As the New Hampshire primary draws closer, and average voters start coming out to hear the presidential candidates in person, there’s a common refrain at Democratic events: We want someone who can beat President Donald Trump – and not just in coastal states like ours.  

Even some avowed progressives are expressing concern that, as much as they love Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s calls for systemic change, programs like “Medicare for All” might be more than fellow voters across the nation can swallow, especially in the heartland.

That may explain an uptick of interest in Midwestern candidates like South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, as well as the last-minute entry of former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and the possible bid by a centrist like Michael Bloomberg. Despite the unusually large Democratic field, what’s emerging is a deepening sense that beating Mr. Trump will be no cakewalk.

A recent New York Times poll indicated that among the front-runners, only former Vice President Joe Biden would beat Mr. Trump in a majority of Midwestern battleground states – and only barely.

“We need to build a blue wall around those states ... and make Donald Trump pay for it,” Senator Klobuchar told a theater full of voters in Rochester, New Hampshire, so packed at lunchtime on a weekday that more than a few people had to stand. To do that, she emphasized, the nominee must reach out not only to Midwestern Democrats but also to independents and “Republicans of conscience.”

Elise Amendola/AP

Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg speaks outside the Statehouse in Concord, New Hampshire, after filing to be placed on the 2020 New Hampshire primary ballot, on Oct. 30, 2019.

That message has won the support of Patrick Quinn, a Republican who credits President Trump’s tax cut with dramatically improving his income as a travel nurse but calls the president himself “vile.”

“For the first time ever, I started looking at Democratic candidates,” says Mr. Quinn, who paid $45 for a ticket to a recent Democratic gala in southern New Hampshire headlined by Senator Klobuchar. By the end of the night, he was sold on her – despite his friends’ reactions on Facebook. “I’m happy to donate to her campaign, support her in any way that I can.”

In particular, Mr. Quinn, who still plans to vote for Republicans in every race other than the presidential contest, says he’s impressed with the Minnesota senator’s bipartisan record. She has passed more than 100 bills as the lead Democrat and was the primary sponsor of a third of those, compared with a handful for senators like Bernie Sanders and Ms. Warren.

That no doubt contributed to her winning 42 counties in 2018 that had gone for Mr. Trump just two years prior. And what about in a face-off? A recent poll shows her beating the president by 17 points in the state.

“Not flyover country to me”

“The heartland is not flyover country to me,” Ms. Klobuchar told a packed audience at a retirement community in Exeter, New Hampshire, earlier that day. Demonstrating how she would spar with Mr. Trump on a debate stage, she added, “I don’t think about these farmers and workers in the middle of the country as poker chips in a bankrupt casino like you do, as you bankrupt the country – they are my neighbors and friends.”

The go-to candidate for centrist voters all along has been Mr. Biden, a Roman Catholic who comes from a blue-collar family in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and is seen as having a more natural appeal to some of the white working-class voters who ditched the Democrats for Mr. Trump in 2016.

Charles Krupa/AP

Democratic presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick files to have his name listed on the New Hampshire primary ballot, on Nov. 14, 2019, in Concord, New Hampshire.

When he arrives at the New Hampshire capitol to officially file his papers for the Feb. 11 primary, the narrow hallways are packed with firefighters and other supporters chanting his name. “J-O-E for 6-0-3,” they yell, referring to the state’s area code. As the former vice president walks with his wife past gilded portraits depicting New Hampshire statesmen, young staffers beat on upside-down plastic buckets hastily painted the day before, leaving a trail of blue paint chips behind them.

Outside, a modest crowd assembles in the frigid weather, awaiting Mr. Biden’s exit. They include voters who have just put the schedule of candidate visits on their fridge and are coming out for the first time, as well as people like John Keenan, who saw the crowd and stopped to see what it was about.

“I’m more worried about [finding] the candidate that can beat Donald Trump than policy,” says Mr. Keenan, who was shopping with his daughter to replace her pink Converse low-tops. He says he likes Mr. Biden but also Mr. Buttigieg and Senator Warren – and adds that he knows it will take someone really strong to beat the president. “When [Mr. Biden] is under the gun, he’s not as quick as he could be.”

Others dismiss the idea that Mr. Biden is too old or should pass the baton to a new generation, noting that he would be able to enter the White House on Day One knowing how to run it, and could leverage his many relationships with world leaders to repair America’s alliances.

“What better way to pass the baton than to right the ship and then pass it on to the next generation?” says Chris, a New Hampshire voter who didn’t want to give his last name because he is a federal employee.

“The character of our nation is on the ballot,” Mr. Biden said when he took to the stage before a modest crowd that had braved snow squalls on a frigid Friday afternoon. He indirectly addressed the president’s criticism around his and his son’s involvement in Ukraine. “I’ve learned two things the last several weeks: One is that Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be president,” he says. The other – “that Donald Trump doesn’t want me to be the nominee.”

“He’s scared of you!” shouts one woman amid more drumming and cheers.

In a five-minute speech, Mr. Biden presents himself as the only one who can bring the country together and make progress on key issues like health care, while still respecting Americans’ freedom to choose for themselves.

Mr. Biden is the only candidate who has a chance of beating Mr. Trump, says Dianetta Gilmore of Brooklyn, New York, when he finishes, pushing a cart of Biden buttons toward a line of protesters on the sidewalk with Medicare for All signs. Button sales haven’t been good today, though. “I tell you what,” she says, “Sanders and Warren are bringing them out in bigger numbers, and that’s not good.” 

Not an either/or choice?

Indeed, there has been tension throughout the campaign season over whether a crusader promising sweeping overhaul, like Ms. Warren or Mr. Sanders, is what’s needed to energize Democrats and get them to the polls in larger numbers. While some back that theory, others argue that it would be better to find a moderate candidate who can woo back former Obama supporters who went for Mr. Trump, win over disaffected Republicans, and help the country heal.

Mr. Buttigieg, the 38-year-old gay Harvard grad and Navy reservist, tells voters they don’t have to settle for one or the other.

“Don’t let anybody tell you that we’re going to have to choose – either solve the problems, or everyone is going to be united but we can’t get anything done. That’s not an acceptable choice,” he said, adding that the nation needs a president “who can stand on the rubble of what has been busted in our society and in our politics, pick up the pieces, implement bold solutions to get something done about those issues, and find a way to do it that’s actually going to unify the American people.”

Mr. Buttigieg has been raking in contributions lately, even as Mr. Biden’s fundraising machine has sputtered amid apparent donor worries about the staying power of his candidacy. The South Bend mayor now has more offices than any other campaign in New Hampshire, and has nearly doubled his staff since the summer, according to his campaign.

One voter from Boston, a 2016 delegate for Mr. Sanders who didn’t want to be identified because his clients come from across the political spectrum, says he likes Senator Warren’s policies but that recent polls have started to change his thinking. “[Mr. Buttigieg] might be the candidate that strikes the right balance [of] being inspiring without triggering fear of change,” he says. In particular, he’s concerned about the backlash Medicare for All could create, citing challenges with the Affordable Care Act’s rollout. “If you force that big a change ... you will upset a lot of people and eventually energize a lot of Republican voters in 2022 or 2024.”

Soaring high above Beirut’s central Martyrs’ Square, the focal point of a month of nationwide protests against decades of corrupt and sectarian rule in Lebanon, is a signboard of a clenched fist and the Arabic word for revolution.

But perhaps the most tangible symbol of defiance and resolve in this protest movement is found at the base of that clenched fist.

Here, like a shrine, protesters have collected the broken tent frames and smashed plastic chairs and tables left over after thugs armed with sticks and pipes – and chanting pro-Shiite slogans favoring the powerful Hezbollah and Amal parties – attacked the square in late October.

Within hours of the attack, the protest camp was erected anew. And those tens of thousands of Lebanese who continue to take to the streets every day, demanding change in cities and towns from north to south in a cross-sectarian campaign of sustained civil disobedience, count it as one more victory – and one more source of inspiration as they raise their voices.

“They attacked everyone; they were not behaving like Lebanese,” says Anita Mansour, a 30-something architect from Beirut, speaking beside the pile of revolutionary debris.

“They had been given orders, but it’s not going to work,” says Ms. Mansour, as she waits for an evening candlelight vigil and women’s march. “If they will come back, we will come back even stronger. It won’t stop until they stop. This is the first time I feel this unity – we are proud of this revolution.”

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Architect Anita Mansour attends a candle-lit rally protesting corruption and sectarian government and calling for the removal of the country's entire political class, in Beirut's Martyrs' Square, Nov. 6, 2019.

The attempt to intimidate the protesters by loyalists of Hezbollah and Amal – even though Shiite Lebanese, too, have taken to the streets in anger at the lack of services and rampant corruption in the strongholds of those powerful parties – only helped consolidate the uprising.

The symbols of resistance are resonant. Among the crowds are nationals from across the Arab world who see the Lebanese fight as universal, part of a renewed Arab Spring that has this year alone boiled angrily into the streets in Iraq, Algeria, Sudan, and Egypt.

“This was a shameful act, but it will give us more courage to stay,” says Nawras Abou Fakher, a bearded hipster and architect from Syria who has lived in Lebanon for five years, as he gazes at the pile of broken tents.

“We feel sorry for the people who did this, who can’t see [our] vision. This problem [of corruption] is coming to them, too,” he says. “This is a big monument for the revolution. We succeeded, as seen by this pile of stuff.

“This makes us feel we need to push for more,” adds Mr. Fakher. “This gives us more energy, because we are on the ground and peaceful, while they tried violence and it didn’t work.”

Lebanon’s uprising has been largely nonviolent, and its moments of violence have been turned into emblems of resistance. From protest stages, between DJs playing electronic dance music, speakers declare their defiance: “You beat us, we won’t move.”

And painted onto the smashed windows of one building on the square are the words: “In Case of Revolution, Break Glass.”

“We have gangsters”

But the violence has nevertheless been felt by – and has galvanized the anger of – people like Nabil Zeineddine, a Beirut taxi driver who shows his passengers pictures on his mobile phone of Lebanese security forces, in the first days of unrest, arresting and beating 57 protesters, including his son Hadi.

Scott Peterson/Getty Images/The Christian Science Monitor

Windows smashed from earlier protests are labeled "In Case of Revolution, Break Glass," in central Martyrs' Square in Beirut, Nov. 6, 2019.

Mr. Zeineddine shows images of his 19-year-old son after a severe beating. His bare back and head are covered with welts and wounds, his forehead bleeding.

“Look what they did to him!” seethes Mr. Zeineddine, describing how his son’s head was kicked.

“We don’t have a government; we have gangsters,” he says. “We’re going to make sure, when this revolution is over, to try them in a court of law, those who beat these kids.”

Many Lebanese are still in awe of their own actions on the street, convinced they can remove a sectarian system entrenched for decades.

“Optimism is in the air, but there is still political pressure, so it is up and down,” says Rita, a protesting filmmaker who would only give her first name. “If people didn’t have hope, you wouldn’t see them in the streets.”

“For the first time there is a sense of solidarity among Lebanese people, regardless of religion and sect,” says Rita’s friend Nasrine, a primary school teacher. “For the first time our voice is heard.”

Need for accommodation

Protesters argue about the risk of renewed violence, with one man overheard stating about the ruling class: “These people will never stand down. They will burn Lebanon to ashes.”

But analysts say the case of Lebanon – which still bears the scars of a sectarian civil war fought here from 1975 to 1990 – is unlike many others in the Arab world.

“At some point, the old guard has to do a calculation of what, realistically, can they do?” says Rami Khouri, a professor at the American University of Beirut and fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

“They can’t stay in power, just by using force,” says Professor Khouri. “The nature of the Lebanese system is not like Egypt or Syria, where the government can kill people, and beat them up, and arrest thousands, because the policemen you would send out on the streets to do this are being told to beat up their own brothers and neighbors and sisters.”

“So they can’t use force,” he says. “And political demonization doesn’t work; they tried it. So there needs to be some accommodation.”

But how will that play out in the future? All that Ms. Mansour knows is that Lebanon can’t go back to its old ways.

“We will be strong, we will not stop. We have changed our brains,” says the architect at the tent-rubble pile. “The most powerful force on earth is a soul on fire, and our souls are on fire.”

François Aurat/Tara Ocean Foundation

Polar ice surrounds the research schooner Tara, which from 2009 to 2013 sampled oceanic plankton around the world. The expedition discovered 150,000 single-celled plants and creatures, 35,000 species of bacteria, and 5,000 new viruses.

In the 1954 microbiology textbook, “Horton Hears a Who!” the title character, an elephant, must convince his friends not just that the Whos living on a speck of dust are important, but that they exist at all.

The same was true nearly three centuries earlier for Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. A Dutch draper with a knack for grinding and polishing lenses, Leeuwenhoek built tools that could magnify objects up to 400 times, about 20 times greater than his contemporaries’ microscopes. With these meticulously crafted instruments, Leeuwenhoek became the first person known to directly observe bacteria and protozoa, sperm cells and blood cells.

At first, not everyone bought Leeuwenhoek’s claims that the soil, water, and even our own bodies were teeming with life too small for human eyes to see. His 1676 letter to the British Royal Society, his 18th to the learned academy, includes testimonials from a Lutheran minister, a notary, a barrister, and five other witnesses. With the help of another pioneer of microbiology, the English polymath Robert Hooke, Leeuwenhoek brought to light a world previously unknown to science.

Today, Leeuwenhoek’s revolution continues, as a pair of studies published in the journal Cell this week expand our understanding of the tiny organisms that inhabit the world’s oceans, the invisible creatures whose ancient metabolic machinery supply us with the oxygen for one of every two breaths. As the scientists and policymakers prepare for the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, a United Nations-backed effort set to launch in 2021 aimed at reversing the global decline in ocean health, many more of the world’s human eyes will be focusing on the oceans’ smallest inhabitants.

“Microbes are the stewards of the planet,” says Paul Falkowski, an oceanographer at the department of marine and coastal sciences at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. “They are the organisms in general that make life possible on Earth.”

Karl Bruun, Nostoca Algae Laboratory, courtesy of Nikon Small World/AP/File

Marine diatom cells, which are an important group of phytoplankton in the oceans, help soak up atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Both papers rely on data collected by the research schooner Tara, which from 2009 to 2013 sailed the oceans of the world to undertake the largest systematic sampling effort of oceanic plankton. The expedition brought back around 35,000 samples and discovered 150,000 single-celled plants and creatures, 35,000 species of bacteria, and 5,000 new viruses.

“Plankton actually represent about at least two thirds of the biomass in the ocean,” says Chris Bowler, a scientist at the Institut de Biologie de l’École Normale Supérieure in Paris and an author on one of the studies. “They’re just microscopic, so we don’t appreciate them. But actually, they are extremely abundant.”

“Plankton” is not actually a taxonomic category like “amphibian” or “gorilla.” Rather, the word refers to any organism – plant, animal, bacteria, you name it – that is unable to swim against ocean currents. Some plankton, like small jellyfish, can be seen with the naked eye. Most cannot.

The studies rely on both advanced microscopy and high-throughput DNA sequencing. Like Horton’s keen ears and Leeuwenhoek’s sharp lenses these modern instruments are revealing a world that previously existed only in the imagination.

In one paper, Dr. Bowler and his colleagues found that most planktonic groups follow a gradient of diversity along latitudes, with the lowest level of diversity closest to the poles. This finding mirrors an observation made by Alexander von Humboldt in the early 19th century. It’s one of the first patterns discovered in what would become the science of ecology.

“On land, things are pretty fixed,” says Dr. Bowler. “Whereas in the ocean, things are very mobile. ... We thought that, maybe we wouldn’t see these big global patterns that von Humboldt first noted on land. But yes, in fact, we do see them.”

The other paper complements this discovery by looking at not just which genes were present, which can tell what an organism is capable of, but which genes were expressed, which can explain what an organism is actually doing.

This study, conducted by an international team of researchers, examined how microbial communities – mainly bacteria and another domain of single-celled organisms called archaea – adjust to environmental change. Using data from 126 sampling sites from the equator to the poles, the team identified 47 million microbial genes and found that the microbial diversity and microbial gene expression vary across geographies. In warmer waters, where genetic diversity is rich, organisms adapt by switching genes on and off. In polar waters, where diversity is lower, the organisms may be more hard-wired to their environment.

“It’s quite safe to say that the Arctic presents itself as a biologically very unique ecosystem,” said Shinichi Sunagawa, a researcher at Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich and a co-author of the paper.

Taking a mental leap

It’s perhaps ironic that scientists ignored something so fundamental to biology for so long.

Most timelines of microbiology leave a huge gap after Leeuwenhoek.

“It took another 150 years almost before microscopes were rediscovered [by German biologist Ferdinand Cohn],” says Professor Falkowski, author of the 2015 book Life’s Engines: How Microbes Made Earth Habitable and a science adviser for the Tara expedition. 

Even then, the so-called Golden Age of Microbiology didn’t really get going until the mid-19th century, as science came to accept the existence of microorganisms and their ability to interact with the larger world.

“Interact” is an understatement. The breathable atmosphere as we know it was constructed by single-cell organisms. 

About 2.3 billion years ago, there were no animals, no leafy plants, and, in the planet’s atmosphere, very little oxygen. Then, rather suddenly as these things go, bacteria that had evolved with tiny solar-powered machinery to turn water and carbon dioxide into sugars and oxygen – that is, photosynthesize – forever altered the trajectory of life on Earth. 

These ancient cyanobacteria began dumping free oxygen into the air, killing nearly all life on the planet. Our ancestors were among the hardy microorganisms that survived what scientists today call the Great Oxidation Event, the first of two ancient bursts of oxygen that allowed animals to evolve.

“We’re the fragile species,” says Professor Falkowski. “Cyanobacteria will go a long, long time, long after we’re extinct.”

Today, ocean plankton serve as the lungs of our world, absorbing carbon dioxide and oxygen.

Scientists estimate that half the oxygen we breathe has been produced by microorganisms in the ocean. 

“There really are important ways that organisms, and in fact mostly very small microorganisms, can influence large-scale chemical cycles on Earth,” writes Zanna Chase, an oceanographer at the University of Tasmania, in Hobart, Australia, who studies the relationship between microbes and global climate, in an email to the Monitor. “The key mental leap is to recognize that they may be small, but there are lots of them, collectively they can do many things, chemically speaking, and they’re everywhere – in soils, in freshwater, in the surface ocean, the deep ocean, even in deep sea sediments and in the atmosphere.” 

Mighty microbes

Microscopic life can be found everywhere, from the upper stratosphere to miles deep in the Earth’s crust. Near-microscopic animals may even inhabit the moon as marooned colonists: A population of tardigrades – a kind of eight-legged animal that can measure up to the thickness of a credit card – is thought to have survived the crash of an Israeli lunar mission.

Even your own body is home to an entire ecosystem of microbes. Overall, scientists estimate that your microbiome – the 100-trillion-strong population of protozoa, viruses, bacteria, and fungi that make their homes in various parts inside and outside your body and are thought to be essential to your well-being – has 200 times the number of genes that you have. It may weigh up to five pounds. 

“We tend to focus on their immediate health effects on the human body, but microbes have so many more roles in our world,” writes Amy Lam, a postdoctoral fellow in bioengineering at Stanford University, in an email to the Monitor. “It’s kind of humbling to think that we humans could not exist without microbes, but likely a majority of microbial species would continue fine without us.”

Dr. Lam created an exhibit at the San Francisco Exploratorium that allowed visitors to interact with light-sensitive water-dwelling organisms called Euglena. Using projectors, the single-celled Euglena were scaled up to human size.

Dr. Lam’s single-celled participants didn’t always behave as expected, but, she writes, “when interacting with the completed exhibit, I definitely feel more kinship with the cells. Seeing them at my scale and being able to directly stimulate them (interact with them) makes them seem (falsely?) more relatable.”

An ocean of life

When it comes to microbe hospitality, the oceans lay out the welcome mat. In a single milliliter of seawater, one can find 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 protists, and thousands of fungal cells. 

“In the upper ocean, microbes are extremely ubiquitous,” says Professor Falkowski. “In every drop of water, there are millions – literally millions – of microbes.  They’re everywhere. There’s no place on the planet where there are not microbes.”

These creatures form the basis of marine food webs. Phytoplankton and algae are consumed by zooplankton, small fish, and crustaceans, which are in turn eaten by larger fish, all the way up to top ocean predators like sharks, dolphins, and seals. 

As for humans, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 1 in 10 depend on fish for their primary source of protein, meaning that the nutritional prospects of nearly three quarters of a billion people rest on the well-being of microscopic marine organisms.

Saving the oceans, then, means saving not just the whales, seals, and other animals that grace the marketing materials of ocean conservation advocacy groups, but also looking after all creatures, as Dr. Seuss would say, no matter how small.

Professor Bowler argues that microfauna can be just as charismatic. “No matter what your religious background is, life is beautiful, be it microscopic life, be it larger life.” he says “Life is beautiful with beautiful patterns, beautiful structures.”

When Harvard freshman Ellie Hamilton thinks of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), she thinks of harsh, headline-grabbing immigration tactics – such as the family separation policy.

While the agency is often criticized for being overfunded and abusive in its own facilities, ICE is not, in fact, responsible for detaining children at the border (Customs and Border Protection is). Asked why she’d never heard of the agency’s other responsibilities – things like fighting drug trafficking and terrorism – Ms. Hamilton says she leans left, consumes like-minded news, and rarely seeks out the other side. 

“There’s so much news out there that we kind of select the ones that just echo what our views are already,” she says. “So it’s kind of hard to even think that there are other views that are just so contrary to what I think.”

At Harvard and other campuses, the preference for information that supports already held beliefs is challenging press freedoms. More than 1,000 students signed a petition to boycott their student paper, The Crimson, for trying to present both sides of an immigration debate. After covering a campus “abolish ICE” rally in September, the paper requested comment from the agency – a decision some say put student activists at risk. 

Entrenched viewpoints and increasing criticism of media outlets have converged on college campuses. Student journalists are weighing freedom of the press and the expectations of the communities they serve. If a person, group, or issue is perceived as a threat, does that disqualify the subject from media coverage? If readers think certain groups don’t deserve a voice, does listening to that group make journalists complicit?

“A lot of people … [think] students on campus today are snowflakes,” says Kathleen Bartzen Culver, a professor of journalism ethics at the University of Wisconsin. “I just don’t see it that way,” she adds. “I see this within that larger context of many, many people wanting journalism to be on their side. They want it to reinforce their worldview.”

Certainly, student-run papers have been caught up in eras of turmoil dating back at least to the Vietnam War. And the widespread lack of understanding today about how reporters do their jobs extends well beyond college students. But the question of how best to balance learning their craft while extending empathy, particularly to marginalized groups, is one student journalists are grappling with at colleges and universities across the country. And it’s taking place at a time when campus newspapers, like the press broadly, are facing existential budget crises and institutional pressures from their own universities.

The campus newspaper at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, faced blowback from students when reporters at the Daily Northwestern covered a Nov. 5 appearance of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and protests of his visit. In that case, the student journalists apologized – sparking deep consternation among professional journalists who pointed out that covering a public event is one of the most fundamental tasks of reporting.

Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune/AP

People stand near the entrance gate to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, April 29, 2016. The university's student newspaper is under fire after student activists questioned journalists’ coverage of protests. Within days, editors decided to write a statement apologizing but their editorial prompted a second round of criticism from journalists around the country.

The criticism directed at campus newspapers at Northwestern and Harvard fits into a broader pattern of suppression of speech by students, particularly by those on the far left and right: 

• On Oct. 23, students at the University of Pennsylvania shouted down Thomas Homan, a former acting director of ICE, ending his panel discussion on immigration policy before it could begin.
• At Boston University, about 200 students protested conservative pundit Ben Shapiro’s Nov. 13 lecture on campus. An online petition decrying his visit received more than 2,200 signatures.
• Members of a far-right group heckled Donald Trump Jr. off the stage during a Nov. 10 appearance at the University of California, Los Angeles, after he said he wouldn’t take questions.

The Northwestern case spotlights a challenge faced by student journalists today. Many of their peers consider certain opinions inherently harmful, which would prevent covering all sides of a story. Campus newspapers feel caught between the code of ethics of their craft or loyalty to a large portion of their student bodies. 

Northwestern students censured the paper for its coverage of Mr. Sessions’ visit. When the paper published an apology letter promising “reform and reflection,” professional journalists criticized the Daily Northwestern for hypersensitivity. Charles Whitaker, dean of the Medill School of Journalism, issued a statement defending the student reporters, who he said were subject to “vicious bullying and badgering” for “the ‘sin’ of doing journalism.” The apology, however, “sends a chilling message about journalism and its role in society. It suggests that we are not independent authors of the community narrative, but are prone to bowing to the loudest and most influential voices in our orbit.”

Instead of apologizing, the Harvard Crimson doubled down on traditional ethics. In a note to readers, the paper’s editors defended their “belief that every party named in a story has a right to comment or contest criticism leveled against them.” Still, the petition continued adding signatures, and on Nov. 10, Harvard’s Undergraduate Council voted to “[stand] in solidarity” with the student group that started the boycott. 

This kind of stonewall, experts say, is often worse for activists than it is for reporters – setting a dangerous precedent and distracting from protesters’ real message.

Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center in Washington, D.C., asks students boycotting The Crimson to consider what reporters should do if they were to cover a new ICE policy. Should they request comment from pro-immigration groups?  

“If [activists don’t provide comment] because they are somehow trying to punish The Crimson,” he says, “they’re really just punishing their own communities and their own efforts to try and have their voices heard.”

The example of ICE

The specific debate over ICE also shows that isolation can lead to misunderstanding. 

October polling from Pew Research Center labeled ICE the only government agency with a higher unfavorable than favorable rating, at 54% to 42%. Experts say this animus toward ICE – not limited to college campuses – reveals wider frustration with U.S. immigration policy, which the agency has come to embody. 

Part of what fuels this resentment, says Faiza Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty & National Security Program in New York, are two common misconceptions: All immigration enforcement is carried out by ICE, and ICE’s only role is immigration enforcement. The agency also limits cross-border criminal activity and terrorism. But Ms. Patel says its role in arrests and deportations – especially under the more “brutal” policies of the Trump administration – is more visible and thus a magnet for discontent.

“Being kind of the front-line agency that people see doing things,” she says, “[ICE] naturally is the focus of this unhappiness.” 

Richard Rocha, a spokesman for ICE, says the agency doesn’t make the rules, it just enforces them. “One of the hardest things for ICE is that there are so many misconceptions about the work that we do,” he says, adding that their goal is to “make sure that the public is safe.” 

ICE wants to address those misconceptions with the public directly, Mr. Rocha says, and stonewalling the agency does those willing to listen a “huge disservice.”

On Harvard’s campus

Harvard senior Cecilia Nuñez, president of the Phillips Brooks House Association, a community service group that signed The Crimson petition, says it’s important to stay informed, but students’ feelings of safety should take precedence. When it comes to The Crimson, she says she expects a more nuanced approach and “making sure that … getting both sides of a story doesn’t come with putting people at risk and putting people at danger.”

Other students, such as Harvard senior Gabe Fox-Peck, disagree. “The best arguments take into account the counterargument,” he says. “I don’t think that just speaking to an oppositional force, even if it’s dangerous, is a problem. I think that’s a good thing.”

For her part, Ms. Hamilton, the Harvard freshman, just wants a “middle ground.” Learning more about ICE didn’t end her disagreements with the agency, or U.S. immigration policy, but it did show her where those disagreements lay. She thinks a neutral news outlet – one that doesn’t just tell her what she wants to hear – would help remove those “blinders,” for her and the country. 

“If people did tune into that,” she says, “then we wouldn’t have such polarized viewpoints.”

Staff writers Riley Robinson and Dwight Weingarten contributed to this report.

AP

Workers in Jiddah wait in front of an advertisement for Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil giant Aramco with the Arabic reading: "Saudi Aramco, soon on stock exchange."

On Nov. 17, Saudi Arabia’s absolute and often brutal monarchy will take a crucial step toward transparency and accountability. It plans to sell shares in its state-owned oil company, Aramco. The public offering is only a small percentage of one of the world’s largest companies. And it is only on a local stock market. Yet if the sale meets expectations, it could lead to more Aramco shares being sold on global exchanges. Private investors could then start to make demands on the kingdom’s crown jewel – and perhaps on the country’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

In many other Arab countries, from Algeria to Iraq, massive protests have recently challenged strong-arm rulers to hold them to account for basic rights and liberties. In Saudi Arabia, any challenges to the ruling Saud family are more subtle and slower, a result of swift crackdowns on dissent. They often show up on Twitter or in groups of women pushing the boundaries of rules that restrict their freedom. “The Saudi feminist movement has proved to be the most organized and articulate civil society in the country,” writes Saudi professor of social anthropology Madawi al-Rasheed in The Guardian.

Yet the monarchy’s biggest vulnerability is the economy. After world oil prices fell in 2015, it launched massive reforms under a new crown prince to diversify the economy and create jobs for a massive youth population. The regime plans to transfer a quarter of its economy to private hands. The sale of Aramco shares will not only provide needed cash for reforms, it will also be the ultimate example of the country being forced to open itself to the world – and to new values and expectations of the global market.

Saudi Arabia is the Arab world’s largest economy and Aramco is in charge of the world’s second-largest proven crude oil reserves. Both may soon need to treat private investors well by ensuring open, responsive, and clean governance. The shares being offered are available to both common Saudis and foreign buyers. With more public offerings worldwide, many investors may not like the arbitrary killing of dissidents or the way Saudi Arabia conducts its war in Yemen. Such troubling behavior could cause instability. Investors might also push the country to diversify more rapidly toward a post-oil future.

The Aramco offering is hardly a cathartic moment for Saudi Arabia. Yet it reflects a quiet revolution in Saudi identity, driven from both the top and the bottom. Young Saudis are not in the streets protesting. But many will be lining up to buy shares in Aramco.