A big industry defended by powerful lobbyists. A product popular with grassroots supporters but reviled by critics as lethal. A nationwide debate that touches on deep aspects of American culture.

Guns in 2018? No, tobacco in 1998.

Twenty years ago, a historic settlement between tobacco firms and 46 states shackled the smoking trade in the United States. The industry agreed to pay states billions of dollars in damages, and to curtail much of its marketing. Tobacco dollars funded a new national anti-smoking advocacy campaign. Smoking rates in the US declined – and continue to go down.

Could that public health success be a template for anti-gun action? Some activists are now renewing calls for national gun-control organizations to focus on the tools used against tobacco, from liability lawsuits to gritty ad campaigns intended to “deglamorize” consumer usage. The theory: Back in the day, Big Tobacco seemed impervious against attack – until, suddenly, it wasn’t. Perhaps the same holds true for the National Rifle Association today.

But there’s a flaw in this chain of logic: Guns and tobacco occupy very different positions in American law. The Second Amendment to the Constitution is silent on the right to possess cigars. And firearms are symbolic in a way that tobacco is not. To many owners, they are about freedom, as well as shooting. They are emblems of a traditionalist vision for the country, plus a way to plink cans off the fence.

Still, comparing and contrasting these industries may be a good way to highlight and explain the strengths and vulnerabilities of both sides in the post-Parkland gun debate. For their part, the NRA and the gun industry may have learned from tobacco’s long experience in trying to stave off greater federal controls.

“There is some remarkable overlap between what the tobacco industry invented 30 years ago, and the strategy of the NRA and its supporters today,” says Mark Pertschuk, a longtime expert and organizer for both the anti-tobacco and anti-gun movements.

For instance, both the tobacco and gun lobbies have taken a muscular approach to combating criticism, including attempts to prevent government research on the health aspects of the issue in question, says Mr. Pertschuk, former longtime president of Americans for Nonsmokers’ Rights and former legislative director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

John Duricka/AP/File

Heads of the nation's largest cigarette companies appeared before a hearing of a House Energy subcommittee on Capitol Hill in Washington on April 14, 1994. Each of the executives testified he believed 'nicotine is not addictive.'

Back in the early 1990s, tobacco firms managed to block publication of an Environmental Protection Agency report on the dangers of secondhand smoke for more than two years. More recently, the NRA has effectively blocked the federal Centers for Disease Control from studying the effects of gun violence.

Today, one of the most important similarities between what used to be known as Big Tobacco and the NRA is the use of state preemption laws to block any gun violence reduction laws at the local level, says Pertschuk.

Take Florida. Back in 1985, the state legislature passed a law controlling the power of local officials to restrict smoking in public places. Similarly, under Florida law today, city or county leaders who enact or enforce firearms legislation in their jurisdictions face state-ordained punishments that can include removal from office.

The purpose of such laws is legal consistency, according to the NRA. NRA executive director Chris Cox has said they protect gun owners “from harassment by an unreasonable and confusing patchwork of municipal gun laws.”

However, a focused effort by gun-violence prevention groups, harnessing the energy created in the wake of the Parkland shooting, might be able to get some of these laws repealed, says Pertschuk. That would open the way for more liberal city governments to tighten gun laws, even in red states.

“If they did that, it would catch fire like the revolution against tobacco,” he says.

A historic settlement

The Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement of 1998 was struck between the four largest United States tobacco companies and the attorneys general of 46 states. The states agreed to drop mammoth lawsuits they had filed against the companies for the medical costs incurred by public programs such as Medicaid for treating tobacco-related illnesses. In return, the tobacco industry agreed to sharply curtail much of its advertising, make continued payments to the states for health care costs, and to establish an anti-smoking advocacy group called the Truth Initiative as part of its settlement payout.

Smoking was already on decline in the US in 1998. Since then, that trend has accelerated. At the time of the tobacco settlement, about 27 percent of Americans smoked at least once a week, according to Gallup historical data. The comparable figure for 2017 was 17 percent.

Smoking among teens has fallen even faster than it has among adults. About 23 percent of teens smoked in 1998; today, the rate is about 6 percent. Edgy anti-tobacco ads funded by the tobacco industry itself via the Truth Initiative are a big reason for this drop, according to some experts.

That’s led some gun-violence prevention activists to press for their own Truth Initiative – a national ad campaign devoted to making gun ownership seem less attractive, or to at least point out the costs of the nation’s high gun ownership rate.

Where would the money for such an effort come from? There’s no gun equivalent to the tobacco settlement, so the industry itself isn’t paying for it, obviously. Some experts have speculated that someone like billionaire Michael Bloomberg might back such an initiative, or lead the fundraising for it, in any case. The former New York mayor is a longtime anti-gun activist who backs the nonprofit group Everytown for Gun Safety.

But the effects of an anti-gun ad blitz might not be the same as those of the past anti-tobacco effort.

Smoking used to be a habit widely spread through all US demographics. As surprising as it may seem today, its dangers were not well understood until the 1960s. In 1964, the surgeon general published a sweeping report that drove home the point: smoking was a leading cause of national mortality. The report shocked the public, according to a Harvard Political Review 2016 analysis. It was one of the most followed news stories of the year.

“As a result of the Surgeon General’s report and the ensuring reforms, since 1964 the smoking population in the United States has steadily declined,” according to the Harvard Political Review.

In contrast, gun ownership is not widespread across demographic groups. Gun owners are much more likely to be white, male, and live in rural areas than non-gun owners (a 2017 Pew Research poll found that about half of all white men say they own a gun). They are fully aware that guns are dangerous. Given that many cite personal safety as the impetus for firearms purchases, that is often the point.

For many that own them, guns are a part of their identity. Many live in areas where gun ownership is the norm, according to Pew Research data. Sixty-six percent own more than one firearm.

The vast majority of owners say their guns are not just a practical object, but a symbol as well. A “defining characteristic” of gun ownership is the extent to which firearms are associated with a personal sense of freedom, wrote Pew in a 2017 report.

Seventy-four percent of gun owners say possession of a firearm is “essential” to their own sense of freedom, according to Pew. Only 35 percent of non-gun owners say the same.

“Integrated into the fabric of American society since the country’s earliest days, guns remain a point of pride for many Americans,” concludes the Pew study.

The Second Amendment

Perhaps the biggest difference between tobacco and guns is legal status. There is nothing in the Constitution about the right to smoke being necessary for a well-regulated militia.

For that and other reasons, tobacco was vulnerable to lawsuits prior to 1998. As a big, highly profitable industry, it wanted to get out from under this threat, and could afford to pay to do so.

“The tobacco industry was looking for a settlement,” says Timothy Lytton, a law professor at Georgia State University’s Center for Law, Health, and Society.

The gun industry is in a different position. It is much smaller, and thus unable to pay for an expensive, wide-ranging settlement. It has the constitutional bulwark. And Congress has further protected it via laws that make it difficult to sue gun makers or sellers.

Prior to the mid-2000s, some plaintiffs did successfully sue gun dealers on the grounds that they should have known that the product they were selling would be put to criminal use, notes Mr. Lytton, an expert on tort litigation and public policy and editor of the 2005 book, “Suing the Gun Industry.”

But in 2005, lawmakers passed, and President George W. Bush signed into law, the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.” The bill prohibits civil liability actions against the makers or sellers of guns and ammunition on grounds that purchasers used their products illegally.

“For the most part, [the 2005 bill] made it extremely difficult to sue a firearm manufacturer,” says Lytton. “We don’t see many lawsuits.”

As a result, an effective means of pressuring a large industry has been greatly restricted. Suing can be about more than just winning, after all. It spotlights industry practices. Plaintiff’s attorneys can produce lots of interesting documents due to the discovery process. It keeps an issue in the spotlight.

Take the long legal effort to get the Roman Catholic Church to shoulder responsibility for sexual abuse committed by priests.

“The wave of litigation, even when it lost, had a tremendous effect in framing [public opinion],” says Lytton.

The legal status of tobacco and guns may indeed be different. But there is one characteristic the two industries share, says John Tures, an associate professor of political science at LaGrange College in Georgia, who’s written on the issue. That characteristic is hubris.

Before the 1990s, Big Tobacco was seen as unassailable, says Dr. Tures. “Their perceived power led to a lot of arrogance,” he says. “They didn’t realize how quickly public opinion could change.”

Tobacco refused to compromise – and is now an endangered species, industry-wise.

Rather than follow that model, Tures says, gun proponents should look to a different (and perhaps surprising) one: the comic book industry. In the 1950s, violent comics were blamed for a spurt in crime, to the point where Congress held hearings on the subject. The industry quickly turned to self-regulation to head off government inquiries, emphasizing “positive” superheroes among other things.

For advocates of gun-violence prevention, a better analogy to consider as they press forward might not be tobacco – but automobiles, according to some experts.

Automobiles are a big public-health problem. Yet they are not going to be banned or even tightly controlled any time soon. What the US and other countries do instead is work to make them less deadly. This has been a slow process, but since 1921 it has reduced the death rate per mile driven by 95 percent.

The key there has been incremental movement. From seatbelts to national speed limits, child safety seats to airbags, gradual steps have saved lives.

Consider teenagers alone: The combination of a higher drinking age, increased license standards, and stiffer penalties for intoxication have lowered the chances of a teen dying in a car crash by 69 percent since 1978, according to Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research in Baltimore. A combination of incremental efforts might have the same effect with guns, he noted in an interview last fall.

Over time, the US could see steep reductions in its gun violence rate, says Dr. Webster.

“I do sense changes in the conversation, changes in the manner [the US deals with guns, that] I hoped for and cautiously predicted,” he says.

Clarification: This article has been updated to include additional information on the establishment of the Truth Initiative as part of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.

Jacquelyn Martin/AP

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laughs as he takes a seat to answer questions from students after speaking about the relationship between the U.S. and countries in Africa, at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., Tuesday, March 6, 2018.

For decades, the United States has vaunted the advantages and promise of deeper engagement with Africa, but more often than not the action has failed to match the rhetoric.

President George W. Bush introduced his groundbreaking PEPFAR AIDS-response program, while Barack Obama intervened to save a region from Ebola and then established a vast public-private electrification project to help boost Africa’s development.

But to a large extent – and notably aside from a steady buildup of counterterrorist security partnerships in recent years – the US has steadily retreated to the sidelines as African states have sought to develop their economies. And that’s been true even as other powers – most notably China – have leapfrogged the US to become Africa’s dominant foreign partners.

This week Rex Tillerson makes his first trip to Africa as secretary of State, aiming to reassert America’s role not just as a hard-power security blanket but as a soft-power partner.

He’ll talk up the importance of democracy, good governance, and respect for human rights on his five-nation tour, according to State Department diplomats. He’ll pledge American partnership in fulfilling Africa’s bright economic promise, as some African countries register impressive growth rates and international economists spotlight Africa as the world’s next Southeast Asia.

And as he suggested in a speech Tuesday at George Mason University before jumping on a plane, Mr. Tillerson will warn his African hosts about China’s development model, which to America’s way of thinking is stripping Africa of its natural wealth – particularly precious metals – and indebting countries to dangerous levels while giving little back.

Touting America’s model of development assistance as one that demands transparency, good governance practices, and respect for human rights in exchange for US “partnerships,” Tillerson said it “stands in stark contrast to China’s approach.”

The Chinese model, he said, is typified by “predatory loan practices and corrupt deals that mire nations in debt and undermine their independence” while “creating few if any jobs in most countries.”

But for many, the US is coming late and with little bang to the African dance. Moreover, African leaders are likely to receive Tillerson with a mixture of longing for American engagement and mounting skepticism over America’s desire and capability to play its traditional global leadership role.

Much of the world is “questioning whether we really have the energy, the engagement, the investment to sustain what has for 70 years been the rules-based liberal world order the US built after the Second World War,” said Sen. Christopher Coons (D) of Delaware, speaking last week at Washington’s Hudson Institute.

Contrasting US, China

Senator Coons, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and something of an Africa expert, was speaking specifically about the Middle Eastern countries he’d recently visited, and drawing a conclusion from the resounding message he said he’s received from leaders around the world.

In Africa in particular, he says, leaders want America’s involvement and partnership – but in the absence of that strong engagement they are turning increasingly to China and its very different model of development.

“There is no continent on the planet where the US is more positively viewed than Africa,” says Coons, who has visited 27 African countries over his tenure as senator. But he says there is no other continent “where the contest of ideas and systems between the United States and China is so daily and widely evident.”

Describing China’s message to Africa leaders as basically, “You can have development without all the messiness of human rights and journalists and [political] opposition,” he adds: “The force of China’s engagement with Africa is like a tidal pull. They’re present, they’re engaged, and they’re providing a powerful counterexample of how you can organize society.”

Tillerson will make stops in Ethiopia, where he’ll meet with national leaders as well as with representatives of the African Union, and then Djibouti, Kenya, Chad, and Nigeria. All are key security partners of the US – indeed Tillerson dedicated the first half of his George Mason speech to the importance of US security arrangements in Africa.

But some Africa experts worry that the secretary’s trip is heavy on countries where the US focus is largely on battling extremist groups, like Boko Haram in Nigeria and Chad.

Over-emphasis on security?

“The countries being visited by Secretary Tillerson have an overarching common denominator, and that is security and counterterrorism,” says Johnnie Carson, a former assistant secretary of State for African affairs and ambassador to several African countries. “For some of these states security is indeed the key issue,” he adds, “but it should not be the only focus of US policy in Africa.”

What sub-Saharan Africa is looking for in the US “is a good partner in economic development … a better commercial and investing partner,” adds Ambassador Carson, who is now an Africa expert at the US Institute of Peace in Washington.

Others say they can appreciate the reasoning behind Tillerson’s emphasis – but that it risks confirming the perspective of a broader section of Africa’s political and economic players that the US is out of all but the security game.

“I get that [Tillerson] is positioning security as the precondition for prosperity, and many African leaders – clearly those he’ll be meeting with – will agree with that,” says Aubrey Hruby, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center.

“But for broader stakeholders in the economy, the emphasis leaves the US out of the picture,” she says. “Security partnerships are important, but they are invisible to a lot of people, and so leave US engagement invisible as well.”

As it had before, the US launched with great fanfare a new initiative for commercial and economic engagement with Africa in 2000, says Ms. Hruby, former managing director of the Whitaker Group, an Africa-focused corporate strategy and investment advisory firm.

But then the results never lived up to the promise. “What has happened is that over the last 10 years the US has not increased its engagement of African economies as much as others have,” she adds, “so that has made it look like the US is slipping behind.”

Need for sustained partnerships

Certainly the US has slipped behind China, which has built huge infrastructure projects across Africa (including a transnational railroad in Djibouti) largely financed by big long-term loans.

Carson says the US is right to warn African countries about the consequences of the large amount of debt they are piling up with China. “We certainly don’t want Africa falling back into another debt trap like the one that was so debilitating in the 70s and 80s,” he says.

But the Atlantic Council’s Hruby says that more effective than warnings about other countries’ level of engagement would be a move by the US – both public and private sectors – beyond rhetoric to sustained partnerships.

“Africa’s leaders are not naïve, they are not hoodwinked into deals with China or anyone else, and they’ll be the first to tell you that the Chinese have their own agenda,” she says. “But they do feel like they don’t have a lot of alternatives.”

What the US should be doing, she adds, is demonstrating that the option of “broad-based, productive, and sustained partnerships” with US public and private sectors is more than Washington rhetoric.

The crowd making its way down the windy stone streets at the center of Freetown could easily be mistaken for a carnival. Women shaded by wide-brimmed hats stroke feather boas curled around their necks and cool themselves with red plastic fans. Men dressed in skin-tight suits pose on top of cars. Children dance to the beat of Nigerian pop music. A man standing on top of a van shouts “A, P,” into a loudspeaker, to which the crowd responds with a deafening “C!”

A mix of festival-like excitement and tense pre-election jitters pervades the streets of Sierra Leone as the country prepares to go to the polls this week, voting in a new president, parliamentarians, and local council members.

Sixteen years ago, Sierra Leone had just emerged from an eleven-year civil war: a conflict in which more than 50,000 people died, thousands of children were recruited as soldiers, natural resources (most famously diamonds) were looted, and the already dismal infrastructure was destroyed.

The scars remain today – not least in a still-struggling economy, one of the poorest in the world. And on March 7, voters will decide whether to stick with the incumbent All People’s Congress (APC), switch to their historical rival, the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), or give a chance to a handful of smaller opposition parties.

Around the world, belief in the importance of elections remains strong, but belief in their integrity is another matter. In a Gallup World Poll, fewer than half of respondents reported confidence in their country’s elections – and voting-day turnout is on the wane, as well.

But in Sierra Leone, turnout has averaged near 80 percent for all elections since the end of the war. Widespread belief that the ballot box is the path to political change stems from more than the party-like rallies that have gripped the capital over last week – though the festive atmosphere and candidate freebies no doubt add to the enthusiasm. Memories of the war have bolstered voters’ resolve to make change by more peaceful means, but so has the growth of an increasingly robust civil society, and increasing inclusiveness in politics, from new parties to newfound interest among youth.

Standing on his second-story balcony, Mohamed Alieu Bah looks out at the gyrating crowd of red and white. “It is a party today,” says Mr. Bah, who works at a youth-empowerment nonprofit. “But when it comes to peace, Sierra Leoneans don’t joke with that.”

“We have learned the lesson of the past,” he adds. “We have learned that war is no good. Power is only achieved through voting.”

Votes and peace

In 1996, Sierra Leone began its transition to democracy after decades of coups, counter-coups and one-party authoritarian governments. In the midst of the civil war the country held an election, won by SLPP’s candidate Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.

“1996 was the first time many Sierra Leoneans voted, and they took pride in doing it,” says Joseph Bangura, a historian and director of the African Studies program at Kalamazoo College in Michigan. “Tejan played a major role in bringing about peace. That experience made a lot of Sierra Leoneans take the issue of voting very seriously.”

The SLPP won the next election in 2002, too, attributed to its role in delivering peace. However, after the 2007 election’s tense campaign and run-off, the APC’s Ernest Bai Koroma was declared the winner. The SLPP contested the results, although the complaint was ultimately dismissed by the courts. 

“The fact that in 2007 there was very smooth and peaceful transfer of power from one civilian administration to another civilian administration – the ordinary voters of Sierra Leone felt pride in that development” and in their role in it, says Dr. Bangura. The transition “injected a high degree of confidence… And so they are motivated. They are motivated by the fact that they have the power to change things.”

Past elections have been marred by violence: in 2007, after clashes in the capital, the president threatened to impose a state of emergency. In recent weeks several incidents have taken place between supporters of rival parties, some of them fatal. But the violence has decreased compared to previous election campaigns, says Susan Shepler, an associate professor at American University in Washington, D.C., who studies African politics. “If there is violence it will be clashes between drunken young men and security forces, more than political parties intimidating voters,” she says.

Civil support

In part, Sierra Leoneans’ belief in change through the ballot box may be attributed to the increasing independence of the National Electoral Commission (NEC). In the past year the NEC has been involved in a number of high-profile disputes with the ruling APC involving requirements for candidacy, missing census data, and setting the date for the election. 

But the NEC has been supported – and held accountable – by an increasingly vibrant civil society that has been working since the end of the civil war to build up democratic norms shattered during the conflict. For the upcoming election, groups like the National Election Watch (NEW) have been engaged in a range of voter education activities, according to Ngolo Katta, spokesperson for the group.

“It starts with direct contact with voters in communities through town hall meetings,” explains Mr. Katta. “We also do radio jingles, public services advertisements, and music. We just did a training for citizens to understand the electoral process and address some of the rumors that spread on social media,” from bizarre stories about candidates’ origins to claims of rigging.

Last year a broad coalition of civil society organizations conducted a country-wide survey and put together a “citizens’ manifesto,” whose demands include campaign-funding transparency, candidates’ asset declarations, and the nomination of traditionally marginalized groups – women, youth, and the disabled – as candidates.

Not all demands have been met. But the manifesto has had an influence, says Andrew Lavali, the executive director of the Institute for Governance Reform, a Sierra Leonean think-tank that helped spearhead the initiative. Among the effects: Political parties’ own manifestos putting more focus on transparency and accountability, one opposition candidate publishing his assets, and the SLPP committing to a proposal to require all party and government leadership to publish their assets within their first 100 days in office.

New voices

Mr. Lavali points out that nearly half of down-ballot seats are being contested by people under age 35 – a key demographic in a country where one-third of the population is between 15 and 35, and more than two-thirds of youth are unemployed or underemployed.

Young Sierra Leoneans have registered to vote in record numbers and are approaching the election with an “unprecedented sense of duty,” citing a lack of education and opportunity as their biggest concerns, according to a study by Restless Development, a youth-led development agency.

Part of that newfound interest may also be a result of the opening up of the traditional two-party system by the National Grand Council (NGC) party. Led by Kandeh Yumkella, a former United Nations official, the NGC has branded its movement a “third way.”

“We are tired of the red and the green” says Samson Stevens, a first-time voter from the outskirts of Freetown, referencing the colors of the APC and SLPP. “Yumkella has policies for education, agriculture, and healthcare. He has a plan for the nation.”

While Mr. Yumkella’s support is largely limited to the diaspora and educated elite in Freetown, observers say he is opening up new types of political debate, with less of the traditional appeal to ethno-regionalism. In addition to the presidency, he is contesting a parliamentary seat in an APC stronghold – meaning his party has the potential to remain a force in politics, with or without the presidency.

“Whether or not Yumkella wins the election,” says Lavali, “the effort himself and other opposition parties have injected in this, the standards they have raised, and the force of civil society and by extension social media is really changing the narratives in Sierra Leone.”

Observers say Wednesday’s election is too close to call. If none of the candidates receive 55 percent of the vote, a runoff will be held between the top two, expected to be the APC and SLPP.

“Here in Sierra Leone we want democracy,” explains Amadu Jalloh, the owner of a small used appliances shop in the eastern suburbs of Freetown. “We had dictators, we had a war, we had coups. We know the alternatives, and we want to vote.”

XIE YUJUAN

Students prepare for exams at Shantou University’s main library in January. The school was founded in 1981 and came to represent a new China.

On a rainy morning in January, Yang Ting stood in front of 150 people in an auditorium at Shantou University and recited a poem called “Homeland, My Dear Homeland.” The poem, written by one of contemporary China’s most acclaimed poets, Shu Ting, is widely considered to be one of her best. But it was an unusual choice for this particular event: a two-hour recital in celebration of the Chinese Communist Party.

“Homeland” was published in 1979, amid a cultural and political outpouring known as the Democracy Wall movement. In the poem, Ms. Shu explores the relationship between the Chinese state and its citizens – touching on themes of oppression and exploitation – in a way that would have been unthinkable just years before, during the state-sponsored upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. 

Ms. Yang, an undergraduate in faded jeans, said she picked “Homeland” simply because of its passionate tone. “I didn’t think about its meaning,” she said after the recital, as a group of children in gray People’s Liberation Army costumes streamed out of the auditorium.

Nearly 40 years since “Homeland” was first published, the political winds in China have shifted once again. At the instruction of General Secretary Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist Party has launched the greatest campaign for party loyalty since the days of Mao Zedong. “Government, military, society, and schools; north, south, east, and west,” Mr. Xi, who is also China’s president, said during a gathering of top party leaders in October, “the party is the leader of all.”

Higher education is no exception. In fact, in 2016, Xi declared that universities should be strongholds of the party. Shantou University, which has long prided itself for its commitment to academic freedom, has been hit especially hard by the ensuing campaign – one that could have far-reaching consequences. China has built hundreds of universities in recent years as it tries to train a new generation of highly skilled workers, particularly in science and technology. As those efforts ramp up, critics question whether the country’s authoritarian political system can establish an educational system that fosters the kind of creativity and critical thinking needed in a modern economy. Xi’s crackdown on independent thought has only deepened their suspicions.

“Homeland,” like any artistic work, is a reflection of the time in which it was created – a time antithetical to the recital held at Shantou University. That the poem was recited nonetheless is no small irony. But even more striking is the possibility that no one in the auditorium that day recognized the irony at all.

MICHAEL HOLTZ/THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR

Two students recite a poem at a celebration of the Chinese Communist Party at Shantou University. The top line on the screen behind them says, ‘Marching toward the new era.’

Blazing a trail

Shu received a national poetry award for “Homeland” in 1981. That same year, Shantou University was founded with the help of a $38.5 million donation from a charitable foundation started by Li Ka-shing, a native of the Shantou region who had become one of the richest men in Asia.

Most universities were just getting back on their feet after being shuttered during the Cultural Revolution. But Shantou was a blank slate. The university came to represent a new China, one that strived to open to the outside world. That spirit of openness would soon transform the entire city, a southeastern fishing port that has since become a manufacturing hub of 5.6 million people. In the early 1980s, Shantou was designated one of China’s first special economic zones. By attracting foreign investment and technology, these zones helped kickstart the country’s economic boom. They also caught the attention of Mr. Li.

Li made his early fortune in Hong Kong, but was quick to see opportunity in the mainland’s reforms. Shantou became his focus, and Shantou University one of his most cherished projects. Li’s foundation has donated more than $1.28 billion to the school – making it the only privately funded public university on the mainland – and he serves as honorary chairman of its board of directors. 

In 2001, the university launched a series of reforms that earned it a reputation for Western-influenced education. Julia Hsiao, who, at the time, was an assistant vice-chancellor at the University of California at Berkeley, was hired to lead the initiative. Under Ms. Hsiao’s guidance, the university brought in dozens of foreign teachers, overhauled its curriculum, and experimented with new teaching and management methods. It created a credit system – reportedly the first of its kind in China – and hired overseas architects for a campus upgrade. 

Zhu Wang, a Chinese professor who taught English at Shantou University from 2005 to 2014, said the aim was to replace the Chinese tradition of rote learning with critical thinking and creativity. The credit system allowed students to decide their own curricula at a time when enrolling in a set of required courses was the standard practice. Ms. Zhu said free and open discussion was not only tolerated, but encouraged. 

Peter Herford, a longtime CBS News producer who taught journalism at Shantou from 2003 to 2013, said no topics were off limit. The dean of the journalism school did advise him to avoid “the three Ts” – Tiananmen, Taiwan, and Tibet – but Mr. Herford ignored the warning, doubting that restrictions would be enforced. “I was right,” he said. “No one ever told me to stop.” 

China’s Ministry of Education was eager to learn from Shantou’s reforms. On June 29, 2012, the ministry entered into an agreement with the Li Ka-shing Foundation and the Guangdong provincial government to co-develop the university. That same day, Li struck an optimistic tone in a speech he gave on campus.

“I would like to express my sincere gratitude and appreciation to every member of our faculty and administrative staff for your dedication and commitment to advancing reforms in higher education,” he said. “I have great confidence in the future of Shantou University.”

XIE YUJUAN

Students set up an outdoor display at Shantou University. Some 10,000 students are enrolled at the school.

Double-down

The direction of higher education took a dramatic turn when Xi came to power in November 2012. One of the earliest signs came the following spring, when an internal party memo referred to as Document No. 9 was leaked. The memo called for the eradication of “seven subversive currents” in Chinese society, including “Western constitutional democracy,” “universal values” of human rights, and Western ideas of media independence and civic participation.

Although Document No. 9 wasn’t explicitly addressed to universities, it became a harbinger for what was to come. In 2014, Xi urged universities to “cultivate and practice the core values of socialism in their teaching.” Two years later, he called for their loyalty to the Communist Party. Officials from its anticorruption agency fanned out to campuses all over China to investigate potential threats to this new mandate. Last June, the agency released a report accusing 14 top universities of infractions ranging from weak party leadership to inadequate adherence to ideology. (In 2015, China’s minister of education called for a ban on textbooks that promote Western values, and said criticism of the Party shouldn’t be allowed in the classroom.)

Kristin Shi-Kupfer, the director of research on public policy, society, and the media at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin, said Xi’s disregard for notions like pluralism and freedom of expression has been clear since he first took office. She doesn’t expect him to change anytime soon. “There had been an expectation that once Xi Jinping established his power, he would be a little bit more relaxed,” she said. “This has clearly not been the case.” Instead, she warned, things are likely to get worse for those who don’t fall in line. Nonconformity has become a liability in Xi’s new era. Last January, to give just one example, a professor at a university in Shandong Province was fired for posting critical remarks about Mao on Weibo, one of China’s most popular social media platforms.

Shantou University’s own troubles started in the fall of 2016. On Oct. 12, a team of inspectors from the Communist Party’s branch in Guangdong Province descended on the university’s lush, tree-lined campus. For the next 50 days, they interviewed faculty members and students and examined syllabi and textbooks, evaluating party loyalty.

On March 2, 2017, Yang Hanjun, the head of the inspection team, shared its findings with university officials. The results were dismal. Mr. Yang accused the university’s party committee – every university in China has one – of weak leadership and of failing to implement provincial and nationwide party policies, according to a report posted on the university’s website. He said the committee needed to strengthen its supervision of foreign teachers, classroom discussions, and even online posts.

The university responded quickly. In early April, it hired a new president-cum-party-secretary named Jiang Hong. Then, on June 26, the university’s party committee released a 91-point rectification plan. The plan called for ideological and political education, including what has since been enshrined in the party’s constitution as “Xi Jinping Thought,” to become priorities in and outside the classroom.

News of the plan sent ripples through the Shantou community. Many people on campus were outraged; so, too, were alumni and former faculty. “That is the exact opposite of what a university is supposed to be,” said Dan Trotter, an American business professor who taught at Shantou from 2011 to 2016. “Universities aren’t meant to be propaganda centers. They’re meant to be places where people try to discover truth.”

Palpable shift

At the start of the school year, in September, it didn’t take long for students to notice Shantou had changed. Dozens of billboards and posters around campus reminded passersby of the virtues of the Communist Party. The campaign intensified around the time of the 19th Party Congress in October. On the white-tile facade of a five-story dormitory, the 12 “core socialist values” were emblazoned in 24 Chinese characters. The university, observed one student, was becoming more and more red.

There were plenty of subtler changes, too. Zhu Haibin, a soft-spoken sophomore, said some of his teachers had started to avoid sensitive topics in class. Last semester, his law professor even warned students of a “red line.” “When it came to the situation of civil rights in China, the teacher didn’t dare speak,” Mr. Zhu said. “He would talk about things in theory, but not in practice.”

As the Party tightens its control over Shantou, the influence of the Li Ka-shing Foundation has started to wane, according to dozens of teachers and students interviewed for this story. On a recent visit, its on-campus offices were empty: lights turned off, desks and cabinets bare. Across from the offices, on the other side of the courtyard, a conference room now seemed to be a 19th Party Congress study room. Stacks of party handbooks were spread across a long wooden table. Against the back wall was a floor-to-ceiling poster board with party slogans printed in red and yellow characters.

When reached for comment, the Li Ka-shing Foundation said it was still involved with Shantou University and that it moved its offices to the nearby city of Shenzhen to comply with a new Chinese law regulating foreign nonprofit organizations. “Mr. Li is well known for his commitment to education in China,” the statement said. “Since 1981, he has understood that the delicate nuances of navigating the maze of changing regulations can be difficult. But he has never shied from his commitment.” 

In November, the foundation announced that it would donate an additional 2 billion Hong Kong dollars (about $255 million) to Shantou University. Yet for some of the university’s 10,000 students, no amount of money could ease their concerns about the Party’s growing presence on campus: the ubiquitous propaganda, the required lectures on the 19th Party Congress, the quiet fear of being reported by a classmate for crossing an invisible line. Bella, a senior who gave only her English name, said that she had become resigned to most of it. But she still felt sad. “I’m going to study in Shanghai next year,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t think it will be any different there.”

Xie Yujuan contributed to this report.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story misstated Peter Herford’s role at CBS News. He was a producer.

As the pickup truck slowly bumps down the dirt road, radio static fills the cab. The scientists subdue their chit-chat and perk up their ears for the signal. Then, it comes. A muted chirp breaks the static. "There she is!" says Sarah Cooke, a graduate student on the University of Florida's Croc Docs wildlife research team.

“She” is number 858, an Argentine black and white tegu lizard nicknamed “Furiosa” by a former lab intern, for the way she flailed when the scientists first captured her and outfitted her with an electronic tracking backpack.

The chirps, sounding like drips from a leaky faucet, intensify as Ms. Cooke drives on. Another grad student on the team, Jenna Cole, periodically hops out and disappears into the scrubby poisonwood trees to check the small wire traps that the team uses to catch tegus, and to make sure that the bait – a white chicken egg – is still there.

Tegus love eggs. They’ve been documented eating everything from ground-nesting bird eggs to turtle, snake, and alligator eggs. Actually, they’ll eat pretty much anything. And that’s precisely why Cooke and Ms. Cole are here. Furiosa and her kin are not native to Florida, and the invasive omnivorous lizards, which can grow up to four feet long, could devastate this ecosystem and its already imperiled native species.

Tegus aren’t the only scaly or slippery invaders in Florida. More than 50 species of non-native reptiles and amphibians roam the state, one of the highest populations worldwide. But in the process of battling them, researchers are developing a deeper understanding of how these animals came to call Florida home – and they’re learning the importance of early action in preventing more invaders from taking over.

“The more we learn about these animals, the better we can manage them,” says Joe Wasilewski, a wildlife biologist in Princeton, Fla. “Knowledge is what we’re seeking, of all these animals and their habits.”

Courtesy of Brittany Mason

Argentine black and white tegu number 858 wears a radio tracking backpack with red and green beads so researchers can identify her quickly and in camera trap images. Number 858 is the only telemetered tegu with a nickname, 'Furiosa', which was given to her by a former intern in the "Croc Docs" laboratory at the University of Florida.

Getting attention

Invasive species have enjoyed a long history in Florida, with non-native reptiles and amphibians first documented more than 140 years ago. But over the past few decades, more and more have been cropping up, thanks to a hospitable climate and a thriving exotic pet trade through the state’s many ports.

One of the tegu’s fellow reptilian invaders, the Burmese python, has been called a poster-child for invasive species. By the time people became aware of their presence in the Everglades in the early 2000s, these massive snakes were already a dominant predator there, devouring mammals, birds, and even crocodiles. The pythons are now so abundant that the state created a program to pay contractors to hunt them.

There’s an upside to the python story: “There was an awareness that was coming across because of the alertness to what was happening with the pythons,” says Kristen Sommers, who leads the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC)’s Wildlife Impact Management Section. That awareness prompted agencies and researchers to look around more closely for other exotic invaders – such as the tegus – that might have the potential to reach the pythons’ level of ecosystem devastation.

Tegus first emerged as a problem 10 years ago, but their numbers grew quickly. Now there are two established populations: one in Miami-Dade County and one in Hillsborough County near Tampa. Researchers say it’s likely a handful were released by a pet distributor who didn’t want to sell them anymore, but now, groups like the Croc Docs can capture more than 400 in a year. The Croc Docs team and other research and wildlife agencies are collaborating to survey, trap, radio-track, and remove the tegus.

Trapping the tegus and hunting the pythons isn’t just about removing the invaders from threatened habitat. It also gives scientists an opportunity to size up the problem. By tracking the movements of tegus outfitted with trackers, like Furiosa, researchers have learned valuable information about the lizards’ habitat preferences and home range. And learning about the tegus brumation – reptilian hibernation – cycles helps explain why they may be hard to find during certain months so that agencies can be sure if they’ve eradicated the last tegu. Studying the lizards’ physiology has also yielded key insights into their diets, and best practices for enticing them into a trap.

Courtesy of Jenna Cole

Jenna Cole, a graduate student at the University of Florida, holds an Argentine black and white tegu lizard that has been outfitted with a radio tracking backpack.

Early detection, rapid response

The most effective way to stop an invasion is to catch it before it begins. And that requires an understanding of how the invaders got there in the first place.

"If you don't catch them while they’re in the really easy stage to control, where you only have a few individuals, you get into a stage when you have a breeding population, and then the question is can you eradicate it or not,” explains Laura Brandt, wildlife biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

As a population of invasive animals grows and expands its range, it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to eradicate it. Instead, the focus shifts to containing the population and limiting its impact – as is the case with the Burmese pythons and the tegus.

FWC is keeping an eye on the pet industry, looking for ways to identify species that may have characteristics that would make them successful invaders, like being cold-hardy or omnivorous.

"It’s like horizon scanning," Ms. Sommers says. The commission keeps tabs on which animals are increasing in popularity as pets and then devises a way to prevent them from escaping the comforts of human homes. The solution may include some regulation. For example, the invasive lionfish spotted on reefs off the Florida coast have been predominantly from two species, but FWC decided to ban importation of the whole genus so that the pet industry didn't pick a different lionfish species in response to regulations.

Another piece of the solution is preventing these pets from becoming wildlife. Various agencies are working to educate exotic pet owners. If pet owners haven’t done their homework on how large an animal will grow, how long it will live, how to best contain it, and other factors, they might be inclined to release it into the wild when it surprises them. FWC also has an Exotic Pet Amnesty Program in which they help rehome exotic pets, no questions asked, to give owners a way out if they have a pet that is illegal, requires a permit, or that they can no longer care for.

Still, these animals can escape due to hurricane destruction or poorly designed cages. And the public can help catch them before it’s too late. FWC has a hotline, 1-888-IVE-GOT1, for people to report when they've seen an exotic animal. The agency will dispatch someone or contact a partnering organization to remove it and search the area for more. All institutions involved take every opportunity to educate the public to keep an eye out for invasive species, setting up booths at festivals, holding events, posting fliers at nature centers, and canvassing neighborhoods where invasive species have been found.

Ultimately, the agencies are still learning how best to handle the exotic invaders using the most cost-efficient and effective methods.

“They want to do right, but they don’t have unlimited person-power and budgets, and they have to choose where they pick their battles and put their money,” says Steve Johnson, a professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida. “And that’s not always an easy decision.”

“For most species, there is not a silver bullet. You have to have a diversity of tools in your toolbox to try to address these things. We just have to keep at it, continue to be creative, look for new methods.”

In the field

On this particular February day, sunshine beats down on the sawgrass-filled marshes. But Furiosa is not out enjoying the sunshine. Cooke and Cole track her to a dense mat of bushes and grasses, in the last days of a four-month-long brumation period.

Almost all of the traps were empty that day, too. But it wasn’t a tegu that the researchers captured; it was one of the native animals they think the lizards are munching on.

“Hi friend,” Cole greets the cotton rat as she approaches the closed trap. When she opens the door to free the native bycatch, the rat hesitates for a moment. “It’s OK,” she tells it. “C’mon, let’s go.” The rat scurries out and disappears into the brush.

Eva Botkin-Kowacki/The Christian Science Monitor

Jenna Cole, a graduate student at the University of Florida, releases a native cotton rat that was bycatch in a trap intended to capture Argentine black and white tegu lizards – an invasive species. The rat is one of the many things on the omnivorous tegus' diet.

Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, shakes hands with South Korean National Security Director Chung Eui-yong on March 5 in Pyongyang.

 By the numbers alone, the prospects of peace on the Korean Peninsula can look bleak to the rest of the world:

For 27 years, five American presidents have tried to denuclearize North Korea. Three times the regime appeared to have suspended its nuclear program. Yet it may now have more than 30 atomic warheads. Kim Jong-un, the current leader in Pyongyang, has launched more missiles than his father and grandfather combined. Last November, he tested a missile capable of traveling thousands of miles – and able to reach all of the United States.

In diplomatic circles, trust of North Korea stands at zero. Yet trust – a difficult commodity to measure – is exactly what the Kim regime now needs to end its growing isolation and to forestall economic collapse. In recent months, the noose of United Nations-endorsed sanctions has tightened considerably. An estimated three-quarters of North Koreans are “food insecure.”

Perhaps to rebuild trust, North Korea announced March 6 that it is willing to consider giving up its strategic armaments if “the safety of its regime [is] guaranteed and military threats against North Korea removed,” according to a South Korea spokesman. Such a proposal to eliminate the North’s nuclear weapons is quite a dramatic reversal. Last year the regime claimed the bombs were a “treasured sword of justice.”

Yet with its credibility gone, the North needs a dramatic U-turn to end sanctions. During any coming negotiations, it can no longer easily exact concessions on aid or demand conditions. Its broken promises on deals made in 1994 and 2005 have taught a lesson to South Korea, the US, and China, its chief ally.

As a harsh winter takes a toll on North Korea, the Kim dynasty may have come to fear regime change more from within than from without. And China certainly shows new worries about a possible flood of refugees across its border.

A model for hope is the 2015 deal with Iran. Long before Iran agreed to give up its nuclear program in negotiations, it first had to earn the trust of Western countries, at least on the nuclear issue. International isolation had pushed the regime to fear its own people more than external foes. The first step for Iran was to stop being disingenuous about its nuclear ambitions. Through concrete steps, such as international inspections, it regained trust.

North Korea may be at such a point. Yet testing its motives will require careful diplomacy by the US and South Korea. Trust is not easily won. But if the Kim regime can make irreversible concessions on its nuclear program, it will earn trust aplenty.