Hours after a package containing a pipe bomb was mailed to a “John Brenan” c/o CNN in New York on Wednesday, former CIA Director John Brennan linked the attack to America’s political fever pitch.

That the beating of “tom-toms of anger, animosity, and war” should “embolden people to take matters into their own hands” doesn’t require an intellectual stretch, Mr. Brennan, who served under six presidents, told an audience at the University of Texas in Austin Wednesday night. He added, “I hope this is a turning point.”

Brennan was among those who received a series of bombs mailed to Democratic leaders and Trump critics, including former President Barack Obama; former Vice President Joe Biden; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; former Attorney General Eric Holder; George Soros, a liberal financier and frequent target of conspiracy theories; actor Robert De Niro; and California Rep. Maxine Waters.

On Wednesday, President Trump condemned the attacks. “Any acts or threats of political violence are an attack on our democracy itself. No nation can succeed that tolerates violence or the threat of violence as a method of political intimidation, corrosion, or control,” he said.

Of the total of 10 suspicious packages that have been found, none have detonated and no one has been hurt. Law enforcement is searching for the suspect, whose motives remain unknown.

But the incidents, which have been widely condemned, offer one of a growing number of examples of how virulent rhetoric can go from viral to real.

Given that social media driven discourse from all sides is painting different-thinking Americans as moral degenerates, “none of this is particularly surprising – demonization is old-school,” says Victor Asal, who studies political violence at the University at Albany. But “a lot of people don’t realize how dangerous [demonization] is; some people don’t care; and some people want it to be dangerous.”

The national conversation has been getting coarser and cruder for years, with Mr. Trump coming in for particular criticism. Indeed, all the people targeted are seen as opponents of the president.

The reaction to the bombs themselves is illustrative: After a brief pause to condemn the attacks, various factions immediately began blaming favorite targets – from the president to the media – for reckless rhetoric. (There also was a healthy helping of conspiracy theories bruited about, another common feature today, where dialogue has given way to division. Right-wing pundits such as Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and John Cardillo suggested without evidence that the bombs were a “false flag” operation by Democrats.)

After CNN headquarters in New York was evacuated Wednesday because of the bomb, CNN head Jeff Zucker issued a statement saying that White House officials failed to understand “the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media.”

On Thursday, the president on Twitter blamed “the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News” for “a very big part of the Anger we see today in our society.”

“Words have consequences,” says Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks hate crimes from New York.

Hate-crime researchers have found distinct patterns linking rhetoric to violence, rooted in crime data, that suggests that patterns of hate-filled violence are shifting. FBI data suggests that catalytic events – such as an election – can shape an emerging “seasonality” of hate.

“Over recent weeks we’ve seen an escalation of [hate-driven violence],” says Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “We saw the Proud Boys in New York and Patriot Prayer in Portland, including a cache of weapons on a rooftop,” he says, referring to far-right groups who have engaged in violent altercations with counterprotesters this month.

“When we have leaders and a critical mass of people on social media who demonize folks specifically, it’s common sense that for some people they will regard that as where to direct their aggression, particularly when the language is so over the top.”

Historic parallels

Political violence has been part of the American grain since the country was founded by revolution.

The country has seen four presidents assassinated, and one, President Ronald Reagan, nearly killed by a bullet. During the civil rights movement, bombings were frequent, with black churches targeted for destruction by white supremacists. More recently, politicians such as former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat, and Rep. Steve Scalise, a Republican, have survived armed attacks, with Representative Scalise’s apparently politically motivated.

Historic equivalents also include Southern leaders during the civil rights movement who opposed desegregation, historians say. They didn’t bomb churches themselves, but their rhetoric fueled terror campaigns. The cold war era also featured Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his search for hidden Communists, resulting in the demonization and black-listing of fellow Americans.

The throes of change don’t have to define a society’s collective future, observers say. And after other inflection points, Americans have found ways to help people think through change without lashing out – first verbally, and then actually.

The extent to which political rhetoric stirs the pot and injects moral certitude into political violence cannot be pinned on any one person. The president, though, has mocked and belittled opponents in ways that previously had been considered unpresidential. And last week, he praised a Montana representative who body-slammed a reporter for asking a question – an act for which the representative pleaded guilty. “Any guy that can do a body slam,” Trump said, “he was my guy.”

“It’s not that this president is very partisan or that he’s a divider, but that he has actually spoken about violence,” says Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University. “When a president does that, it’s a whole other ball game.”

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, talking to reporters Thursday, pushed back strongly on the idea that the president’s words could be held responsible for an unknown criminal’s violence, saying there’s a difference between “comments made and actions taken.”

Danger of delegitimizing

The intent and effect of hate speech throughout US history, says a political scientist, is to silence opposition in order to gain political power. Take for instance, violence against African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.

Understanding the seasonality of hate may help authorities and Americans in general to address the threat of political violence around them. “It can help us keep our eyes on the loners, these loose electrons that have flown off the atoms,” says Professor Levin.

Yet the bulk of the responsibility for reining in hateful violence likely falls hardest on those hammering on America’s fault lines, including leaders who have the power to generate the “catalytic” moments that drive spikes in hate crime.

“People who commit political violence have a reason for it in their head that makes sense,” says Professor Zelizer, author of the coming book, “Fault Lines: A History of the United States since 1974.” “That could be John Hinckley [who shot Ronald Reagan] trying to impress an actress by trying to assassinate a president. So we have no idea where this came from. It could be a mentally unstable person, it could be a Democrat. But dehumanizing the person you are attacking is an essential step in an act of political violence.
“It’s true that you can’t control your most passionate fans, but that’s not justification for [delegitimizing opponents]. It’s the opposite. You have to do everything possible not to incite something like this.”

Leah Millis/Reuters

President Trump talks to reporters about the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey during a bill signing ceremony at the White House in Washington, Oct. 23, 2018.

The murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi will have far-reaching repercussions in the coming months – from the viability of the US-Saudi strategy to counter Iran, to the price of oil, and on to prospects for President Trump’s Middle East “deal of the century” peace plan.

What is less certain is whether the horrific violation of one Saudi regime critic’s human rights will do much to stem the rise and free rein of rights-violating regimes across the Middle East and indeed around the world, many regional experts say.

The Saudis may have believed they had a “blank check from the Trump administration” to pursue actions like the silencing of regime critics such as Mr. Khashoggi, says Steven Cook, senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in Washington. If they did, it is at least in part because they saw other authoritarian leaders – from regional players Turkey and Egypt to global powers Russia and China – silencing their critics and stamping out dissent with impunity, he adds.

“None of those leaders have been held accountable for their acts” – by the US, the West, or the international community, Mr. Cook says – “so why should the Saudis in this environment think they should have to act any differently?”

That sobering assessment of unchecked impunity could very well play out in the Saudi case, including with respect to its disastrous war in neighboring Yemen, considered the world’s worst humanitarian disaster by the UN, despite the intense global attention the Khashoggi case is garnering, regional analysts say.

But, some add, the US is uniquely placed to alter this course if a transactional White House that has been single-mindedly focused on American economic and military interests adjusts to make values like human rights and the rule of law part of its equation. A course correction could also occur if another influential power – for example, the US Congress – asserts itself and demands consequences strong enough to alter regime behavior.

“Under this White House, the US-Saudi relationship has been overwhelmingly focused on military-to-military relations … and left to the relationship between [Trump son-in-law] Jared Kushner and [Saudi Crown Prince] Mohammed bin Salman, but we’re going to see some correction,” says Elizabeth Prodromou, a professor of conflict resolution at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass.

“This event will push the Trump White House to make some adjustments, and the question will be whether the White House takes the lead in that correction or Congress pushes the White House to take action,” she says. “But either way, we’re going to go in the same direction.”

Among the concrete steps Professor Prodromou and others expect to see in the coming weeks:

• The nominating finally of a US ambassador to Riyadh to “professionalize” the relationship and take it out of Mr. Kushner’s inexperienced hands.
• Renewed congressional efforts to stop arming the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
• Perhaps sanctions aimed at putting on notice Saudi Arabia – and for that matter other US partners in the region – that America is going to act in defense of its values and count human rights among its vital interests.

“The Saudi relationship will become perhaps the key metric for how seriously the world takes us for our exercise of soft power and our commitment to universal human rights,” says Prodromou, an expert in the intersection of religion, democracy, and security. “It’s going to provide a measure of how we’re perceived in the world, of our ability to lead on human rights – and whether our moral authority holds any longer.”

Clearly the US is not going to sever or even seriously downgrade relations with Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi affair. Mr. Trump has consistently stated – since shortly after Khashoggi, a resident of Virginia and columnist for the Washington Post, disappeared after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul – that no matter what he would not jeopardize US arms sales to the kingdom, and the “American jobs” he says those sales create.

New leverage for US?

This week Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin visited Riyadh and met with the crown prince, though he tried to give the stop on a six-country trip a low profile (until the Saudis issued a photo of Mr. Mnuchin with the prince).

But CIA Director Gina Haspel was also dispatched this week to the region – in her case to Turkey, where she is reported to have listened to tapes Turkish officials have claimed to have of Khashoggi’s murder. Some unnamed US officials with knowledge of Ms. Haspel’s meetings described the tapes as “compelling.”

And Congress has made it clear that it intends to hold the administration’s feet to the fire over the Khashoggi scandal. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has already invoked the Magnitsky Act, which directs the president to report back to the committee on a country’s grave human rights breach within 120 days and determine whether sanctions will be imposed.

After an initiative by Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky to stop arming Saudi Arabia’s Yemen war lost by only four votes in June, many observers now expect the Khashoggi case to prompt Senator Paul to try again – and very possibly with a different result this time.

What all of this tells some diplomats and foreign policy analysts is that the US post-Khashoggi will have unprecedented leverage over Saudi Arabia and in particular Crown Prince Salman, also known as MBS – if the Trump White House decides to use it.

Noting that US-Saudi relations have been “bouncing from one problem to another under MBS’s leadership,” Middle East expert and former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk says the Khashoggi case adds fresh urgency to an already needed reassessment.

“We have an opportunity to sit down with MBS … and say, ‘We cannot go on like this, we need a reliable partner,’ ” he says. “We need to restructure our relationship with MBS if we decide we can’t get rid of him and have to work with him.”

Impact on Yemen war

Indyk says the Khashoggi debacle only reinforces the already growing sentiment that the White House strategy of relying on Saudi Arabia to deliver the Palestinians to accept a grand peace accord with Israel is in tatters. But he says the new leverage the US has with the Saudis could salvage some aspects of the strategy to counter Iran.

Noting that new US sanctions targeting Iran’s oil production will go into effect shortly, Mr. Indyk says Trump could pressure the Saudis to make up for the estimated 1 million barrels a day of Iranian oil that will no longer reach the global market. The worrisome aspect of such a scenario is that Trump might “soft-pedal” the US response to Khashoggi in order to get the Saudis to boost oil production.

But perhaps the most significant impact Indyk and others see from a post-Khashoggi recalibration of US-Saudi relations will be on the disastrous war in Yemen, where Saudi bombing campaigns (using US-supplied bombs) continue to hit civilians, and where millions of people face starvation.

“Part of the positive side” of something as horrendous as the Khashoggi killing could be “getting the Saudis out of Yemen,” says CFR’s Cook. The White House has shown little interest in the war, he says, “but the Congress is in a completely different place on this,” he adds. He expects to see Congress “using this brutal murder to hold MBS accountable on Yemen.”

Indeed some experts see a congressional effort to stop the Saudis’ use of US arms in Yemen spilling over into heightened attention to the state of rights and the rule of law inside Saudi Arabia. “We see in Congress a growing preoccupation with the gross human rights violations in the Saudis’ prosecution of the war in Yemen,” says the Fletcher School’s Prodromou, “but what I think generally is that there’s going to be more rather than less concern over the human rights part of this relationship.”

Prodromou says she believes there’s a “50-50 chance” of some sanctions on Saudi officials being triggered by the Magnitsky Act. “And if that happens it will be a sea change in the relationship.”

‘Windfall for Iran’

What worries Prodromou is that while the Khashoggi affair may end up prompting the US to assert its values and other aspects of its soft power in its relations with Saudi Arabia, the scandal will only empower and embolden others in the region with as bad or worse human rights records – including Turkey and Iran.

“Turkey has more journalists in prison than China, and that’s been true for a decade, and yet Turkey is going to come out of this a big winner,” she says, arguing that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has played the Khashoggi affair adroitly – even using it to make that case that Turkey and not Saudi Arabia should be the center of Sunni Islam.

Beyond Turkey, the shambles of the Trump White House MBS strategy can only be seen “as a windfall for Iran,” says Indyk, who notes that the region will now see the US strategy for countering Iran as a failure.

“In the end,” he says, “MBS has really helped the Iranians instead of helping us.”

Sally Mattson pulls out of a Starbucks at the Westchester Commons shopping complex in central Virginia, her trunk stocked with campaign literature. She’s about to go knock on doors for a Democrat who has a real chance of winning a House seat that’s been under Republican control for nearly five decades.

The last time voters here sent a Democrat to Congress, Richard Nixon was president, and the sprawling retail center that is disappearing in Ms. Mattson’s rear-view mirror didn’t even exist.

As the former nurse heads out on the highway that connects the suburb of Midlothian to downtown Richmond, green fields quickly give way to generously sized homes, and then smaller ones. Mattson turns into a modest neighborhood where she will canvass for Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA operative who is seeking office for the first time. Ms. Spanberger is challenging Republican Rep. Dave Brat, the tea-party candidate who four years ago unseated House majority leader Eric Cantor in a primary upset that stunned the GOP establishment.

Now Congressman Brat is facing a revolt of his own, from suburbanite women voters. Which is encouraging liberal foot-soldiers like Mattson, as she goes door to door, advocating for a female Democrat in a race ranked “toss-up” by the independent Cook Political Report.

Indeed, if Republicans lose control of the House in November, it will be in large part because of shifts taking place among college-educated, white women in suburban districts like Virginia’s 7^th . Once reliably Republican, these women – whom one pollster dubs “the Panera moms,” for the salad-and-soup chain they visit with their kids after soccer games – appear to be moving en masse toward the Democrats.

“Suburban environments are perilous for the Republicans right now,” says Stephen Farnsworth, a political science professor at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.

A recent survey of the 69 most competitive House districts nationwide – many of which are suburban – shows a Democratic edge propelled by women. The poll, conducted by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School, finds women voters in those districts backing Democrats over Republicans by 55 to 42 percent. Among white women with college degrees, however, the margin in favor of Democrats is 23 points. In 2016, college-educated white women chose Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by just six points.   

In some districts, the leftward shift is also a reflection of demographic changes. Looking at Virginia’s 7^th , which wraps around the outer edge of Richmond in a semi-circle and extends into more rural areas, Mr. Farnsworth describes a first wave of suburbanization, in which Chesterfield County – where Mattson is knocking on doors – became an area of white flight from the city and a Republican enclave. Now it’s undergoing a second wave, of people looking for affordable housing. In addition to the detached, single family homes, townhouses and apartments have sprung up close to the highways.

When a suburban area becomes denser, “it turns less Republican,” says Farnsworth. The change has affected the political leanings of the district as a whole. In 2012, the 7^th  district, as currently configured, backed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney over President Barack Obama by 11 percentage points. Four years later, Donald Trump won the district by just 6 points (and lost Virginia as a whole, the only state in the South he didn’t capture). In 2017, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie won the district by 4 points – but lost Chesterfield County to now-Gov. Ralph Northam (D).

The 2017 election in Virginia was notable as the first statewide test of voter sentiment since Mr. Trump was elected – and Democrats not only elected a governor, but knocked 15 Republicans from the state House of Delegates, missing a takeover by a hair’s breadth.

Anger after 2016

Demographic changes played a role in that election – but so did voter anger in the wake of 2016. Mattson can attest to that. Before Trump entered the Oval Office, she had sat on the political sidelines. Like many Americans, she says she couldn’t name her representative in the state house or what voting district she lived in. But after Trump’s election, she joined an activist group, the Liberal Women of Chesterfield County, and she’s been volunteering for Democratic campaigns ever since.

Francine Kiefer/The Christian Science Monitor

Volunteer Sally Mattson canvasses for Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former CIA operative who is running for Congress in Virginia's 7th Congressional District, a toss-up race. "Suburban women are determined. They’re angry. They, like me, wish that they had gotten involved earlier," says Ms. Mattson.

“Suburban women are determined. They’re angry. They, like me, wish that they had gotten involved earlier,” says Mattson. The morning after Trump won, “I woke up and thought, ‘I’m not waking up again the day after an election and being ashamed that I didn’t do enough.’ ”

Quentin Kidd, a political scientist and pollster at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, credits the liberal women’s group for turning Chesterfield County blue in Virginia’s 2017 gubernatorial election. “That group popped up literally the first week after the 2016 election,” he says. “And they never went away.”

The Spanberger campaign is counting on those women to deliver her to victory in a district the Democrats have targeted for flipping in their nationwide “Red-to-Blue” campaign. “The real backbone of our campaign is the strength of our volunteers, the majority of whom are women,” said Spanberger in an interview last month.

The candidate could consider herself one of them. Before 2016, Spanberger – who has worked as a federal law enforcement officer for the US Postal Inspection Service and for the CIA overseas – was only involved in advocacy as a mom against gun violence and a volunteer at polling places. But after the election, she found herself increasingly disturbed that everything from health care to protecting children in schools was becoming “hyper-partisan.” She entered the “Emerge” program that trains women Democrats to run for public office.

In her ads and on the campaign trail, she presents herself as a problem-solver who wants to restore civil discourse and work across the aisle. The No. 1 issue she hears about from voters is health care, and she’s put that front and center with an ad about a Virginia mom who is switching her vote from Brat to Spanberger over concerns about coverage for pre-existing conditions.

No walk in the park

Bob Holsworth, a veteran political observer in Richmond, cautions that while Spanberger has a “pretty impressive” resume, “this is no walk in the park for Democrats.” About a third of the district does not fit the suburban mold, but is more rural – and Trump won handily in those areas.

That much was clear at the Chesterfield County Fair last month, when a steady stream of passersby at the Republican booth expressed their support for Congressman Brat and President Trump.

“I’m for conservative values and small government,” says Donna Waters, wearing a Dave Brat sticker. Keeping the House under Republican control is “very important” says this mom who works for the state police. She points to the strong economy as Trump’s doing, but adds that the “horrible liberal media” and Democrats “will never give him credit for it.”

She sounds much like the congressman himself, an economics professor turned renegade politician. A member of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, Brat touts his tough stance against the GOP establishment, illegal immigration, and the Affordable Care Act. And he repeatedly underscores the strong economy and the Republican tax cuts.

“Small businesses just couldn’t be happier,” he said in an interview before House members left Washington for the final stretch of the campaign trail. As he puts it, he’s campaigning on “results instead of resistance.” It’s a theme being voiced in close races across the country.

While many of Spanberger’s supporters may be angry at the president, she uses Trump’s name judiciously as she tries to win over moderates, independents, and some crossover Republicans. Her ads have a calm tone to them.

Still, she sounded much sharper at a recent debate as she fought off Brat’s attacks that she is for sanctuary cities and a $32 trillion “government takeover” of health care. 

“A vote for my opponent will be a vote for the Nancy Pelosi liberal agenda,” he said. “Do you want to turn Richmond into San Francisco?” Spanberger, like several Democrats trying to win in swing districts, has pledged not to vote for Congresswoman Pelosi as Democratic leader “under any circumstances.”

She’s also refusing corporate PAC money – not that she needs it. Donations have been pouring into her campaign, which raised nearly $3.6 million in the last quarter, three times what Brat raised, and more than he spent on his last two campaigns combined. Outside money has been flowing for both candidates, whose competing ads are saturating the airwaves.

‘The women are in my grill’

Democrats can take back the House without this seat, says Farnsworth. But if they succeed in wresting it back, it will likely indicate a big win for them on election night. And unquestionably, he says, women voters will have a lot to do with it.

In the interview, Brat acknowledged it has been “hard to counter” the energy of the women opposing him. Earlier in the campaign he made an ill-fated remark when he complained about rowdy, disruptive town halls, saying that “the women are in my grill, no matter where I go.” He later stopped doing town halls altogether, opting instead for smaller gatherings with constituents.

That irritates Jane Robison, a retiree having coffee at the Midlothian Starbucks: “He’s excluding people who aren’t in his tribe.”

But what about his point that the town halls had become counterproductive yelling fests?

Ms. Robison has an answer to that. “If you make the weather, don’t cry when it rains.”

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Supporters attend the 'Rally for the American Dream – Equal Education Rights for All,' in Boston on Oct. 14, 2018. The rally was held the day before the start of the federal trial to determine if Harvard University is discriminating against Asian-American applicants.

On the blustery Sunday before the Harvard admissions trial began in the US District Court here last week, two dueling rallies formed on either side of the Charles River. In Boston, a largely Asian-American crowd lambasted the university’s race-conscious admissions policies. In Cambridge, Mass., a more racially mixed group of students and activists staunchly defended the approach – with many taking to loudspeakers to list the ways encountering diversity in college had changed their lives.

There’s no denying the cavernous ideological divide: To detractors of affirmative action, the concept of being “race blind” sounds like the ultimate ideal for America’s future. To supporters of considering race in admissions, it sounds like the ultimate ignorance of America’s longstanding racial disparities.

But dig a little deeper into people’s stories and you’ll find some common values. Virtually everyone agrees that society should be free from racial discrimination and that admissions to selective universities should be fair.

“It is an emotional issue because it has to do with our core values about racial equality, one way or another,” says Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland in College Park, who sees race-conscious policies as critical to ongoing civil rights efforts.

The federal trial has been diving into the details of how Harvard’s admissions process works, and whether it might be relying too heavily on race, to the point of discriminating and unfairly restricting Asian-American enrollment, as the group bringing the suit against the Ivy League school has claimed.

William Lee, lead attorney for Harvard, ended his opening statement in the Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA) v. Harvard trial last week noting that diversity in elite universities is linked to the diversity in the courtroom now. What he sees is a sharp contrast to 42 years ago, when he stepped into a similarly crowded Boston courtroom and realized he was the only person of color in a sea of white men.

The case is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court, which could potentially ban race-conscious affirmative action in higher education.

Those stakes have prompted people to raise their voices – whether in public rallies, on social media, or over dinner conversations – about the roots of their deep commitment for or against affirmative action.

Differing views 

Consider the stories of Kelley Babphavong, a Harvard junior, and Gregory Davis, a Harvard PhD student, for instance. 

Charles Krupa/AP/File

Admissions practices at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Mass., are currently being scrutinized in a Boston courtroom. The case is expected to make its way to the Supreme Court, which could potentially ban race-conscious affirmative action in higher education.

Ms. Babphavong is a critic of her school’s admissions policies, and she attended the Boston rally in support of SFFA. The child of Laotian immigrants, she says equal access to education has always been critical to her family.

“My parents have really instilled the value of education as a main reason why they moved from Laos, because it was going under Communist control and they really saw that the education system was growing worse,” she says in a phone interview.

Babphavong refers to data submitted by SFFA that alleges that Asian-American students admitted to Harvard have higher test scores than their peers. That leads some to suspect that Asian-Americans are held to a higher standard, and that some are not getting in because of preferences for other minorities to suit racial balancing goals. “That's really impacted me, to see potentially other Asian-Americans being barred from access to better education simply because of their race,” she says.

Mr. Davis, on the other hand, has been watching the court rulings on affirmative action since he attended a predominantly black high school in Detroit. Davis opted to attend Morehouse, a historically black college in Atlanta, and later enrolled in law school at the University of California, Los Angeles, which had almost the polar opposite demographics. A 1996 state ban on affirmative action prevented the school from considering race as a factor in admissions. Of about 1,100 law students, Davis says, he was among only about 40 who were black.

“It was fascinating ... to be constantly reminded of how the upper echelons of the profession and class were dominated by white students,” he says in a phone interview. “It’s not to say that they didn’t deserve to be there, but it was kind of a stark reality for me.”

Often he and other black students felt a pressure to share differing perspectives in discussions related to race, Davis says. Davis was willing, but for some of his black classmates, the obligation had “a silencing effect,” he says. Should the Harvard admissions case make it to the Supreme Court, he worries such conditions – or an atmosphere even worse for black students – could become a reality on the bulk of US campuses.

Racial equality: 'How do we get there?'

Both stories embody an aspiration for racial equality. That’s a common hope in the US, but “then it becomes a question of, how do we get there?” says Liliana Garces, an associate professor of education at the University of Texas at Austin.

One side believes that trying to be blind to race will lessen discrimination, and “the other side says, ‘No, if we don’t look at it and address it head on, then things actually will get worse,’ ” Dr. Garces says, noting that her research and experience have placed her in the latter camp.

Even Supreme Court justices have echoed these dueling perspectives over the years.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the 2007 Parents Involved case, which struck down the way two K-12 school districts used race to try to balance school assignments.

In a dissent in the 2014 Schuette case on affirmative action, Justice Sonia Sotomayor offered a direct retort: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.”

On the race-neutral side of the argument, some see a major flaw in the Supreme Court rulings that say diversity is a compelling government interest that can justify a narrowly tailored use of race in admissions. The Court has sided with universities' stance that racial diversity contributes to viewpoint or ideological diversity in class discussions, for instance. But that’s “based on the assumption that people of certain races all think alike, which is quite offensive,” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, during an Oct. 4 panel discussion on the Harvard case at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Alex Zhong, founder and president of the Association for Education Fairness, a Maryland-based organization advocating for race-blind admissions in school choice and enrichment programs, also spoke at that event and later with the Monitor by phone. He immigrated to the United States after leaving a low-income community in China. His parents’ total education added up to just eight years, he says. For him, the US promised opportunity to excel, free from economic barriers in China.

But in 2016, the school district in Montgomery County, Md., where his daughter attended, implemented comprehensive admissions reforms to its magnet programs for academically advanced students. The changes vastly increased accessibility, especially for low-income students, and were spurred in part by an effort to boost black and Latino representation, though race was not a factor in admissions. The effect was powerful. Representation for black and Latino students jumped by 8 percentage points, but Asian-American enrollment fell by the same proportion. Mr. Zhong’s daughter had attended a magnet elementary school program but was not admitted to the middle school equivalent.

“This is totally different from our expectations of this country,” he says. “Race-blind to me means we don’t care about that person’s race. We only care [about] his character, his personality, his capability,” he says, alluding to Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech.

Certain simulations show that if Harvard admissions swapped racial considerations for class-based metrics, Asian-American enrollment would go up but African-American enrollment would go down, testified Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and a consultant to SFFA, on Oct. 22.

Harvard has repeatedly challenged accusations of racial bias in the trial. It argues that admissions decisions are based on a combination of elements and that a plus factor for racial diversity can be applied to Asian-Americans as well as other nonwhite students.

Supporters of affirmative action see race as a crucial component in an applicant’s life that should be recognized. “When I hear the term ‘race blind,’ I just see a lack of understanding of systemic racism that many people of color face,” says Rollin Hu, an Asian-American senior at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., who wrote a widely distributed op-ed on the intersection of Asian-American identity and elite college admissions for the school newspaper.

Looking at the whole picture

Ultimately, both sides in the trial say that applicants deserve to be seen as whole people, rather than being reduced to racial categories. The idea is ripe for common ground outside of the court as well.

But often people are confused about how affirmative action currently works. They frequently think about racial quotas, but those haven’t been allowed for years in higher education. Race can only be considered in a very narrowly tailored way to try to ensure that people are seen through a multifaceted lens, says OiYan Poon, an assistant professor of higher education leadership at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. She supports Harvard’s approach to admissions and contributed to an amicus brief before the trial.

When she asks those who oppose affirmative action what their ideal system would be for college admissions, she says, “ironically, almost all of [them] have basically described the current state of race-conscious whole-person review,” she says. Asian-Americans she’s interviewed on both sides tend to say “it’s important to understand that kids are different, … and if there’s a kid who’s coming from a lot of disadvantage … admissions should account for these things to really understand the whole picture of any given student’s accomplishments and potential for future contributions.”

Even some of those who have staked out firm positions on either side of the debate express compassion for where their ideological opponents are coming from – in part because of the trial’s personal reach.

“I am sympathetic to quite a few of these groups [supporting SFFA]. I recognize their experiences. A lot of them do parallel mine,” says Mr. Hu, who supports Harvard in the trial. He acknowledges that some level of racial stereotyping seems to exist within elite college admissions, citing research presented in the case that suggests Asian-American students applying to Harvard are, on average, awarded lower scores in assessments of personal and social character.

Zhong, likewise, says he can understand the drive students from under-resourced backgrounds have to enroll in elite schools and programs – even the one his daughter was initially rejected from (after five appeals, he says, she was placed in the program at a different school).

“I personally empathize with all the kids from poor families because my wife and I, we were from poor families. We really understand how dear the opportunity is for us and for them,” he says.

Today, all is calm in Víctor Alberto Rupay Dorregaray’s flock. From his camp, the sheep are barely discernible dots among the sage grass as they munch their way across a nearby hillside. A large guard dog meanders through the band of sheep, with his white, fluffy coat making him blend in among his charges. But just a week earlier, things weren’t so quiet.

The first sign of trouble came as a yelp from one of the band’s three guard dogs. It sounded like a wolf’s jaws were wrapped around the dog’s throat as it struggled to sound the alarm, Mr. Dorregaray says. The herder leaped into action, grabbing a noisemaker and running toward the sound. The blare of an air horn filled the air, and the startled wolf took off. The dog was fatally injured, but the sheep survived to see another day. And so did the wolf.

The image of wolves as “big bad” has been seared into our collective consciousness, forever branded by nursery rhymes and cartoon tales. And for ranchers in the American West, the predators are a very real threat looming over their livelihoods – one that they’d rather not face. But their relationship with wolves has had to change in recent years, as ranchers’ focus shifts from eradication to coexistence.

Conflicts between wildlife and their human neighbors have taken center stage in national debates in recent months. Citing concerns that humans are disproportionately hindered by regulations under the Endangered Species Act, several bills have been introduced in Congress to ease those tensions. After being removed from the list of federally protected species in 2017, a federal judge reinstated protections for Yellowstone-area grizzly bears in September.

But in Idaho, where gray wolf populations have rebounded to numbers not seen in decades, perhaps even a century, ranchers are settling into their new normal, accepting that they must now find a way to share the landscape with wolves. And for some, that means exploring ways to protect both livestock and wolves from a premature death.

“It’s good to keep livestock alive and it’s good, or at least okay, to keep wolves alive,” says Brian Bean, who owns and operates Lava Lake Lamb in Hailey, Idaho, with his wife Kathleen. The Beans, who employ Dorregaray, are strong advocates of a non-lethal approach to ranching with wolves around.

A war on wolves once raged across the United States. For centuries, ranchers, hunters, and government campaigns exterminated the animals, to the point of near extinction by the early 20th century. But after gaining federal protections under the 1973 Endangered Species Act, and being reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the gray wolf is back. And it’s here to stay.

Courtesy of Jacob W. Frank/NPS

A wolf pauses near the entrance to Artist Paint Pots in Yellowstone National Park. Wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone and central Idaho in 1995 and 1996.

But as the species rebounded, ranchers’ concerns about the impact of the “big bad” on their livestock returned, too. And these worries were not unfounded. Over 550 sheep have been reported killed by wolves since 2009.

“[Ranchers] just want to be able to protect their sheep,” says Brandy Kay, executive director for the Idaho Wool Growers Association. The way ranchers speak about their sheep, she says, you’d think they were speaking about family members. And when a wolf kills one, she says, they want to do whatever it takes to protect the others.

“It’s really changed ranching,” says John Peavey, co-owner of Flat Top Ranch in Carey, Idaho, and a former Democratic state senator, “They’re here, and they’re going to stay. It’s whether ranching can survive or not.”

A global challenge on a local stage

And that’s not a concern unique to Idaho ranchers. In France, for example, a revived wolf population is raising similar questions for farmers. Globally, interactions with wildlife are only increasing, as humans expand into wild areas and species recovery programs from half a century ago are demonstrating success. How will humans and wildlife do as neighbors? What role does lethal control and population management of predators play? Can human endeavors, like ranching, survive the revival of wildlife? The wolves and sheep in Idaho are a microcosm of that global dialogue.

The gray wolf was removed from the list of federally protected species in Idaho and neighboring states in 2011. But even before that, federal regulators permitted lethal action in retaliation for some livestock kills. At the time, in an effort to mitigate tensions around the ESA protections, the nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife established a compensation program to reimburse ranchers who lost livestock to wolves.

The use of lethal controls became more widespread following delisting in 2011. Now, if a sheep is killed, for example, a livestock operator can report it to the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. USDA APHIS Wildlife Services conducts a necropsy to determine if the sheep was indeed killed by a wolf and examines the conditions which led to depredation. Then, Wildlife Services recommend a suite of options to Idaho Fish and Game. That recommendation can include the option for Wildlife Services to kill the offending wolf or pack. Last year, Wildlife Services used lethal control 53 times in Idaho.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean the war on wolves is back on. Now, the question is more about managing the dynamics with wolves, and what role lethal and non-lethal ways to prevent depredation play.

That’s where the Beans of Lava Lake Lamb come in. As livestock operators, they don’t want to see their sheep attacked by wolves. But as conservationists with a connection to the Nature Conservancy, they also don’t want to see wolves killed, either.

In the 2000s, a pack of wolves, dubbed the Phantom Hill Wolf Pack, terrorized the many sheep that graze in central Idaho’s Blaine County. Lava Lake’s sheep were among them. One night, in just a few hours, they lost 36 sheep to wolves. Gray wolves were still federally protected at the time, but the depredation was extreme and lethal control was on the table.

“This was a big deal for us,” Mr. Bean says. But his philosophy meant that retaliation was not an option. Instead, Bean began learning about and deploying non-lethal deterrence methods to prevent wolf attacks.

At the same time, the Defenders of Wildlife was shifting its efforts around livestock and wolves toward a similar preventative approach. So in 2008, the group came together with the Beans and like-minded officials in Blaine County to launch a collaborative project called the Wood River Wolf Project (WRWP), designed to test the effectiveness of using only non-lethal deterrents to prevent both sheep and wolves from being killed.

In the first seven years of the project, just 30 of the approximately 22,000 sheep grazing in the nearly 1,000-square-mile project area were killed by wolves. In the surrounding grazing areas, depredation losses were 3.5 times higher. The collaborators published their findings in the Journal of Mammalogy in 2017.

The project employs a variety of simple techniques, from an increased human and large guard dog presence to noisemakers and visual tools that startle wolves and make human presence known. The idea is that the wolves want an easy meal, so anything that makes it seem like a challenge to attack a flock will help.

Establishing a culture of coexistence

When the project began, the Defenders of Wildlife took charge and sent many people out into the field to try these techniques. But since the organization stepped away in 2015, the project has focused more on training ranchers and herders, and distributing duffel bags full of various tools to participating herders.

Some of these methods “require a significant amount of extra effort and time to implement effectively,” says Greg Hill, who has worked on two projects with the Beans, including WRWP. And when the onus is on ranchers to make so much effort, it’s a challenge to get them on board.

“Our guys,” Ms. Kay says of the ranchers she works with through the Idaho Wool Growers Association, “they try to do a lot of things non-lethal if they can,” But, she adds, “it has taken a toll on them.” Since reintroduction, she says, some ranchers have doubled or tripled guard dogs and herder presence with each band, but that can get expensive.

Eva Botkin-Kowacki/The Christian Science Monitor

Victor Alberto Rupay Dorregaray, a herder for Lava Lake Lamb, stands in front of a camping trailer outside Hailey, Idaho on October 4, 2018. The duffel bag at his feet contains noisemakers, lights, and other tools to deter wolves from attacking his band of sheep.

There’s also a cultural element at play, says Frank Van Nuys, a professor at South Dakota School of Mines & Technology and author of the book “Varmints and Victims: Predator Control in the American West.”

“We have a pioneer culture or homesteader culture or settler culture whose memories and ties to a land and livelihoods were constructed on the back of ridding their lives of those threats,” he says. “You’re trying to redirect a pretty well-entrenched cultural response when you advocate for non-lethal techniques.”

But that’s also why it’s important to change society’s relationship to wolves, argues Lawrence Schoen, a Blaine County commissioners and a member of the WRWP steering committee. “It's not just the responsibility of the livestock producers. It's a social responsibility,” he says. “We settled this land, we displaced these native predators. Now, in the 21st century, we’re saying we want to find ways to coexist.”

The WRWP focuses on non-lethal deterrence entirely, without lethal control of the wolf population. But the solution may lie somewhere in the middle.

“I support all these non-lethal control efforts until they don’t work. When we start losing 10 lambs in one night, a guard dog, another dog injured,” Mr. Peavey says, describing a depredation event Flat Top Ranch experienced this summer, “I think it’s time to take one or two wolves out.”

“There is no real simple answer here,” says Mr. Hill. “But I do believe that there’s a happy medium. Being proactive in preventing a problem before it starts is the best practice if possible. But problems are going to happen.”

Most ranchers aren’t advocating for a new war on wolves, or to shoot them all on sight, both Peavey and Kay say. Instead, they appreciate state management of the wolf population, either in response to depredation or through hunting permits.

Most ranchers are not anti-wolf, Kay says. “They’re used to wildlife being around. That doesn’t really faze them. It’s really just when it becomes a problem.”

Reuters

Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta (L) greets opposition leader Raila Odinga at the Harambee house office in Nairobi, Kenya March 9, 2018.

Democracy, writes British scholar David Runciman in a new book about the topic, is simply “civil war without the fighting.” But, he adds, when something is not working in a democracy – such as when there is an uptick in political violence – the people usually change it.

Lately, a few democracies have witnessed a rise in political violence. In the United States, 10 pipe bombs were sent to critics of President Trump this week, with no facts yet about the motive. In Brazil last month, the leading presidential candidate was stabbed. Mexico recently experienced an average of 14.5 political murders a month. In South Africa, an increase in feuding within the ruling African National Congress has led to about 90 politicians killed since 2016.

The test in such cases of “civil wars with the fighting” is how people respond.

Do they reflect on how their own verbal attacks on political rivals might give license to violence? Do they renew society’s unwritten rules about civility and the need for a peaceful contest of ideas? Do they remind themselves of what binds a country more than bifurcates it?

One democracy that has erupted in violence over several election cycles is Kenya. In postelection upheaval in 2007 and 2008, more than 1,000 people were killed. In last year’s election, violence erupted again. The worst example was the killing of the official responsible for developing the country’s new voting system.

Each time, civic leaders came together, sometimes with foreign help, in an attempt to alter course. A new constitution in 2010, for example, distributed governmental power and established basic rights. A network of peace activists was set up to track potential violence in ethnic hot spots.

“Kenyans have stepped up time and again to make extraordinary sacrifices to ensure liberty, advance democracy, and win fundamental rights,” said Robert Godec, the US ambassador to Kenya, in a speech last month.

The most recent course correction was a historic handshake in March by the country’s two main political rivals. President Uhuru Kenyatta and a former prime minister, Raila Odinga, agreed to set up a 14-member task force called Building Bridges.

Made up of church leaders, civic activists, professionals, and others, it is charged with touring the country and coming up with proposals to reduce ethnic antagonism, curb corruption, and improve the national ethos. Sometime next year, Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Odinga will travel together to popularize the task force’s ideas to create a “new Kenya.”

At the least, the task force’s work focuses attention on what can unite people in the African country. “We want Kenyans to have faith in the process we have started with President Kenyatta. People should not be jittery,” says Odinga.

The US and other democracies hit by political violence can learn from such attempts at political healing. Ambassador Godec says Kenya has the opportunity “to inspire and shape the future of Africa and the world.”

Kenya’s democracy is still a work in progress. But the response of Kenyans to political violence so far shows they welcome any progress.