Yuri Gripas/Reuters

President Donald Trump speaks to the media after the Congressional Republican Leadership retreat at Camp David, January 6.

President Trump’s mental health has burst into public consciousness, following release of the explosive tell-all book “Fire and Fury” and Mr. Trump’s eye-popping Twitter response – in which he called himself a “very stable genius.”

The book, by journalist Michael Wolff, describes a chaotic White House riddled with infighting. In an interview on NBC’s “Today,” Mr. Wolff asserted that “100 percent of the people” around the president – including senior advisers and family members – question his intelligence and fitness for office.

But anyone who thinks the Trump presidency is on the ropes or that he’s about to be removed from office via the 25th Amendment to the Constitution – a topic Wolff claims White House aides discussed repeatedly – has another thing coming, analysts say. And, it can be argued, Mr. Trump may in fact come out on top when all is said and done, given the questions surrounding the reporting techniques used by Wolff, and factual errors in the book.

In addition, efforts by mental-health professionals to raise alarm bells about Trump’s stability may well backfire, as none have formally evaluated Trump. The American Psychiatric Association’s longstanding code of ethics prohibits drawing conclusions about a person’s mental state without an in-person examination.

“I think this all inoculates him,” says Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and co-author of a book on the first months of Trump’s presidency. “In other words, the more this stuff is out there, the less impact it probably has.”

“I’m not defending Trump,” Mr. Schier continues. “Even a casual view of his behavior does raise concerns, but it doesn’t mean he’s clinically [out of his mind].”

Besides Wolff’s book, a months-long effort by a Yale University psychiatry professor to sow alarm about Trump’s mental stability has added to the drumbeat of concern about his ability to function as president. The professor, Bandy Lee, published a book of essays last October by 27 mental-health practitioners who say their “duty to warn” the nation about Trump’s mental health supersedes “professional neutrality.”

But the nation has hardly reached the point where an effort to remove Trump from office via the 25th Amendment is even remotely feasible. The 25th Amendment, enacted in 1967, was a response to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which raised questions about the nation’s governance had Mr. Kennedy survived but in an incapacitated state.

The requirements for removing a president under the 25th Amendment are steep: The vice president and a majority of Cabinet members must make a “written declaration that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Then a two-thirds vote by both houses of Congress is required to fulfill the transfer of power to the vice president.

‘Inoculated with his base’

On Monday, Wolff acknowledged on “CBS This Morning” that he did not interview Vice President Pence or any Cabinet members for his book. This admission throws cold water on his suggestion that the 25th Amendment is a viable option. Wolff’s book quotes White House staffers speaking frequently about the 25th Amendment. Wolff spent the better part of a year essentially as “a fly on the wall” inside the West Wing, at the invitation of now-former Trump aide Steve Bannon and current adviser Kellyanne Conway.

Wolff’s book, which burst into public view last week, was not what the Trump White House expected. But so far, it doesn’t seem to be hurting the president’s job approval ratings, still sitting at about 40 percent.

The flaws in Wolff’s book – which the author himself admits was produced hastily – have played into Trump’s narrative of a press corps eager to take him down, and that could help him survive this latest maelstrom.

“At least he’s going be inoculated with his base,” says Republican strategist Ford O’Connell. “He’s also probably going to get the benefit of the doubt among some right-leaning conservatives and potential independents in key states going forward,” particularly in the midterm elections this November.

Mr. O’Connell also sees a lot of the “mainstream media” angry that Wolff beat them to the punch. “I think they would have preferred to build the ‘Trump is nuts’ narrative over time, and now it could undercut their reporting and be a blessing for Trump,” he says.

Dr. Lee of Yale reportedly spent two days on Capitol Hill last month, meeting with more a dozen Democratic senators about Trump’s mental state.

From Lincoln to LBJ

If anything, one outcome is clear from both the Wolff book and Lee’s effort to raise alarm bells about Trump’s behavior: They have busted through the taboo that has kept public discussion of presidential mental health under wraps, at least while a president is still in office.

Throughout history, presidents have faced emotional and mental challenges, either following a family tragedy or under the strain of the job. Experts on the presidency describe the job as isolating; only the president himself knows what he is experiencing.

“Woodrow Wilson was sidelined in August 1914 by the death of his first wife. It took him a while to snap out of it,” says historian David Pietrusza. “When he did, he was seriously lovesick over courting his future second wife, Edith Bolling Galt. I'm not sure which situation was worse.”

President Abraham Lincoln, who lost two of his children, was reported to have suffered from depression. Kennedy was diagnosed with anxiety, and took heavy-duty prescription medication. Presidents Franklin Pierce and Calvin Coolidge both lost children, and dealt with depression.

Aides to Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon had to navigate both presidents’ serious psychological challenges.

As for Trump, “playing armchair psychiatrist/psychologist is a dangerous game, even when one knows the individual in question very well,” says Mr. Pietrusza in an email. “Playing it at a distance is like playing the lottery. Add a substantial dose of political self-interest, and the pastime becomes even less reputable.”

“Previously, the knock on Trump was that he was fascist," Pietrusza continues. "That proved to be incorrect. He was not a fascist. He was just Trump. Now, he is rumored to be mentally unfit as defined by the 25th Amendment or by some such reasoning process. He is, however, probably still just Trump.”

‘Goldwater rule’ at stake

On Friday, Trump will go for a physical exam at Walter Reed National Military Center. Typically, presidential physicals don’t include an examination of mental health. But when spokeswoman Sarah Sanders was asked last week if Trump’s physical would include mental health, she did not say either way.

In response to an interview request about psychiatrists’ comments on Trump, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) responded by providing a link to its web page on with the so-called “Goldwater rule.” The rule, instituted in the wake of Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964, was a response to a survey sent by Fact magazine to more than 12,000 psychiatrists, who were asked to assess Senator Goldwater’s mental health.

The survey elicited some “harshly negative responses” by psychiatrists who had never met Goldwater, and in 1973, the APA instituted its rule forbidding members from commenting on the mental health of political candidates. Many of the responses were deemed to be tainted by the political views of the doctors.

Today, some psychiatrists argue that since non-physicians comment publicly on Trump’s mental state, the Goldwater rule binds medical professionals unfairly. And in the case of Trump, some feel a “duty to warn” the public about what they see as danger signs.

The store Surge Polonia, whose Latin name means “Rise Up Poland,” was established in 2011 online, selling clothes with patriotic slogans such as “Feel Pride” emblazoned onto T-shirts and sweatshirts.

But demand has grown so much that the owners have since opened physical locales in Warsaw, Lublin, Gdynia, and Wrocław, according to their website, joining dozens of other such apparel shops peddling in patriotism in recent years across the nation.

“I started to wear these clothes a few years ago to show that patriotism has its value, that we can be proud of Poland,” says Jakub Strzelczyk, while shopping in the Surge Polonia Warsaw branch inside a shopping mall that also houses such standards as Zara, Mango, and H&M.

His viewpoint provides some insight into how Poland – whose pride was once founded on leading the country away from the Soviet Empire and into the western fold – is now sitting on the front lines of a rebellion against the European Union.

Pro-Warsaw and pro-Europe

Poland is one of the biggest challenges the EU faces at the start of 2018.

Last month, the EU triggered Article 7, a never-before-used procedure to attempt to force the country to halt legislation that gives politicians more sway over the courts. Widely seen abroad as undemocratic, the legislation could technically lead Poland to lose its voting rights – and already has cost it clout – in the bloc.

The so-called “nuclear option” shows how seriously the EU takes dissent coming from Poland, the biggest and most influential of the post-Soviet member states. But the next steps are unclear if Poland does not back down from its controversial judicial reform. The EU will vote on the sanctions process, but it requires unanimity among all member states. Already Hungary has said it’s on Poland’s side.

And Poland's ruling party, Law & Justice (PiS), remains as popular as ever. Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who is due to announce a cabinet reshuffle by tomorrow, heads to Brussels Tuesday to meet with the EU Commission to discuss next steps.

“Quel paradoxe!” opined Le Monde, France’s newspaper of record, about the triggering of Article 7 on Dec. 20, when contrasted with Poland's grassroots movement to bring down communism in 1989.

It’s not that Poles are clamoring to follow Britain out of the bloc; they remain enthusiasts of the EU. Even PiS politicians who criticize the EU do not advocate in favor of leaving it.

But surveys show a bump overall in support for the government since Brussels took the unprecedented step against it. In fact, despite Poland and the EU being at loggerheads throughout 2017, 65 percent of Poles in a poll by CBOS published Jan. 4 said the last year was a good one, the best result since 1989.

Conservative Poland

The popularity of the party, which has divided Poland, owes to many factors, including Poland’s strong economic performance, child benefits that PiS has enacted, and the party’s hard stance on refugees and Russia. But it’s also benefited from a new kind of nationalism brewing, where the EU is painted as an enemy class of liberal elites who are out of step with regular Poles.

Maciej Gdula, a sociologist at the University of Warsaw who authored a report about small-town support for PiS in November, says that for most of Poland's transformation from Soviet rule, small-town Poles were made to feel “bad” for not being big-city elites. PiS has thus come into power restoring their sense of self, Professor Gdula says, "that people from small towns and villages can feel proud of who they are."

It is one reason its isolation as a rebellious EU member state has not crossed a “red line” for supporters, he says.

According to recent Eurobarometer polling, Poles hold more positive views of the EU than the EU average. But they also feel distinct from it. The Stefan Batory Foundation, which receives funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, recently carried out a survey on Polish identity. As the most homogeneous society in Europe, 70 percent said that being a Catholic was an important factor for being considered a "real Pole.” In Roman Catholic Spain, just 20 percent said the same.

“Polish society stands out from other EU countries when it comes to conservatism in social matters, which enhances the feeling of being different from the rest of Europeans,” the report notes.

‘Not financed by the European Union’

Bashing the EU remains popular among ruling politicians and patriotic merchandisers. Among the mottoes of one patriotic apparel company, Red is Bad: “This product has not been financed by the European Union.”

Indeed, Polish patriotism has kicked into full gear this year as Poland observes the 100th anniversary of regaining independence.

Joanna Bieniek is in her 20s and coordinates the Academy of Modern Patriotism, which runs workshops for students where they are taught economic patriotism – like buying only Polish products. According to a CBOS poll in November 2017, 46 percent of respondents said that they choose products because they were Polish, 13 percent more than a year ago.

She says when she was in high school ten years ago, there was very little emphasis put on the EU. "I don't remember that in high school an emphasis was put on European values.”

Robert Grzeszczak, a professor who specializes in the EU law at University of Warsaw, says that in the transition to democracy, many governments failed to build an ethos around the EU and its common values, instead selling it to the public as merely an economic success story from which Poland can benefit. Today, he says, “Polish Euro-enthusiasm is very superficial.”

Richard Mertens

Barbara Martinez works at her desk at the at the nonprofit Heartland Alliance in Chicago. Even with a regular salary she says she's financially vulnerable if emergencies crop up. She's used short-term loans sometimes, but was able to use alternatives to ultra-costly payday loans.

Barbara Martinez was driving home on Interstate 55 when another car merged too soon, swiping her 2011 Honda Civic and putting her in a financial bind. Her insurance would pay for repairs – the other driver was uninsured – but her deductible was high and she lacked savings to pay it.

Millions of Americans find themselves in the same predicament, short of cash with bills to pay. Often they borrow from friends and relatives. But many also turn to payday loans that are easy to get but hard to pay back.

Ms. Martinez, who is 40, had taken a payday loan before: $350, to be repaid in two weeks, plus fees. “I remember thinking ... it’s going to take so much money to pay this back,’” she says.

This time she had an alternative. A local credit union lent her $1,000 at low interest, with six months to repay. A part of her payments went into a savings account. It kept her car on the road and allowed her the “peace of mind,” she says, that a payday loan could not.

Payday lending has come under increasing scrutiny because of its heavy cost to borrowers, including high fees, short repayment periods, and the danger of ensnaring them in debt. Eighteen states now restrict or ban the loans. In October the federal Consumer Finance Protection Bureau imposed new rules aimed at curbing their worse features.

At the same time, efforts are growing to provide alternatives, like the “borrow-and-save” loan Martinez used to fix her car. It’s one of the ways that credit unions, small banks, advocates for low-income families, and an increasing number of employers are working in communities around the country to meet the needs of financially vulnerable families. Most of these alternatives are small in scale, especially compared with the payday loan industry’s estimated 12 million customers a year. But advocates believe that the mounting restrictions on payday lending offer an opportunity to make alternatives more widely available.

“Getting rid of bad loans could help good loans to flourish,” says Lauren Saunders, associate director of the nonprofit National Consumer Law Center.

No one argues that alternatives to payday loans can, just by themselves, relieve the financial strain on families struggling to make ends meet. When Walmart, the country’s largest employer, announced in December that it would allow its employees to take advances on their paychecks, the response from critics was: Why not just pay them more?

“For someone who doesn’t have enough money for expenses, credit isn’t the answer,” Ms. Saunders says.

Families with unexpected needs, volatile incomes

But even critics of payday lending say that access to short-term credit is crucial to low- and middle-income families, many of whom live paycheck-to-paycheck and are ill-prepared to handle unexpected expenses. The popularity of payday lending, they suggest, is symptomatic of an economy that relies heavily on low-wage workers, and in which more than half of all households report spending more than they earn. Studies have found that, amid trends like “gig” work and variable scheduling, incomes often fluctuate from week to week.

“That’s a massive problem,” says Nick Bourke, an expert on consumer finance at the Pew Charitable Trusts, which has studied payday lending. “It explains why people turn to payday loans.”

Martinez was able to repay her payday loan on time, but most borrowers can’t. They renew the loan over and over, as fees mount and push them further into debt. On an annual basis, interest rates can exceed 300 percent.

Among the leaders in payday alternatives are credit unions, member-based institutions with a history of serving low-income communities. North Side Community Federal Credit Union in Chicago introduced small-dollar loans 20 years ago, when payday loans were just becoming popular. Two years ago, it began offering larger loans with a borrow-and-save requirement, an increasingly popular feature of payday alternatives. Borrowers are offered financial counseling, an effort to nudge them further along the road to long-term financial stability.

“It’s a complex problem,” says Sarah Marshall, North Side’s CEO. “Offering a payday alternative loan is just one factor in getting people away from payday loans.”

Martinez has taken out three of the loans –  once for her car, once to pay medical bills and once to fix a tooth.  She’s not poor: She works full-time at a nonprofit agency, promoting “asset building” among low-income clients. But even a regular salary can’t make her feel secure.

“It’s stressful, even when you have a full-time job,” she says. “You don’t know what will happen next year.”

A new market for small banks?

The federal government has taken steps to encourage payday alternatives. In 2010 it introduced new rules that allow credit unions to charge higher interest on small personal loans. The number of credit unions offering the loans has since risen to more than 500 – about a tenth of the credit unions in the country.

Some smaller commercial banks also offer payday alternatives. Mitchell Bank in Milwaukee was among 28 banks that participated in a pilot program several years ago supported by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Mitchell charged borrowers from 15 to 22 percent interest and required them to put 10 percent into savings.

“It was absolutely a success,” says Mitchell’s CEO, Thomas Hart. The bank continues to offer the loans.  One of the main attractions of payday loans is their convenience, and so Mitchell has tried to make its alternative easy for borrowers, too.

“They come in and we cut them a check right away,” Mr. Hart says. “People have definitely used it rather than payday loans.”

In St. Louis, RedDough Money Centers offer loans in storefront operations that compete directly with the payday lenders that are ubiquitous in many low-income neighborhoods. The nonprofit offers small loans at 36 percent interest –  higher than many other alternatives but considerably lower than payday loans. The repayment period ranges from four to 12 months.

“The challenge for us is scale,” says Paul Woodruff, CEO of the St. Louis nonprofit Prosperity Connection, which runs RedDough. “We’re working hard to get the word out.”

Employers offer loans and advances

Perhaps the fastest-growing alternatives are salary advances and small loans offered as a workplace benefit.  The 2008 recession seems to have marked a turning point, says Meredith Covington, who directs the study of financial wellness programs at Washington University in St. Louis.

“Employers started recognizing that a lot of their employees were undergoing major financial hardship after the recession,” Ms. Covington says.   

Lutheran Social Service of Minnesota is one of them. Based in St. Paul, the agency employs 2,300 people, most of whom work part time for $11 to $13 an hour. Joyce Norals, head of human resources, says she was skeptical about a small-loan benefit until she saw how popular it was.

“It aligns with our values as an organization, helping people sustain their lives,” says Ms. Norals. “It’s a far better alternative.”

Employers don’t lend money themselves but use third-party vendors to connect employees with banks. Advocates say the approach works because it’s efficient. Lenders have access to payroll information and can withdraw payments directly from a worker’s paycheck.

Employees of Lutheran Social Service get their loans from Sunrise Banks, which provides small-loan benefits to more than 100,000 employees at 2,500 firms across the country.

“Making small-dollar loans to people with no credit scores is hard to do,” says David Reiling, Sunrise’s CEO. “It’s much easier to eliminate risky borrowers from your portfolio or to increase fees on those borrowers to offset risk.”

For this and other reasons, the reach of payday alternatives remains limited. Alternatives come mainly from small institutions already dedicated to serving low-income communities.  Many people don’t know about them.  “They’re still working out the details of what works,” says Margaret Sherraden, a professor of social work at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who is writing a textbook on financial services for low-income households.  

“We see a space where there needs to be a little more creativity,” says Prosperity Connection’s Mr. Woodruff.

Martinez sees a lot of need around her: Single mothers, one-income households, Uber drivers and those juggling multiple part-time jobs.  When squeezed, a lot of them use payday loans, pawnshops, or online lenders. She suggests they look at the alternative that helped her.

“I feel it’s a hidden treasure,” she says.

The Blue Team is ready to roll.

Audrey Pearson hops in the front seat of a white van emblazoned with the Homeless Outreach sign. The vehicle exits through barbed wire that rings a former bread factory, and onto the hot and hostile streets of South Los Angeles. Charles Cuadro, a stocky man, all lip rings and necklaces, maintains a calm demeanor behind the wheel.

In the back is Ms. King – everybody calls her that, though her full name is Shanadral King – the veteran.  She fled a desk job to get out back on the street, where she talks the language of the homeless. She is a presence: big bejeweled sunglasses under a halo of purple-tinted hair.

These social workers are the front lines of a nonprofit hired by the city to battle the most stubborn and accusing urban ill: the destitute people discarded to the streets, living under canvas tarps or piles of trash without food or sanitation.

Ms. Pearson is pumped. She is new on the job, a recent arrival from St. Louis with solid experience there and a psychology degree. She came to Los Angeles three months earlier “to follow my dream” –  nothing to do with stardom or fame, but to work with homeless people.

In a cross-country reporting journey to sample views of America, it is good to start with Pearson. She is incurably upbeat, full of laughter and smiles. She knows the jargon of social work, but her soul just runs friendly. She dawdles to talk to everyone, from her colleagues at the Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System (she has to bend her neck to read the name from the HOPICS logo she now wears), to the grizzled guy emerging shirtless from under a tattered tent.

“It’s important to do what you can,” says Pearson. She started a program for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in St. Louis, and watched it grow over six years to a charity for all homeless people, with 125 volunteers. “You have to give back how you can. We are all an inspiration to someone. Powerful things can happen.”

And yet …   

Pearson was left agape by the homeless situation in L.A. “I’ve just never seen anything like it. Along all the roads and highways, all the tents. In St. Louis, the police never, never would have let this happen. They would have forced them out.

“I went to Skid Row. I thought ‘How does this happen? How do we allow this to get this way?’ We really have to ask ourselves: As a country, how do we sleep with this epidemic happening?”

Los Angeles has an estimated 58,000 homeless people, more than any US city except New York. The vagrants have taken over downtown streets, haunt Hollywood, and carve rough encampments into city parks. They lack basic hygiene; the city is alarmed at a statewide outbreak of hepatitis A, spread by contact with human waste. A cooking fire at a homeless camp is blamed for one of the flash fires that encircled the city in December.

The problem is not fed by a lack of good will. Impressively, the voters of Los Angeles have approved $1.2 billion in bonds for more housing and voted to raise the sales tax to expand social services for the homeless. The mayor and city council are on board.  John Helyar, who runs the South Los Angeles outreach for HOPICS, is plowing through applications – he values time in prison or homelessness, hard to find on most résumés – to put more teams on the road.

He is hopeful, but the homeless numbers keep going up. “Clearly people want to see results,” he says. “But it’s not going to happen as soon as they think.  It’s not a ‘this year’ solution.”  

Pearson, too, wonders at the end-game. The social workers wrestle with a real-life puzzle to get homeless people – who often don’t want the help – into a labyrinth of services that often don’t have the space to give the help.  

Mr. Cuadro pulls the van over at a jumble of tents propped against the concrete wall of I-110 at the dead end, ironically, of Hope Street. Ms. King and Pearson walk the row, greeting men and women emerging sleepily. A regular here, Dee has agreed to go to a sobriety tank, but is getting edgy about it. Eugene pulls up on a bike. He’s friendly, but wants nothing to do with their services: “I’m on the run,” he explains. “Mr. Bless” sits on a child’s trampoline and mumbles that he was evicted from a veterans’ shelter.

The Blue Team will go back to their office to work the phones to find services, but two weeks later, those three will still be on the streets. With no other anchors, many homeless people have staked claims to drugs or booze or inner demons that make the independence of their lives addictive.

“Some days, it does discourage me,” Pearson admits. “I’m a person of hope. And I know there is so much chaos going on right now, from the White House to individuals’ homes. But it makes me feel like, is this is the survival of the fittest?

“It’s time to stop stepping over our issues our problems, and even ignoring that others around us may need a helping hand to get up,” she says. “Stepping over an individual just to get in your home and ignoring the fact that they are laying down there? It has grown to be a sore that is everybody’s.”

Mike Blake/Reuters

Snowboarder Alex Deibold poses for a portrait at the US Olympic Committee Media Summit in Park City, Utah, on Sept. 27, 2017.

Alex Deibold is a 31-year-old college freshman who has spent far more time snowboarding than studying.

But that’s not because he’s a slacker.

Mr. Deibold is an Olympic bronze medalist. And he’s gunning for another Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, next month.

Like many elite athletes, his intense training schedule makes it difficult to pursue a traditional education. But Deibold and other American Olympians have harnessed the determination, perseverance, and innovation that makes them great at their sports to get an education along the way – it just doesn’t always happen in a classroom. Because of their unique path, they often bring more to their classwork than your average college student.

“I have a 4.0 GPA because I’ve been around the world and I’ve worked crummy jobs,” says Deibold, who worked as a door-to-door roof salesman after he missed the 2010 Olympic team, and experienced homeowners slamming the door in his face or screaming at him to get off their property. “I’m going to dedicate myself to the opportunities that are put in front of me – instead of being like, ‘I gotta go to class, or I don’t want to do that paper’ … now I have this perspective and it’s going to help me grind harder.” 

Traditionally, athletes have competed for one or maybe two Olympic cycles before getting on with “real life.” But as Olympic sporting careers increasingly span three or four or even five Games, athletes and teams are recognizing the value of developing the whole person.

“The shift has been palpable even in the four years I’ve been here,” says Julie Glusker, head of athlete career and education for US Ski & Snowboard in Park City, Utah. Her office overlooks a huge gym where Olympians are working out and abuts a study hall where they can work on academics in-between training sessions. “It went from, ‘Don’t bother the coaches about school’ to now, a coach comes to me and says, ‘Hey, how is so-and-so doing in this class?’ ”

For teams, who invest millions of dollars in developing young athletes, offering education and career advancement opportunities can help them keep medalists and rising stars far longer than they used to. For athletes, academics bring perspective beyond their competition goals, and a springboard for a post-competition career once they retire. 

“I think it’s super intimidating if you’ve been an athlete for awhile and all of a sudden you’re cutting off sport to go to school,” says Ms. Glusker. “I’ve had several say that being able to go to school has made them less concerned about retirement because they know there will be a good place to land.”

A boon for parents

More than five dozen US Ski & Snowboard athletes received tuition reimbursement in the past year, according to Glusker, including nearly half the aerials team and almost a third of the alpine team. Their mean GPA was 3.69. In addition, Westminster College, a liberal arts school in Salt Lake City, provides 600 credit hours – worth roughly $800,000 – free of charge to A and B Team members. Last year, 39 such athletes were enrolled.

For parents of young athletes, such educational opportunities can help ease the decision of forgoing a traditional collegiate experience.

“If mom and dad are making a decision at age 14 – does Johnny go on the college path or the US Ski Team path? – we want them to choose the Ski Team path, and know there’s college with it,” says Tom Kelly, vice president of communications for US Ski & Snowboard.

“The minute I made the team, my mother and father were very excited because it was essentially a college commitment, too,” says freestyle skier Morgan Schild, who notes that the free tuition is available to athletes for a couple of years post-retirement. “I told them I would do at least two years while I was on the team so that by the time I retire I can still finish fully supported by a scholarship.”

As it turned out, Ms. Schild was injured and unable to compete for 22 months, so she actually lived in the dorms freshman year and got a jumpstart on her education. Most of her classmates didn’t even know about her skiing prowess – until they attended a World Cup moguls competition in Deer Valley, Utah, a year ago and saw her win gold. 

“It was like, ‘Oh yeah, this is what I do for a living actually,’ ” she says. “They thought it was the coolest thing in the world.” 

John Leicester/AP

Ashley Caldwell, the 2017 women's aerials skiing world champion from the United States, soars through the air during jump training in Saas-Fee, Switzerland on Oct. 17, 2017, ahead of the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.

Weak Wi-Fi in European hamlets 

When gymnast Ashley Caldwell watched the 2006 Winter Olympics on TV and saw US aerials skier Jeret Peterson land his crazy-hard “Hurricane” jump, she thought, “I can do that.” The only problem: she lived in Virginia.

So at 14, she moved north to train on snow. Working diligently through an online program, including during the summers, she finished high school in two years. Then she did a four-year college degree in three years through New York's SUNY Empire State College. 

“You know, traveling the world – we do a lot of stuff, but you’re also on the plane for 12 hours at a time. You can get a lot done in 12 hours on a plane,” says Ms. Caldwell. “I just brought my textbooks with me and I made it a priority and I just got it done.”

But as athletes advance and begin spending weeks or months on the road in Europe, often in small alpine towns, finding good internet connections can be hard. 

Erin Hamlin, America’s best-ever female luger, also enrolled in SUNY Empire, earning a two-year online degree after graduating from high school in 2004. But it took a long time to chip away at her bachelor’s degree through DeVry University, an online, for-profit university which has committed to $13.5 million in scholarship support for Team USA through 2020.

A couple of Ms. Hamlin’s teammates were also pursuing an online degree – but their efforts to study were sometimes thwarted by other teammates who would bog down the weak Wi-Fi networks.

“We would get so mad if other teammates were playing games online, or downloading movies, or something,” says Hamlin, a four-time medalist at World Championships, and the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in luge. “We’re like, ‘We just really need to submit a paper here. Can you PLEASE get off the internet?’ ” 

Hamlin, who has ranked in the top-10 on the World Cup luge circuit for nearly a dozen years, persevered and finally got her bachelor’s degree in 2016.

Another kind of education

Having a degree in their pocket when they leave competition helps ease a transition that some athletes find difficult – being the best in the world at something, and then having to start from virtually zero in a new profession. 

But other athletes point out that competing at an Olympic level is an education in itself, from the cultures you encounter to the entrepreneurial skills you acquire as a one-person business. 

“We’re our own brands, we have to get sponsors, we have to work on promoting ourselves,” says Joss Christensen, the reigning Olympic champion in slopestyle skiing, who has taken classes at Westminster. “That’s a huge part – I run two other businesses, I run a website and an app company with my friends…. And it’s just all these experiences that you have to learn hands-on that I don’t think I would have been taught in school.”

Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File

In this official photo released Jan. 2, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks in Tehran, Iran. New unrest in Iran over the past 10 days appears to be waning, but anger over the economy and the regime persists. The protests in dozens of towns and cities shows that a sector of the public was willing to openly call for the removal of Iran’s system of rule by clerics.

What drives many Middle East conflicts? Clashes over religion, of course, such as whether elite clerics should rule. Several countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Tunisia, have lately tried to curb the power of religious authorities. Last year’s overthrow of Islamic State’s brief caliphate marked a major shift in thinking. Now the region’s mightiest theocracy, Iran, has seen a historic challenge after more than a week of mass protests against the Islamic Republic.

The protests began Dec. 28 in Mashhad, a Shiite pilgrimage city, and spread quickly to nearly 80 cities and towns. Unlike protests in 1999 and 2009, the largely leaderless crowds consisted mainly of jobless youths and hard-pressed workers. They expressed resentment at everything from a rise in the price of eggs to shrinking welfare subsidies to corruption.

Part of the fury was directed at a new budget that favors higher spending on the wealthy religious institutions of ruling clerics and on Iran’s military activities in nearby countries aimed at spreading Islamic “revolution.” The budget priorities only reinforce a popular belief that reigning clerics are enriching themselves and suppressing dissent.

Yet it is the protesters’ favorite slogans that hint at a possible historic transition in Iran. Thousands chanted, “We don’t want an Islamic Republic,” “Clerics! Get lost,” and “The people live in poverty, and the leader acts like a god.”

The latter is a reference to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the second supreme leader since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979. Like his predecessor, the late Ruhollah Khomeini, he claims power over the state based on a claim to being the most eminent living Islamic jurist, while allowing a semblance of democracy with rigged elections. Such religious doctrine is not a recipe for humility in governance or accountability to the people – which lies at the heart of the protesters’ demands.

Many revered Shiite clerics, such as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Iraq, argue against the Iranian model of clerics ruling over secular government, especially in a diverse society. Within Iran, leading voices often ask the regime to listen more to the people. Just two months before the protests, President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate who wields little power, warned about popular distrust of the leading imam. “If the asset of trust gets destroyed, everything would be destroyed,” he said.

Nearly four decades of theocratic autocracy will be hard to shake in Iran. Yet 48 million of Iran’s 80 million people now have smartphones, giving them greater access to ideas. Not only can they quickly mobilize, more of them seek a government based on each person’s equality and an ability to reason together through peaceful persuasion rather than through the imposition of religion with state coercion.

In countries that cherish both social stability and freedom of conscience, inspiration comes not from one person but from the highest qualities of thought expressed through collaboration and the democratic process. Those who listen well and seek the highest truth can rule the best. Iran may now be on such a path. And as more Middle East countries haltingly embrace these concepts, the more the region will be at peace.