run by former Democratic and Republican officials appointed by the board. Before Mr. Green, who led U.S.A.I.D. in the first Trump administration, became president and chief executive of the center in 2021, Jane Harman, a former Democratic congresswoman from California, ran the think tank. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The center has been a gathering place for scholars in all areas of foreign policy over the decades. It houses the personal library of George F. Kennan, the diplomat and policymaker who studied the Soviet Union. On Thursday, the director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, Michael Kimmage, posted photos of the library online and compared it to the library of ancient Alexandria, which “fell victim to political vicissitudes and war,” he wrote. One question is what will happen to those materials and extensive digital archives that the Wilson Center has compiled. Researchers from around the world have used the archives for projects, and scholars especially value the center’s records of documents from the Cold War era. A person familiar with the center said that it also housed historical records from Wilson’s campaign and presidency. The center’s more than 50 fellows were expected to be paid until the end of their program, but those who are foreign citizens expect to have their visas canceled. Two of the fellows are at the center through a program for scholars whose work endangers them in their home countries, according to a person familiar with the center. Each class of fellows is usually made up of academic researchers and one or more journalists working on book projects. Reporters from The New York Times have received fellowships. A Trump administration official said that Natasha Jacome, a senior adviser to Mr. Green, was the center’s new president.

Rabbi Sharon Brous was growing increasingly alarmed at the Trump administration’s strong-arm tactics, like its attacks on higher-education funding and bullying of law firms, all in the name of protecting Jews. So early last month, she delivered an impassioned sermon titled “I Am Not Your Pawn” to her Los Angeles congregation. Hours later, the next shoe dropped. Immigration agents began detaining activists and foreign students who had been involved in pro-Palestinian protests. “This is not going to protect Jews,” Rabbi Brous said in an interview. “We’re being used.” Across the country, American Jews have watched with alarm or enthusiasm as an effort to address campus unrest over the war in Gaza has transformed into a campaign to deny elite universities billions of dollars in funding, to press major law firms into pro bono work on “antisemitism” and to deport foreign students even tangentially involved in the protests last spring. “We have to combat antisemitism as vigorously as we can,” said Matt Brooks, the chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, adding that with President Trump in office, there is “a new sheriff in town.” Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The divisions mirror those that have long split Jewish communities and have grown deeper since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the broad campus protests that followed Israel’s devastating response in Gaza.But where most Jews share concerns about antisemitic speech in some of the protests, many within the community have become convinced that things may have gone too far. A video of plainclothes immigration agents surprising and arresting a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University on the streets of Somerville, Mass., had particularly disturbing resonance for some in the Jewish community. The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, had co-written an opinion essay for a student newspaper demanding the university take a stand against Israel’s war in Gaza. For many in a community that has suffered more than its share of unjust arrests, disappearances, deportations and deadly violence over the centuries, the video evoked painful memories from Jewish history. That it was done in the name of defending Jews made it worse. Two pro-Israel groups, Canary Mission and Betar, have even been involved in singling out pro-Palestinian protesters to target. Editors’ Picks What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 Simple Sandals Are Always a Good Investment Is ‘Reef Safe’ Sunscreen Really Better? “I stood up. I was sitting down. I stood up involuntarily,” said Orna Guralnik, an Israeli American clinical psychologist and therapist, describing her reaction to watching the video. “It’s outrage and fear.”Such arrests have “woken people up to the cynical way that the fight against antisemitism is used,” added Dr. Guralnik, who has gained fame with her television show “Couples Therapy.” “It contrasts everything that a liberal person believes in.” In her practice, she said her American Jewish patients were “confused and really conflicted.”Though the federal crackdown has so far targeted critics of Israel, some think the Trump administration’s actions uncomfortably echo previous eras of bigoted nationalism that gave way to overt antisemitism. “Find me a moment in history when Jews anywhere benefited from a mix of rampant nationalism and repression,” wrote the journalist Matt Bai in a Washington Post opinion piece on Tuesday. “You’ll be looking awhile.”By saying that the harsh actions of the federal government have been in the name of protecting the Jewish community, the Trump administration has, intentionally or not, put a spotlight on Jews that makes many uncomfortable. “Anytime you put Jews in the middle on an issue, it’s not good for the Jews,” said Jonathan Jacoby of the Nexus Project, a progressive Jewish group that has been searching for a way to combat antisemitism without suppressing political debate. “That’s a classic antisemitic position that antisemites like to put Jews. So they can be scapegoated.” At the same time, the Trump administration continues to enjoy the backing of many Jewish groups, including those in the mainstream of social and political life. The Anti-Defamation League, which for more than a century has worked to combat antisemitism, quickly put out a statement in support of the arrest last month of an activist at Columbia University, Mahmoud Khalil, saying his detention “serves as a deterrent to others who might consider breaking the law on college campuses or anywhere.” The statement said it assumed Mr. Khalil would be given “due process.” Mr. Khalil, a legal permanent resident from Syria with a pregnant American wife, has not been charged with a crime. He has been held for nearly three weeks in a facility in Louisiana, where he was taken after his arrest on March 8 in New York. The Orthodox Union, an umbrella organization representing religious Jews, has been broadly supportive of the Trump administration’s actions. In a statement, its executive vice president, Rabbi Moshe Hauer, called for the fight against the “anarchy, hate, intimidation, and violence that have infected the campuses” to be carried out “the American way, firmly, resolutely, legally.” A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Brooks, of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said that the answer to antisemitism cannot be doing nothing and called the notion that the federal government’s actions put American Jews in any greater danger “absolutely absurd.”On the streets of American cities with large and diverse Jewish communities, feelings have been much more ambivalent. Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, who leads a socially progressive but religiously Conservative Jewish synagogue in Manhattan, said he had been stopped days ago on the sidewalk by a congregant who expressed how distressed she was that “people are being disappeared from street corners in the name of fighting antisemitism.” “My community is very, very skeptical of the genuineness of the administration’s antisemitism rhetoric,” Rabbi Kalmanofsky said. “I think that the Jewish people are the worse for the wear if the foundations of a constitutional order and civil rights and civil liberties and higher education are diminished,” he said, referring to attacks on the legal system and universities. Amy Spitalnick, chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a pro-democracy group, said she also doubted the motivation behind the push to combat antisemitism because it has involved the selective application of due process rights based on people’s identities and beliefs. “It’s about exploiting concerns about antisemitism to undermine democracy,” she said. But saying so publicly has been an occasionally fraught experience. Rabbi Kalmanofsky posted on Facebook his objection to the treatment of Mr. Khalil, not because he agreed with the activist’s views on Israel, which he said he finds objectionable, but because his arrest represented a potential threat to everyone.“If this legal resident can be arrested and deported for exercising First Amendment rights, then anyone can,” he wrote, offering “kudos” to the federal judge in the case who blocked the deportation and is also a member of his synagogue. The at-times heated discussion over his post surprised the rabbi. “The correct question is does America benefit from him being here,” one commenter replied, speaking of Mr. Khalil. “If the answer is no, then he should be deported.” In Los Angeles, Rabbi Brous of IKAR, a nondenominational Jewish congregation, lamented that for many people, Jewish or not, it has become difficult to hold two competing ideas at the same time, and far easier to retreat into defined ideological camps. She said she wanted to be clear that two things were true: “There is a real antisemitism problem in our time and the universities have become very fertile ground” for its normalization. And, she added, this administration’s attacks “do not emerge from a genuine desire to keep Jews safe.” “What may feel today like a welcomed embrace is actually putting us at even greater danger,” she said in her sermon on March 8. One of her congregants, Shifra Bronznick, watched online from New York, and it resonated deeply with her. She said she told dozens of people about it, telling them: “You must listen to this sermon.”

Tension had been building at Princeton University as pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied a white-columned, Greek Revival-style building at the center of campus and the police moved in. An angry crowd had surrounded a bus where two demonstrators were being held after officers led them out of the building. “It was a tense time as there were hundreds of protesters that were attempting to interfere with lawful arrests,” reads a police report from that day, April 29, 2024. David Piegaro, then a Princeton junior, was there filming with his phone. Mr. Piegaro says he was not one of the protesters, and he opposes much of their language and tactics. He described himself as a pro-Israel “citizen journalist” who was concerned by what he saw as the university’s insufficient response and wanted to bear witness by recording. By nightfall, he was one of more than a dozen students charged with wrongdoing at the elite New Jersey school. He joined the roughly 3,100 people arrested or detained last spring on campuses across the country amid a wave of student activism over the war in Gaza. Trespassing charges are pending against the pro-Palestinian protesters arrested at Princeton that day. But Mr. Piegaro, who was charged with assaulting a police officer after he was blocked from entering a campus building, was the first person to go to trial. On Tuesday, the Princeton Municipal Court judge who presided over Mr. Piegaro’s two-day trial in February found him not guilty. “Incidentally colliding with an outstretched arm may have been unwise, or even defiant, but it does not amount to reckless disregard,” the judge, John F. McCarthy III, said as he announced the verdict. “The defendant, in my opinion, showed poor judgment in a tense moment, but it does not rise to the level of criminal recklessness.” The Trump administration has made a dramatic show of punishing or trying to punish college-age protesters who have spoken out against Israel’s military response in Gaza, where the death toll has surpassed 50,000 people. The administration has either detained or threatened to deport at least nine international students or faculty members, including a Tufts University graduate student who had co-written an opinion piece in the student newspaper criticizing the university’s response to pro-Palestinian demands. She was taken into custody last week. But the arrest and trial of Mr. Piegaro, who was born and raised in New Jersey, underscored the complexity of the issues facing university administrators and the police as they strive to balance respect for free expression with questions about what constitutes hate speech. Mr. Piegaro, 27, is older than most undergraduate students. He began studying at Princeton after serving for several years in the U.S. Army, where he worked as an intelligence analyst with a top-secret security clearance. He is Jewish and said he was troubled by the deadly attack on Israel by the terror group Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people, and the tactics of the growing pro-Palestinian movement on campus. He said he was not, however, involved in the protests or counterprotests. And one of the charges brought against him — aggravated assault — was far more serious than the trespassing citations filed against 13 other Princeton students charged that day. As Mr. Piegaro’s case moved through the criminal justice system, three of the charges he initially faced, including aggravated assault, were dropped or reduced. He and his lawyer, Gerald Krovatin, said he twice refused offers to plead guilty to a lesser charge, convinced of his innocence and unwilling to voluntarily mar his record with a conviction of any kind. He went to trial on a lower-level assault charge, equivalent to a misdemeanor, that carried a potential penalty of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. “I really believe I’m the victim,” Mr. Piegaro said in an interview. “I really don’t think I did anything.” The run-in that led to his arrest involved the head of the school’s campus security department, Kenneth Strother Jr. Mr. Piegaro, upset that more than a dozen of the protesters had been released with citations, had begun recording two of their faculty advisers, who were speaking with Mr. Strother and walking toward Whig Hall, which is adjacent to the building that had been occupied, Clio Hall. Mr. Strother barred Mr. Piegaro from trying to follow them in, and Mr. Piegaro can be heard on the video he recorded asking Mr. Strother, who was not in uniform or wearing a badge, his name and position. “Don’t touch me,” Mr. Piegaro says before the video abruptly ends. Seconds later, Mr. Piegaro said, he found himself tumbling down the front steps of the building.What happened in between was the crux of the dispute. According to Mr. Strother, whose account appeared in the police report, Mr. Piegaro “pushed himself” into Mr. Strother, who “grabbed Mr. Piegaro by his arm and told him he was under arrest.” Mr. Strother said that he lost hold of Mr. Piegaro, who was resisting arrest, causing Mr. Piegaro to fall down the stairs. Mr. Piegaro says he was the one who was assaulted. Sarah Kwartler, a graduate student who had gone on two dates with Mr. Piegaro several years ago and recognized him, testified that she stopped to watch part of what unfolded. She said she saw Mr. Strother holding Mr. Piegaro “like an open pair of scissors,” losing his grip and dropping him, according to a summary of the testimony submitted to the judge. Mr. Piegaro then rolled to the bottom of the stairs, Ms. Kwartler said, where he was handcuffed and arrested. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Complaining of soreness, Mr. Piegaro was taken to a hospital and evaluated for broken ribs and a concussion. Mr. Strother, who did not reply to requests for comment, was uninjured, according to the police report. Mr. Krovatin, Mr. Piegaro’s lawyer, had argued that the decision to initially charge his client with aggravated assault, in addition to several other crimes, smacked of disparate treatment when compared with the lower-level trespassing charges leveled against the protesters. “The fact remains that the only student charged with three indictable offenses on that day was a Jewish U.S. Army veteran,” Mr. Krovatin said, adding, “I don’t get why Princeton hasn’t pulled back on this.” A spokeswoman for Princeton, Jennifer Morrill, said before the verdict that the university deferred to the judgment of the municipal prosecutor and the municipal judge. She drew a distinction between Mr. Piegaro’s assault case and the trespassing charges filed against the protesters. With regard to the trespassing charges, she said, “The university is not a party to — and has not intervened in — those court proceedings, though the university has consistently said that it supports an outcome that would minimize the impact of the arrest on these individuals.” She added, “The university has no comment on the separate charges filed against an individual in connection with his interaction with a police officer.” Two of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrested at Princeton last April declined to comment. Princeton’s municipal prosecutor, Christopher Koutsouris, did not return calls or emails. After Mr. Piegaro was arrested, he was barred from student housing and prevented from entering campus for about two weeks. He spent a few days living with Rabbi Eitan Webb, a Jewish chaplain and director of Princeton University’s Chabad House. Rabbi Webb, in an interview, recalled a “pressure-cooker effect” on campus last spring. “In that environment, speaking specifically to the events of that day, when you have a whole host of public safety officers, administrators — I think doing their best — it’s not surprising that mistakes would get made,” Rabbi Webb, who attended Mr. Piegaro’s trial, said before the verdict was announced. The trial featured competing accounts of the confrontation, and Mr. Piegaro said simply that he was “relieved” by Tuesday’s verdict. Unlike many universities, Princeton quickly quashed efforts last April by pro-Palestinian demonstrators to erect tents on campus. At least two people were charged after they refused to take down tents. The takeover of Clio Hall on the night Mr. Piegaro was arrested lasted only about two hours after students were given a deadline to exit and told that they would face arrest. The school has also managed to avoid much of the turmoil that has engulfed the presidents of several other prominent universities, including some who were summoned to testify before Congress about their schools’ responses to antisemitism on campus. On Tuesday, however, the Trump administration paused an undisclosed portion of the university’s federal funding. Other top schools, including Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, have faced similar cuts as a result of perceived failures identified by the administration. “We are committed to fighting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination,” Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, wrote in an email notifying the university community that “several dozen” federal grants had been suspended. “And we will cooperate with the government in combating antisemitism.” “Princeton,” he added, “will also vigorously defend academic freedom and the due process rights of this university.” Last month, after Columbia agreed to concessions in an effort to preserve $400 million in funding, Mr. Eisgruber said that he was concerned that using federal research grants as a cudgel could cause long-term harm to academic freedom. “I think once you make concessions once, it’s hard not to make them again,” he told “PBS NewsHour.” A day before the funding cuts became public, Ms. Morrill reiterated that Princeton’s “expansive commitment to free speech — which includes peaceful dissent, protest and demonstrations — remains unwavering,” while noting the school’s rules governing the time, place and manner of such demonstrations. The campus continues to bustle this week with signs of vigorous academic debate. On Wednesday afternoon, Princeton is holding a forum on academic freedom and “whether, when, and how universities should take institutional stances on social and political issues.” Later this week, a conference is set to take place on the history, theory and politics of the “anti-Zionist idea.” Keith A. Whittington, a longtime Princeton professor who is teaching this year at Yale Law School, is one of three academics participating in Wednesday’s forum. Professor Whittington, a free speech scholar, was on Princeton’s campus the day the pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied Clio Hall but did not witness Mr. Piegaro’s arrest. “It just sort of indicates how fraught things are on campuses, and how volatile these situations are,” Professor Whittington said. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT In the moment, he said, facts can be difficult to parse. “That’s why you have trials,” he said. Mr. Piegaro expects to graduate in May and is hopeful the verdict will help ease the pressure he has felt over the last 11 months. In addition to a degree in economics, there is one other thing he still hopes to get from Princeton. “I want an apology, honestly,” he said.