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A new expanded edition of Maia Kobabe’s award-winning graphic memoir “Gender Queer” will be released next year.

Oni Press has announced that “Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition” will be available in May. The special hardcover edition of the seminal LGBTQ+ coming of age memoir includes commentary by Kobabe as well as other comic creators and scholars.

“For fans, educators, and anyone else who wants to know more, I am so excited to share ‘Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition,’” Kobabe said in the news release. “Queer and trans cartoonists, comics scholars, and multiple people who appear in the book as characters contributed their thoughts, reactions, and notes to this new edition.”

The new 280-page hardcover will feature “comments on the color design process, on comics craft, on family, on friendship, on the touchstone queer media that inspired me and countless other people searching for meaningful representation, and on the complicated process of self-discovery,” the author added.

Released in 2019, “Gender Queer” follows Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, from childhood into eir young adult years as e navigates gender and sexuality and eir understanding of who e is. The books is a candid look into the nonbinary author’s exploration of identity, chronicling the frustrations and joys and epiphanies of eir journey and self discovery.

A page from “Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition” by Maia Kobabe.

(Oni Press)

“It’s really hard to imagine yourself as something you’ve never seen,” Kobabe told The Times in 2022. “I know this firsthand because I didn’t meet someone who was out as trans or nonbinary until I was in grad school. It’s weird to grow up and be 25 before you meet someone who is like the same gender as you.”

Since the publication of “Gender Queer,” the political climate has been increasingly hostile to the LGBTQ+ community. Right-wing activists and politicians have pushed for legislation to restrict queer and trans rights, including how sexual orientation and gender identity can be addressed in classrooms. Caught in the crossfire of this conservative, anti-LGBTQ+ culture war, “Gender Queer” has become one of the most challenged and banned books in the United States.

In addition to commentary by Kobabe, “Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition” will feature comments from fellow artists and comics creatives Jadzia Axelrod, Ashley R. Guillory, Justin Hall, Kori Michele Handwerker, Phoebe Kobabe, Hal Schrieve, Rani Som, Shannon Watters and Andrea Colvin. Sandra Cox, Ajuan Mance and Matthew Noe are among the academic figures who contributed to the new edition.

“It’s been almost seven years since I wrote the final words of this memoir; revisiting these pages today, in a radically different and less accepting political climate, sparked a lot of new thoughts for me as well,” Kobabe said in the news release. “I hope readers enjoy this even richer text full of community voices.”

A page from “Gender Queer: The Annotated Edition” by Maia Kobabe.

(Oni Press)

WASHINGTON — President Trump has harnessed the weight of his office in recent days to accelerate a campaign of retribution against his perceived political enemies and attacks on 1st Amendment protections.

In the last week alone, Trump replaced a U.S. attorney investigating two of his political adversaries with a loyalist and openly directed the attorney general to find charges to file against them.

His Federal Communications Commission chairman hinted at punitive actions against networks whose journalists and comedians run afoul of the president.

Trump filed a $15-billion lawsuit against the New York Times, only to have it thrown out by a judge.

The acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles asked the Secret Service to investigate a social media post by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office.

The Pentagon announced it was imposing new restrictions on reporters who cover the U.S. military.

The White House officially labeled “antifa,” a loose affiliation of far-left extremists, as “domestic terrorists” — a designation with no basis in U.S. law — posing a direct challenge to free speech protections. And it said lawmakers concerned with the legal predicate for strikes on boats in the Caribbean should simply get over it.

An active investigation into the president’s border advisor over an alleged bribery scheme involving a $50,000 payout was quashed by the White House itself.

Trump emphasized his partisan-fueled dislike of his political opponents during a Sunday memorial service for conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who he said “did not hate his opponents.”

“That’s where I disagreed with Charlie,” Trump said. “I hate my opponents and I don’t want the best for them.”

It has been an extraordinary run of attacks using levers of power that have been seen as sacred arbiters of the public trust for decades, scholars and historians say.

The assault is exclusively targeting Democrats, liberal groups and establishment institutions, just as the administration moves to shield its allies.

Erik Siebert, the U.S. attorney in Virginia, resigned Friday after facing pressure from the Trump administration to bring criminal charges against New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James over alleged mortgage fraud. In a social media post later that day, Trump claimed he had “fired” Siebert.

A few hours later, on Saturday, Trump said he nominated White House aide Lindsey Halligan to take over Siebert’s top prosecutorial role in Virginia, saying she was “tough” and “loyal.”

Later that day, Trump demanded in a social media post addressed to “Pam” — in reference to Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi — that she prosecute James, former FBI Director James Comey and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility,” Trump wrote. “They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump’s remarks, saying Monday that the president is “rightfully frustrated” and that he “wants accountability for these corrupt fraudsters who abuse their power, who abuse their oath of office, to target the former president and then candidate for the highest office in the land.”

“It is not weaponizing the Department of Justice to demand accountability for those who weaponize the Department of Justice, and nobody knows what that looks like more than President Trump,” Leavitt told reporters.

As the president called for prosecution of his political opponents, it was reported that Tom Homan, the White House border advisor, was the subject of an undercover FBI case that was later shut down by Trump administration officials. Homan, according to MSNBC, accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover agents after he indicated to them he could get them government contracts.

At Monday’s news briefing, Leavitt said that Homan did not take the money and that the investigation was “another example of the weaponization of the Biden Department of Justice against one of President Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters.”

“The White House and the president stand by Tom Homan 100% because he did absolutely nothing wrong,” she said.

Some see the recent actions as an erosion of an expected firewall between the Department of Justice and the White House, as well as a shift in the idea of how criminal investigation should be launched.

“If the Department of Justice and any prosecution entity is functioning properly, then that entity is investigating crimes and not people,” said John Hasnas, a law professor at Georgetown University.

The Trump administration has also begun a military campaign against vessels crossing the Caribbean Sea departing from Venezuela that it says are carrying narcotics and drug traffickers. But the targeted killing of individuals at sea is raising concern among legal scholars that the administration’s operation is extrajudicial, and Democratic lawmakers, including Schiff, have introduced a bill in recent days asserting the ongoing campaign violates the War Powers Resolution.

Political influence has long played a role with federal prosecutors who are political appointees, Hasnas said, but under “the current situation it’s magnified greatly.”

“The interesting thing about the current situation is that the Trump administration is not even trying to hide it,” he said.

Schiff said he sees it as an effort to “try to silence and intimidate.” In July, Trump accused Schiff — who led the first impeachment inquiry into Trump — of committing mortgage fraud, which Schiff has denied.

“What he wants to try to do is not just go after me and Letitia James or Lisa Cook, but rather send a message that anyone who stands up to him on anything, anyone who has the audacity to call out his corruption will be a target, and they will go after you,” Schiff said in an interview Sunday.

Trump campaigned in part on protecting free speech, especially that of conservatives, who he claimed had been broadly censored by the Biden administration and “woke” leftist culture in the U.S. Many of his most ardent supporters — including billionaire Elon Musk and now-Vice President JD Vance — praised Trump as a champion of free speech.

However, since Trump took office, his administration has repeatedly sought to silence his critics, including in the media, and crack down on speech that does not align with his politics.

And in the wake of Kirk’s killing on Sept. 10, those efforts have escalated into an unprecedented attack on free speech and expression, according to constitutional scholars and media experts.

“The administration is showing a stunning ignorance and disregard of the 1st Amendment,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley Law School.

“We are at an unprecedented place in American history in terms of the targeting of free press and the exercise of free speech,” said Ken Paulson, former editor in chief of USA Today and now director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.

“We’ve had periods in American history like the Red Scare, in which Americans were to turn in neighbors who they thought leaned left, but this is a nonstop, multifaceted, multiplatform attack on all of our free speech rights,” Paulson said. “I’m actually quite stunned at the velocity of this and the boldness of it.”

Bondi recently railed against “hate speech” — which the Supreme Court has previously defended — in an online post, suggesting the Justice Department will investigate those who speak out against conservatives.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened ABC and its parent company, Disney, with repercussions if they did not yank Jimmy Kimmel off the air after Kimmel made comments about Kirk’s alleged killer that Carr found distasteful. ABC swiftly suspended Kimmel’s show, though Disney announced Monday that it would return Tuesday.

The Pentagon, meanwhile, said it will require news organizations to agree not to disclose any information the government has not approved for release and revoke the press credentials of those who publish sensitive material without approval.

Critics of the administration, free speech organizations and even some conservative pundits who have long criticized the “cancel culture” of the progressive left have spoken out against some of those policies. Scholars have too, saying the amalgam of actions by the administration represent a dangerous departure from U.S. law and tradition.

“What unites all of this is how blatantly inconsistent it is with the 1st Amendment,” Chemerinsky said.

Chemerinsky said lower courts have consistently pushed back against the administration’s overreaches when it comes to protected speech, and he expects they will continue to do so.

He also said that, although the Supreme Court has frequently sided with the president in disputes over his policy decisions, it has also consistently defended freedom of speech, and he hopes it will continue to do so if some of the free speech policies above reach the high court.

“If there’s anything this court has said repeatedly, it’s that the government can’t prevent or stop speech based on the viewpoint expressed,” Chemerinsky said.

Paulson said that American media companies must refuse to obey and continue to cover the Trump administration and the Pentagon as aggressively as ever, and that average Americans must recognize the severity of the threat posed by such censorship and speak out against it, no matter their political persuasion.

“This is real — a full-throttle assault on free speech in America,” Paulson said. “And it’s going to be up to the citizenry to do something about it.”

Chemerinsky said defending free speech should be an issue that unites all Americans, not least because political power changes hands.

“It’s understandable that those in power want to silence the speech that they don’t like, but the whole point of the 1st Amendment is to protect speech we don’t like,” he said. “We don’t need the 1st Amendment to protect the speech we like.”

Monday was a good day to be invested in Scholar Rock (SRRK 6.19%) stock. The clinical-stage biotech received a nod from an analyst initiating coverage on its shares, a move that sent its price more than 6% higher across the day. That rate was well higher than the 0.5% increase of the S&P 500 index.

A bullish start

Well before market open, Leerink Partners’ Mani Foroohar launched his coverage of Scholar Rock, rating the healthcare stock as an outperform (i.e., buy) at a price target of $51 per share. That anticipates considerable growth in the value of the company’s equity, as it’s — coincidentally — more than 51% higher than Scholar Rock’s most recent closing price.

Image source: Getty Images.

The biotech’s leading investigational drug is apitegromab, an add-on therapy that targets a disorder called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). According to reports, Foroohar’s main source of optimism is the prospects for the drug, which is currently being reviewed for approval by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA, a regulator for the European Union).

In his inaugural note on Scholar Rock, the analyst also waxed bullish on the background of the company’s team, characterizing it as the most experienced in the commercialization of rare diseases among its covered healthcare stocks.

High potential

If Scholar Rock can win approval from one or both of those major regulators for apitegromab, it would be well positioned for success. However, I need to caution that getting the green light isn’t enough for a biotech — a new medicine must be effectively rolled out and marketed if it’s going to have any chance at success. So far, though, the indications look good for the company.

When I learned R.F. Kuang was taking readers to hell in her newest book, I groaned. Haven’t we done this enough? I’m not just talking about Orpheus retrieving Eurydice, Dante’s “Inferno” and Virgil’s “Aeneid.” Nor the 19th century poets and cults obsessed with everything chthonic. We as a culture have done katabasis — that is, a journey into the underworld — a lot recently: Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “Gods of Jade and Shadow” (2019), Leigh Bardugo’s “Hell Bent” (2023) and Netflix’s “Kaos” (2024).

(I’m sure it has nothing to do with the political instability we’re facing. We probably shouldn’t worry about the historical pattern of writers becoming obsessed with the living journeying into hell whenever things aren’t going great in society. I’m sure it’s fine.)

I didn’t think there could be much new here. “Katabasis” is a dark academia fantasy where the protagonist — a psychologically wounded but talented student, lacking self-love, perspective or even just one friend to talk sense into her — journeys into hell to fetch the soul of a mentor she’s in thrall to … and may have killed. If this sounds familiar, well, Kuang’s newest hero, Alice Law, does bear similarities to Bardugo’s Alex Stern.

But I was wrong — there are new things here. The journey into hell has been done, but it hasn’t been done quite the way R. F. Kuang does it.

Like “Babel,” which relied on R.F. Kuang’s knowledge of linguistics, “Katabasis” is rich and textured because of her familiarity with the subject.

(John Packman)

Alice Law and her partner-in-hell, Peter Murdoch, are acutely aware of their literary predecessors, even guided by maps based on those journeys. They go because their doctoral advisor, a man they hate and worship in equal measure, has died and they need him back to ensure they get a good teaching position after graduation. It’s a flawed reason, and a greedy one, a fact neither character seems to understand. They don’t seem to see themselves fitting in anywhere in hell, actually — that tension is both annoying and amusing. Their trip is an intriguing take on the journey; things in hell have changed since Virgil played tour guide.

In “Katabasis,” we’re once again treated to the power of Kuang’s mind. It takes a smart person to write geniuses, and Alice and Peter are brilliant, if blinkered. Like “Babel,” which relied on Kuang’s knowledge of linguistics, “Katabasis” is rich and textured because of her knowledge of the subject, her deep familiarity with its shape and philosophy. Also like “Babel,” “Katabasis” revolves around the dark inequities cracking the foundations of a fictional department in an Oxbridge school, a place people would kill to get into and then die in while they’re there.

A warning: The nesting doll of literary references in “Katabasis” will be a delight to some and impenetrable to others. People who aren’t familiar with chthonic myths might want to do some research before reading. For example, there’s a joke toward the end about how John Gradus is clearly a fake name: The reference is never elucidated, and you’ll only get the joke if you know the phrase gradus ad parnassum means “a step toward Parnassus,” which is the mountain where Apollo and the Muses live in Greek myth, and that the phrase is often used by scholars to indicate a process of gradual mastery over a subject. So John Gradus is a journeyer in his own right, learning where he went wrong in life to reach the Lethe and reincarnate. This novel is not for the intellectually indifferent.

But generally, “Katabasis” is a more mature and less showy novel than Kuang’s earlier works. Perhaps this isn’t surprising; Kuang’s first book was published when she was just 21 and she’s 29 now. A person’s 20s are transformative even if they don’t study in China, at Oxford, at Cambridge and at Yale in quick succession. Readers who thought “The Poppy War” trilogy didn’t stick the landing, or that Rin became insufferable by the end, will be pleased that “Katabasis” does stick it, and that Alice evolves.

Some of the same themes from “The Poppy War” return — the horror of sex, the power of delusion to transform reality. But when Alice faces challenges, she lets go of her delusions. Peter is not disposable like Kitay. Both Alice and Rin sacrifice, but this isn’t Rin’s abject despair; Alice’s sacrifices are more nuanced than Rin could ever fathom.

As much as “Katabasis” has in common with Kuang’s earlier works, tonally it might have most in common with “Yellowface.” Unlike the brutality of “The Poppy Wars” or the tragedy of “Babel,” “Katabasis” maintains a slight wry humor throughout. There’s a satirical subtext here that wasn’t present in her earlier earnest fantasies. I mean, these PhD candidates choose to go to actual hell rather than have an honest conversation with someone at Cambridge. Kuang shows us how self-destructive that is, intriguing as the story reads. Like June Hayward/Juniper Song in “Yellowface,” Alice and Peter are so trapped in the flimsy reality they’ve constructed that they can’t see the obvious way out.

Because in “Katabasis,” hell is not other people. It’s defending your dissertation.

This is my one sticking point with writers taking readers to hell. Cultural images of the underworld are bound by writers, and though Kuang introduces new elements, she adheres largely to their canon. Her take on Dante’s City of Dis is — spoiler! — a regal college where academics spend eternity writing self-absorbed dissertations (shortened by real PhD candidates, of course, to “Diss” — there’s that wry humor). There’s no feedback, no advisors, just faith that someone’s reading. I understand why a PhD student would envision this as the worst kind of punishment, but I’m not convinced it’s the worst possible sin.

“Katabasis” is hell filtered through a scholar’s eyes. Orpheus’ journey has stood the test of time because he went for love. Dante went for knowledge. Alice goes for a recommendation letter. It’s an intriguing addition to the canon, but for mere mortals who haven’t survived abusive, plagiaristic and mystifying advisors to earn Oxbridge degrees — or even just bad bosses — it might be unrelatable.

Castellanos Clark, a writer and historian in Los Angeles, is the author of “Unruly Figures: Twenty Tales of Rebels, Rulebreakers, and Revolutionaries You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of.”

NEW YORK — For years, Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar at Columbia University, has used Hannah Arendt’s book about the trial of a Nazi war criminal, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” to spark discussion among her students about the Holocaust and its lingering traumas.

But after Columbia’s recent adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, which casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech, Hirsch fears she may face official sanction for even mentioning the landmark text by Arendt, a philosopher who criticized Israel’s founding.

For the first time since she started teaching five decades ago, Hirsch, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, is now thinking of leaving the classroom altogether.

“A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic and threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry,” she told the Associated Press. “I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.”

Hirsch is not alone. At universities across the country, academics have raised alarm about growing efforts to define antisemitism on terms pushed by the Trump administration, often under the threat of federal funding cuts.

Promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the definition lists 11 examples of antisemitic conduct, including applying “double standards” to Israel, comparing the country’s policies to Nazism or describing its existence as “a racist endeavor.”

Ahead of a $220-million settlement with the Trump administration announced Wednesday, Columbia agreed to incorporate the IHRA definition and its examples into its disciplinary process. It has been endorsed in some form by Harvard, Yale and dozens of other universities.

While supporters say the semantic shift is necessary to combat evolving forms of Jewish hate, civil liberties groups warn it will further suppress pro-Palestinian speech already under attack by President Trump and his administration.

For Hirsch, the restrictions on drawing comparisons to the Holocaust and questioning Israel’s founding amount to “clear censorship,” which she fears will chill discussions in the classroom and open her and other faculty up to spurious lawsuits.

“We learn by making analogies,” Hirsch said. “Now the university is saying that’s off limits. How can you have a university course where ideas are not up for discussion or interpretation?”

A spokesperson for Columbia didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment.

‘Weaponization’ of an educational framework

When he first drafted the IHRA definition of antisemitism two decades ago, Kenneth Stern said he “never imagined it would one day serve as a hate speech code.”

At the time, Stern was working as the lead antisemitism expert at the American Jewish Committee. The definition and its examples were meant to serve as a broad framework to help European countries track bias against Jews, he said.

In recent years, Stern has spoken forcefully against what he sees as its “weaponization” against pro-Palestinian activists, including anti-Zionist Jews.

“People who believe they’re combating hate are seduced by simple solutions to complicated issues,” he said. “But when used in this context, it’s really actually harming our ability to think about antisemitism.”

Stern said he delivered that warning to Columbia’s leaders last fall after being invited to address them by Claire Shipman, then a co-chair of the board of trustees and the university’s current interim president.

The conversation seemed productive, Stern said. But in March, shortly after the Trump administration said it would withhold $400 million in federal funding to Columbia over concerns about antisemitism, the university announced it would adopt the IHRA definition for “training and educational” purposes.

Then this month, days before announcing a deal with the Trump administration to restore that funding, Shipman said the university would extend the IHRA definition for disciplinary purposes, deploying its examples when assessing “discriminatory intent.”

“The formal incorporation of this definition will strengthen our response to and our community’s understanding of modern antisemitism,” Shipman wrote.

Stern, who now serves as director of the Bard Center for the Study of Hate, called the move “appalling,” predicting it would spur a new wave of litigation against the university while further curtailing pro-Palestinian speech.

Already, the university’s disciplinary body has faced backlash for investigating students who criticized Israel in op-eds and other venues, often at the behest of pro-Israel groups.

“With this new edict on IHRA, you’re going to have more outside groups looking at what professors are teaching, what’s in the syllabus, filing complaints and applying public pressure to get people fired,” he said. “That will undoubtedly harm the university.”

Calls to ‘self-terminate’

Beyond adopting the IHRA definition, Columbia has also agreed to place its Middle East studies department under new supervision, overhaul its rules for protests and coordinate antisemitism training with groups such as the Anti-Defamation League.

Last week, the university suspended or expelled nearly 80 students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

Kenneth Marcus, chair of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said Columbia’s actions were an overdue step to protect Jewish students from harassment.

He dismissed faculty concerns about the IHRA definition, which he said would “provide clarity, transparency and standardization” to the university’s effort to root out antisemitism.

“There are undoubtedly some Columbia professors who will feel they cannot continue teaching under the new regime,” Marcus said. “To the extent that they self-terminate, it may be sad for them personally, but it may not be so bad for the students at Columbia University.”

But Hirsch, the Columbia professor, said she was committed to continuing her long-standing study of genocides and their aftermath.

Part of that work, she said, will involve talking to students about Israel’s “ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide” in the Gaza Strip, where nearly 60,000 Palestinians have died in 21 months of war — most of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry — and where experts are warning of rising famine.

“With this capitulation to Trump, it may now be impossible to do that inside Columbia,” Hirsch said. “If that’s the case, I’ll continue my work outside the university’s gates.”

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump has launched a new investigation against Harvard University, this time targeted at an exchange programme that allows foreign scholars to visit the elite school.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement on Wednesday saying the probe was necessary to ensure US security — but the investigation is likely to be seen by critics as the latest attempt to bully the school into compliance with President Donald Trump’s policies.

“The American people have the right to expect their universities to uphold national security, comply with the law, and provide safe environments for all students,” Rubio wrote in the statement.

“The investigation will ensure that State Department programs do not run contrary to our nation’s interests.”

At stake is Harvard’s exchange visitor programme, which allows professors, students and researchers to come to the US on a temporary basis.

Participating scholars receive a J-1 visa, which allows them to participate in cultural and academic exchange programmes on the basis that they are coming to the US not as immigrants but as visitors.

But Harvard’s ability to host such a programme is contingent on the State Department’s approval. Rubio suggested that the school’s “continued eligibility as a sponsor” would hang in the balance of Wednesday’s investigation.

“To maintain their privilege to sponsor exchange visitors, sponsors must comply with all regulations, including conducting their programs in a manner that does not undermine the foreign policy objectives or compromise the national security interests of the United States,” Rubio wrote.

Questions of national security

Under President Trump’s second term, the US has repeatedly cited questions of national security and foreign policy in its attempts to expel foreign students, particularly those involved in pro-Palestinian and antiwar movements.

Rubio himself has drawn on the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 — a relatively obscure Cold War-era law — in his efforts to deport student protest leaders like Mahmoud Khalil.

The law allows the secretary of state to expel foreign nationals “whose presence or activities” could pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

The government’s use of such laws, however, is currently being challenged in court. Critics argue they violate the constitutional right to free speech and protest.

It was President Trump’s opposition to the pro-Palestinian protests that led him to engage in a high-profile confrontation with Harvard, the country’s oldest university and a member of the much-vaunted Ivy League.

Schools like Harvard in Massachusetts and Columbia University in New York were considered the epicentre of the protest movement. At Columbia, for instance, students erected a tent encampment that inspired similar demonstrations across the world.

The schools’ crackdowns on those protests, however, were also emulated at other campuses. Columbia, for instance, called in police to clear pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and other schools took similar action, leading to more than 3,000 campus arrests across the country last year.

Critics of the protests, including President Trump, have called the demonstrations anti-Semitic and warned they create an unsafe learning environment for Jewish students.

Protest leaders, however, point out that most of the demonstrations were peaceful and have forcefully rejected anti-Jewish hate. Rather, they argue their protests are about shining a light on the abuses Israel has perpetrated in Gaza — and the crackdowns are aimed at stamping out views that run contrary to the US’s close relationship with Israel.

Pressure on schools

Upon taking office in January, however, Trump pledged to take “forceful and unprecedented steps” to root out alleged anti-Semitism on campus.

In early March, he began his broadside on Ivy League campuses like Columbia and Harvard. He began by stripping Columbia of $400m in federal contracts and grants and then by requesting compliance with a list of demands, including disciplinary reform and external oversight for certain academic departments.

By March 22, Columbia had agreed to make concessions.

But Trump encountered greater resistance at Harvard University. On April 11, the Trump administration likewise issued a list of demands that would have required Harvard to commit to “structural and personnel changes” to foster “viewpoint diversity”, eliminate its diversity programmes and agree to external audits.

It refused. Instead, Harvard President Alan Garber said such requests would violate Harvard’s rights as a private institution committed to academic freedom.

Since then, the Trump administration has stripped Harvard of billions of dollars in federal contracts, research funding and grants. A federal court in Boston began hearing a legal challenge against that decision this week.

A multipronged attack

But the Trump administration has also explored other avenues to pressure Harvard into compliance.

Trump has threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status — though critics warn it would be illegal to do so — and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blocked Harvard from accessing the Student and Exchange Visitor Programme (SEVP), a system that schools are required to use to enrol international students.

Foreign students make up about a quarter of Harvard’s student body. Losing access to the SEVP system effectively meant those students were no longer able to attend the school.

Harvard challenged the Trump administration’s ban on its foreign students in court and received a preliminary injunction that allows its international students to remain while the case plays out.

But other hurdles have since emerged. Earlier this month, for instance, the Trump administration accused Harvard of civil rights violations and called for a review of its accreditation, the industry-wide quality standard that gives university diplomas their value.

Meanwhile, news outlets have reported that officials from the Trump administration and Harvard continue to negotiate over whether a deal can be struck to defuse the ongoing tensions.