Andrew Kelly/Reuters

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield addresses the United Nations Security Council regarding the situation in Afghanistan, at the United Nations in New York, Aug. 16, 2021.

Thursday’s terrorist bombings outside Kabul’s international airport were a humanitarian tragedy – and may greatly complicate the way forward for both the United States and the Taliban, which have been warily cooperating during the largest evacuation airlift since the Vietnam War.

The attacks Thursday – which killed at least 12 American servicemen and dozens of Afghan civilians – have the potential to alter the calculus on everything from the Taliban’s stated promise to keep Afghanistan from becoming a hotbed of terrorist activity to their attempt to present a more moderate face to the world than they showed the last time they were in power.

At the same time, the attacks may make it more difficult for the U.S. to develop their current relationship with the Taliban into something more than a narrow working effort to manage the evacuation’s chaos. For President Joe Biden, the political pressure of this foreign crisis will only increase.

The Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the explosions, may want a future Afghanistan in which the Taliban and the U.S. have as narrow a relationship as possible.

Nevertheless, an impetus remains for the Taliban and the international community to engage diplomatically. The Taliban are taking the reins from a government in Kabul that relied on U.S. and Western funding for 80% of its budget. At the same time, about half of Afghanistan’s 38 million people have been dependent on international food assistance to survive.

As the Taliban transition from waging an insurgency to governing the country, those factors might seem to suggest that the Western-led international community will have significant leverage to press the conservative Islamist movement to modify its past behavior.

At the same time, the U.S. and other countries have a range of interests, from preventing terrorism and controlling the illicit drug trade to avoiding a new humanitarian disaster marked by rising hunger and an overpowering refugee exodus. And these international concerns will play to the Taliban’s favor.

What this means, experts in Afghanistan and global politics say, is that both sides have cards to play in an emerging diplomatic game between the Taliban government and the international community.

What does the Taliban want from the world?

Much will depend, they add, on perhaps the biggest unknown of the new reality: what kind of governance the Taliban intend to impose, and what kind of relations they want with the world. The Taliban’s actions in the days immediately following Thursday’s devastating attacks will likely influence whether the international community sees them as a credible governing body.

“The leverage the U.S. and the broader international community have is squarely on the financial side, when you remember to what degree Afghanistan has been dependent on international support,” says Earl Anthony Wayne, a former deputy U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

“But of course how much leverage that is depends on what the government that emerges on the Taliban side really wants to do,” he adds. “If they want to be a government that provides services and can help people get jobs that allow for stable and productive lives, then they’re going to require international assistance.”

Wali Sabawoon/AP

Smoke rises from deadly explosions outside the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021. Suicide bombers and gunmen targeted crowds massing near the airport gate in the waning days of an airlift that has drawn thousands of people seeking to flee the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

There are a few conditions the international community as a whole, led by the five powers of the United Nations Security Council – the U.S., China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom – will want to set with the Taliban government in order for international sanctions on the group to be lifted and foreign assistance to resume.

At the top of the list is terrorism.

“It’s actually helpful to the Taliban to have terrorist attacks like today to tell the U.S., ‘If you don’t leave Afghanistan, there will be more like this,'” says Bradley Bowman, senior director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy’s Center on Military and Political Power in Washington.

Today’s attacks may deepen Russia’s worries that the Taliban victory could prove to be a boon to Islamist extremists in some former republics of the Soviet Union, while China has similar concerns about the influence Afghanistan’s triumphant Islamists could have among its minority Muslim Uyghur population.

Moreover, Russia in particular will be focused on another common interest of the international community – stemming the flow of opium and other drugs out of Afghanistan.

“The key to controlling the Taliban’s behavior has to be the region,” says Anatol Lieven, a British South Asia analyst who is now a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington. “All the countries in the region are deeply opposed to Afghanistan again becoming a terrorist haven,” he says.

Not far behind, he adds, are regional concerns about illicit drugs.

The Taliban have assured regional powers that they will “suppress heroin – they’ve made that promise in Moscow and Tehran, as well as to the U.S.,” Mr. Lieven says. 

But beyond such primarily security concerns, interests are likely to diverge. The U.S. and its Western allies could soon find themselves alone in pressuring a new government on human rights, women’s and girls’ rights, an independent press, and inclusive governance, some say.

“The challenge for the U.S. in seeking to preserve the gains made by Afghan society is going to be, can you get tough conditions for the Taliban to hold?” says Ambassador Wayne, now a public policy fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington.

Rahmat Gul/AP

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, center, leaves after his first news conference, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 17, 2021.

G7 leaders met Tuesday for a virtual summit on Afghanistan, but the focus remained on the chaotic evacuation out of Kabul airport – and on disagreement among G7 partners with President Joe Biden’s decision to keep to the Aug. 31 deadline agreed with the Taliban for ending the formal evacuation process.

“The G7 [group of wealthy Western economies] will be the easiest forum to bring along,” Mr. Wayne adds, “but will others join? The Security Council – which is the forum that counts in terms of international sanctions – is going to be a key testing point of the pressure the international community is willing to keep on the Taliban.”

Much has been made over the past two weeks of what some are calling the “new Taliban” – allowing some women journalists to continue working, proclaiming that women’s rights will be respected, assuring (with an eye to neighboring Iran) that the country’s Shia minority will not be repressed.

But many experts caution that the Taliban could simply be “playing nice” in this early period in which no powers have yet recognized the new government, international sanctions on the Taliban are still in force, IMF funding for the country is on hold, and national assets are frozen, mostly in U.S. banks.

Already the Afghan economy is in free fall, with Afghans reporting empty ATMs and food shortages in markets – and skyrocketing prices on the supplies that remain. The World Food Program warned Wednesday that 14 million Afghans could face starvation if massive food aid does not come soon.

Faced with such a catastrophic scenario, some analysts say, the international community could very well shift priorities like human rights and inclusive governance to the back burner. Mr. Wayne says for example that he would expect the U.S. Treasury to move quickly to create “cut-outs” from sanctions on the Taliban to allow for humanitarian assistance.

Parwiz/Reuters/File

An Afghan man works on a poppy field in Jalalabad province, April 17, 2014. Afghanistan is the world's top cultivator of the poppy, from which opium and heroin are produced. After terrorism, concerns about illicit drugs top regional concerns. The Taliban have promised to curb the trade.

Humanitarian concerns

Certainly no one wants to see a grave humanitarian crisis take hold of Afghanistan. But some international analysts say the U.S. – its image already severely damaged by a tumultuous withdrawal and a widespread conclusion that it abandoned friends and allies in the process – can ill afford to see its international standing tarnished further by forsaking the young leaders, rights advocates, and Western-style journalists it fostered.

“Everyone right now is talking about the pressure the U.S. and the rest of the world can bring to bear on the Taliban through sanctions, [withholding] formal recognition, and international funding, but they are not the only three elements at our disposal,” says Rina Amiri, who served in the Obama administration as a senior adviser to the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“The fourth, in my view even more crucial element … is the soft power – the ideals and values that have been such an important part of American power and influence,” says Ms. Amiri, now a senior fellow at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs. “What worries me now,” she adds, “is that the United States is acting like it’s on its back heel and withdrawing from those ideals.”

At a press conference Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Taliban will “have a very strong interest in acting with a modicum of responsibility” if they don’t want to return to “pariah state” status. And he insisted that the U.S. “will use every tool at our disposal … to do everything possible to uphold [Afghans’] basic rights.”

Ms. Amiri, who has maintained her work with human rights defenders and women’s groups in Afghanistan, says she remains hopeful the U.S. will return to emphasizing its moral authority in dealing with a Taliban government.

But she cites a statement she received from a group of Afghan women leaders Tuesday to illustrate just how low America’s stature has fallen.

“There is no political will to rescue Afghan women,” the statement posted on social media said. “America is going to do what it did the entire way. They will raise our hopes, then abandon us at the last minute and wash their hands of us.”

If indeed the U.S. intends to use its moral authority as leverage with the Taliban, Ms. Amiri says, it has a deep hole to dig out of first.

The fishermen of Asilulu knew something was up when the tuna fled their shores for cooler waters. They didn’t grasp that global warming was heating the ocean and displacing the fish on which their livelihoods depended. But they knew they needed to rethink how they fished.  

So the community of roughly 2,000 people adapted. They pooled their resources so boats could travel further in search of tuna. In 2011, an Indonesian PhD student wrote his thesis about Asilulu’s successful community-led adaptation to climate change on a seashore thousands of miles from the centers of power where climate policy is decided.

That was then. This is now: Most fishermen have since given up on long, costly expeditions and turned their back on the sea that nourished past generations. “The fish have gone too far,” says Umar, one of the last remaining tuna fishermen.

The need for adaptation is a mantra in climate debates and there are many examples of adaptations that work, from heat-resistant crops to natural flood defenses. But perhaps just as resonant is the story of those that failed to outrun a rapidly warming planet and its devastating effects on livelihoods, particularly in poorer countries like Indonesia, a vast archipelago of islands that straddle the equator.

For fishing communities who depend on the ocean’s bounty, there may be no easy solutions and only hard questions for richer industrialized countries whose emissions have led the planet down a perilous path of extreme weather from which there is no respite.

"Climate change is a global phenomenon that affects the livelihoods of vulnerable communities. So it is justifiable for them to demand justice from governments of richer countries that are reluctant to cut their emissions," says Linda Yanti Sulistiawati, an associate law professor at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta and a lead author of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report.

Fieni Aprilia/IWMF/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Fish are distributed at a gathering in Pulau Satu, in Indonesia's Southeast Sulawesi, on June 24, 2021.

In 2009, wealthy nations pledged in Copenhagen to provide $100 billion a year in public and private financing for developing countries to respond to climate change. That target was due to be reached by 2020. But since it wasn’t specified what counted towards that target it’s unclear how much assistance has flowed; studies suggest that far more investment has gone to climate mitigation – for example, renewable energy projects – than to helping communities adapt to warmer and less predictable weather patterns.

Even these efforts strike some Indonesians as inadequate to the scale of the disruption.

"International financial aid is helpful but it only acts as a ‘painkiller’. What we need now is real actions by industrialized countries to cut their emissions," says Aminuddin Mane Kandari, the dean of the Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Sciences at the University of Halu Oleo in Southeast Sulawesi.

Studying a spice island 

When Subair, a doctoral candidate at IPB University in Bogor, Indonesia, first visited Asilulu in 2011 he found a coastal community that was trying to adapt to a changing climate. Around 70% of households relied on tuna fishing for their livelihood.

Asilulu is on the northern tip of Ambon, one of the spice islands that lured 17^th century European merchants to colonize the Indonesian archipelago. A sea breeze makes the coconut trees dance, framing crystal-blue waters; at dusk a gorgeous violet sunset fills the tropical sky. 

Fieni Aprilia/IWMF/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

A street view in Asilulu, a coastal village on the island of Ambon in Indonesia that is struggling to adapt to changing oceanic temperatures.

Behind the village stands a dense forest containing nutmeg trees. For centuries nutmeg was grown only on the tiny Banda Islands, south of Ambon. In 1677, the Netherlands swapped Run, one of the Banda Islands, with Britain, which took possession of a North American island called Manhattan.

In 2011, Subair, who has only one name, found that tuna fishermen in Asilulu had already noted the changing environment. The weather had become increasingly unpredictable, they told him. “The wave has become evil…I can’t predict when it’s gonna hit,” one of the fishermen said. Tuna were moving into the open sea, which meant buying more fuel to make longer roundtrips.

Still, at that time adaptation seemed manageable. Strong social ties within their community had built resilience against a crisis. Richer people in the village acted as sponsors, providing fuel and larger boats to poorer fishermen so that they could fish in the Banda Sea south of Ambon.

But today the tuna trade in Asilulu is all but extinguished. Fishermen who used to hunt tuna off nearby islands say that the cost of fuel to travel 50 or more nautical miles to new hunting grounds is prohibitive. Fishermen who borrowed from wealthier neighbors, hoping to catch enough tuna to turn a profit, found themselves trapped in debt. Many defaulted, hitting their sponsors.

Some tuna fishermen have switched to coral reef fishing, using traditional traps. Others have turned their back on the sea and taken jobs on construction sites, or taken up nutmeg harvesting. A kilogram of nutmeg sold at market is enough to cover daily expenses. This represents another side of resilience, says Subair. “People could farm on the land when they don’t go to the sea,” he says.

Fieni Aprilia/IWMF/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Djafar, a fisherman in Asilulu, Indonesia, pulls up a wooden fishing trap with help from two other fishermen on June 24, 2021.

What happened in Asilulu shows how climate change threatens the livelihoods of coastal communities across Indonesia. Maritime industries, including fisheries, aquaculture, and tourism, make up around 28 percent of Indonesian economic output. And while climate change isn’t the only factor – pollution and overfishing are other threats – it raises thorny questions about global responsibility and burden sharing. 

According to Climate Watch, a climate data platform run by the World Resource Institute in Washington, D.C, wealthy nations in Europe and America contributed 79% of global carbon dioxide emissions from 1850 to 2012. “Climate change is…a cumulative result of global human activities but the ones who first face the impacts are vulnerable communities,” says Prof. Aminuddin.  

Warming oceans, extreme weather 

Across the oceans that surround the Indonesian archipelago, and in the waters on which Indonesian small scale fishermen depend, sea surfaces are warming and fish are migrating to colder regions.

Overall, Indonesia’s sea temperature may have warmed by nearly one degree Celsius since the 1980s, according to the national Meteorological, Climatology, and Geophysics Agency, or BMKG. A study led by Ishak Iskandar, a physicist in Sriwijaya University in South Sumatra, shows the warming trend is particularly high in the Banda sea, where Asilulu fishermen hunted tuna.  

An analysis by a U.S.-funded Indonesian climate adaptation project found that climate change had affected fish migration patterns. Extreme weather also resulted in fewer days on which fishermen could put to sea and drove up their operational costs.

Indonesia’s current five-year development plan contains climate adaptation programs. These include $1.6 billion to build sea-walls on vulnerable islands and install computerized weather boards in harbors. Three of these boards are operational in villages on Saparua, an island east of Ambon, says Ilham Tauda, the head of the economic division at a regional development agency.

Fieni Aprilia/IWMF/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

A view of Mekar, a fishing village in the Indonesian province of Southeast Sulawesi, on June 18, 2021.

“So before [fishermen] go out to the sea, they know the wind speed and the wave height”, he says.

Mr. Tauda says climate adaptation is challenging in a nation of more than 17,000 islands, and funding is limited. Only a few villages in his region of 1,340 islands were chosen for the adaptation program. “We cannot reach all of them,” he says.

In Asilulu, none of the fishermen know of any such funds. “As long as I live, I haven’t got help from anyone,” says Djafar, aged 60, who fishes on the remaining coral reef in Asilulu.

Sea nomads settle down

Several hundred miles west, on the starfish-shaped island of Sulawesi, another fishing community has also tried its hand at adaptation, with mixed results.

The Bajau, an ethnic group known as sea gypsies, are found across Southeast Asia. The ocean is their home: As nomads, they hop from island to island, living from the sea bounty.

In the 1990s, one group of Bajau moved to the mainland of Southeast Sulawesi after tiring of being flooded out of their temporary wooden houses.  “The waves hit us too often, we needed to go to a safer place,” says Haji Aminudin, a 70 year-old Bajau.

Three decades on, their group has put down roots in Mekar, a village of 753 people located two hours away from the regional capital. On a recent afternoon, women chitchatted in front of their brightly colored wooden houses and children ran around. Clothes dried in the breeze against a background of gray clouds and pale blue sea.

Fieni Aprilia/IWMF/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Lukman, a fisherman, holds his spear gun on his boat in Mekar village in Indonesia's Southeast Sulawesi on June 19, 2021. His community of former sea nomads is trying to adapt to changing weather and oceanic conditions.

Lukman, a fishermen wearing a red-and-white long-sleeved T-shirt, sat inside his living room watching television. He usually fishes for tuna around Sulawesi, but not today. “Just look at that cloud above,” he says, pointing to the sky. “If it’s dark, then we can’t go.”

Most Bajau in Mekar still rely on the sea for their livelihood, even though they live near a city. So their particular adaptation – moving to permanent housing on the mainland – still leaves them at the mercy of a changing environment. Mr. Lukman says the sea has become “unfriendly” to him.

The eastern monsoon winds that used to end in June now linger as late as August; government data show that the east wind has become more dominant here in the last two years and that 4-foot-high waves are more common.

Such unpredictability is a hazard for fishermen, most of whom use small boats. “Small-scale fishermen are the first ones who see the impact of climate change,” says Faisal Habibi, a scientist at BMKG, the meteorological agency. 

A risky nocturnal dive

Working with a regional fisheries agency, BMKG has taught fishermen about climate change and how to use weather information to adapt to changes. Some villages now have windsocks, the conical tubes flown at airports, to show the direction and strength of the wind.

But none of these programs have reached Mekar. Instead, some villagers are adapting to diminished tuna catches by spear fishing closer to home, diving at night to catch coral fish.

“They sleep at night, so it’s easy to catch them,” says Tahring, a young fisherman with curly hair. On a recent morning he landed a haul of colorful fish; it had been a long night, diving from midnight to dawn, scooping fish into his blue canoe.

The sun was rising as Mr. Tahring approached a house on stilts belonging to an old man to whom he usually sells fish, and who had already whipped out his notebook and pen. Mr. Tahring smiled as the buyer weighed the catch and offered him the equivalent of $35. “It is a lot more than my last fishing day,” he says.  

Fieni Aprilia/IWMF/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

A day's catch is displayed in Soropia, in Indonesia's Southeast Sulawesi, on June 19, 2021.

But this livelihood is perilous since most fishermen use a compressor to breathe underwater. In Indonesia, the Bajau were long renowned for their lung capacity, diving underwater for several minutes to spear fish, but that tradition hasn’t survived here. The Indonesian government has banned compressors for diving because they can lead to potentially fatal lung complications.

Mr. Lukman still remembers the day he returned to the surface and vomited blood. “I got lung problems and I don’t want to get sick again,” he says.

For an alternative source of income, some in Mekar are raising fish using a keramba, a square netted cage anchored to the seabed. Mr. Lukman takes care of one for his uncle, so one morning he went to feed the fish.

Inside the keramba, a school of white fish swam in clear blue water. These fish command a decent price, but a full-grown lobster for export can fetch more than $50, says Mr. Lukman. He used to raise lobster, but he usually sold them as juveniles because he needed the cash.

Asked whether lobster farming could cover his daily needs, Mr. Lukman hesitated. He still needs to fish on the open waters, he says, but only when the weather is favorable. He scanned the horizon.

“People say the sea is rich, but our sustenance is not certain,” he says.

This reporting was supported by the Round Earth Media program of the International Women’s Media Foundation.

Welcoming students to their new dorm, resident adviser Melvin Casillas-Muñoz wears a badge that says “MOM.” The mid-August move-in can be stressful – and humor helps, says the sophomore. 

Mr. Casillas-Muñoz looks forward to more social interactions this fall. After all, the public University of Colorado Boulder is resuming mostly in-person, with COVID-19 vaccines required campuswide. He spent last year in hybrid and virtual learning, struggling as an introvert to expand his social circle over Zoom.

“I’m trying to make up for all that, and make sure all my residents get a good experience with the community here as well,” says Mr. Casillas-Muñoz, as he and fellow RAs hold doors for box-hauling families.

His hope is shared by colleges and universities welcoming back students this fall. As these institutions brace for another uncertain year, they’re juggling more than move-ins and mandates. They’re seeking to rebuild campus community – in part to avoid pandemic opt-outs.

To help convince students to stay, says Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) President Lynn Pasquerella, “it’s more important than ever that colleges and universities position themselves as places of welcome and belonging.”

Higher education faces fall 2021 with a patchwork of plans. As the pandemic endures with the rise of the delta variant, some schools are favoring a temporary online restart. COVID-19 vaccination policies vary, with some schools barred from issuing mandates due to state orders. As of Aug. 26, there are 805 schools requiring COVID-19 vaccination for at least some students or workers, according to a tracker by The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Melvin Casillas-Muñoz (left) and fellow resident advisers at the University of Colorado Boulder help students move into their dorm on Aug. 19, 2021. The sophomore says he looks forward to more in-person interactions this year.

Beyond political and health hurdles, there’s also the issue of head counts. Between the springs of 2020 and 2021, undergraduate enrollment declined by 4.9% – some 727,000 students – a plummet led by community colleges, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. 

Another analysis from the center points to financial and racial disparities. For the high school class of 2019, college enrollment the following fall for graduates of low-income, high-poverty, and high-minority schools dropped at steeper rates than for peers at more advantaged schools. (High-minority high schools have at least 40% Black or Hispanic students.)

To help weather the storm, colleges and universities received billions in federal pandemic relief funding. However, says Dr. Pasquerella of AAC&U, “it’s a concern that most of the money has gone to providing financial resources for students whose family situations have changed radically. But now how do we provide the resources necessary for them to stay in college?”

“Let us help you”

At Austin Community College District – a network of 11 campuses in Texas – a sharper understanding of student needs last year informs continued outreach. The district contacted students early on in the pandemic and asked what they needed.

“They were concerned about finances, being able to support their families, but they were also wanting to stay on track,” says Vice President of Student Affairs Shasta Buchanan. Their central message to students: “Let us help you stay on track.” An outreach team will continue to call and text students moving forward. 

Beyond expanded access to digital devices and Wi-Fi, the district and its food bank partners distributed over a million pounds of food to students and other locals over the past school year – an effort that will continue.

“That ‘community’ part of a community college really kicked in,” says Dr. Buchanan, whose district is starting several fall classes remotely for the first three weeks.

It is also developing a brief online training for faculty on how to connect students with resources beyond academic needs. Besides ensuring students are “college-ready,” she says, “we stand firm in being student-ready, to meet our students where they are.”

Ramping up pandemic operations also led to deeper collaborations with public health partners – and across campus departments, says Michelle Fisher, associate vice president for campus health services at Delaware State University, a historically Black university based in Dover.

“Sometimes higher ed has a history of working in what they call silos, but as a result of this pandemic, we just became a cohesive community,” Dr. Fisher says.

Attention to well-being

For many schools, campus solidarity has meant expanding mental health support in response to growing need.

When Ohio State University surveyed around 1,000 students over the past school year, results were troubling. The shares of students that screened positive for anxiety, depression, or burnout all rose between August 2020 and April 2021. 

“There is an urgent need for universities across the country to shift from a paradigm of crisis intervention to prevention,” says Chief Wellness Officer Bernadette Melnyk.

“When you put COVID stressors on top of the regular stress that college students are under, and then you put the racial and political tensions we’ve had on top of that, it can really be overwhelming for our young adults.”

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

University of Colorado Boulder freshman Matt Asson hugs his mother, Maureen Welter, on the lawn of his dorm before his parents head home to Chicago on Aug. 19, 2021. “I’m just excited to be back in person, go to classes with other people, and not just sit in my room on my computer all day," says Mr. Asson.

While the OSU system of roughly 70,000 students has always had strong mental health services, she says, it expanded its offerings with a Telehealth Wellness Hub in November. New students also received a five-point mental health checklist at orientation. And Dr. Melnyk says she’s exploring with other OSU leaders how mental health resources could be more integrated into curricula. 

“If you don’t make the culture one in which healthy behaviors are the norm, then you’re not going to see great change,” says Dr. Melnyk, who is also president and founder of the National Consortium for Building Healthy Academic Communities.

Desire for help is there. Nationally, while three-quarters (77%) of students report heightened emotional distress and anxiety linked to the pandemic, nearly the same share (72%) intend to seek emotional support from others – including campus counselors – according to an August survey by higher-ed telehealth provider TimelyMD.

School spirit and bottom lines

As private Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio, gears up for a return to mostly in-person learning, President John Comerford expects the resumption of normal campus activities – like sports, clubs, and concerts – to play a key role in rebuilding campus bonds. 

“Student relationships [in the past] formed everywhere from the athletic field to the library, and it is just hard to replicate that online,” he says. “We need to be as in-person as we can be, because that’s what our students want. That’s where our students thrive. That’s where our faculty and staff do their best work.” (The school just announced it’s requiring COVID-19 vaccination for students by Oct. 25 in order to participate in the spring semester. Faculty and staff will also be required to be vaccinated.)

There’s a financial angle, too. Enrollment is down 9% between fall 2019 and the fall 2021 projection of 2,590 students, according to the school.

Beyond tuition woes, more students than usual elected to live off campus during pandemic semesters, which drained room-and-board revenue. He hopes the promotion of a return to normal activities will draw students back to campus not just to learn, but to live. First-time student enrollment is rebounding, he says, along with the share of students choosing to live on campus.

“Reorientation” 

Some schools are welcoming back second-year students to in-person orientations they missed a year ago. Olin College of Engineering –  a private school in Needham, Massachusetts, with under 400 students – held orientation virtually this past year. Now it’s allowing second-year students to participate in an on-campus “reorientation.”

Over meals and info sessions, the goal is to “get up to speed on what it’s like to be there as a full campus, even though they’ve been at the school for a whole year,” says Dean Alisha Sarang-Sieminski.

“We’re used to having this [campus] population that has a pretty shared experience,” says Dr. Sarang-Sieminski, but how students have experienced the pandemic depends on their class year and whether they took a leave. “We’re at a little bit of a cultural reset moment.”

Second-year CU Boulder students like Mr. Casillas-Muñoz are also able to participate in fall welcome events typically organized for first-year students – many of whom finished high school remotely. 

After a near-virtual senior year, CU Boulder freshman Matt Asson says, “I’m just excited to be back in person, go to classes with other people, and not just sit in my room on my computer all day.”

Before his parents fly back to Chicago, they say goodbyes on the lawn. The teen survived the first night in his new home, he reports, and has started to meet dormmates.

“It’s different for me being in a new place not knowing anyone, but so far so good,” he says. 

As his mother pulls him into a hug, he tells her not to cry.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect the new vaccine requirement at Otterbein University.

Karen Norris/Staff

Mary Gentry doesn’t like to use the word “retired.” The engineer, former federal banking executive, and now consultant was looking for ways to stay busy once the pandemic slowed her workflow and the lockdown ended her ability to host dinner parties or visit friends domestically and internationally. 

“Friendship has always been important to me,” she says. “My first friend from kindergarten and I are still in touch several times a year, even though we have had different paths. With time on my hands during the pandemic, I asked myself, ‘What is Cindy doing?’’”  

And so, Mary reached out to Cindy – and 30-plus other friends from her past. “I thought about the parents I met when my now-adult son was in playgroups, and I wondered, Where are they now?” she says. “I made a list that included teachers and friends from high school and college, as well as former work colleagues and neighbors. Many had had name changes, and some I knew before there were cellphones or email.” 

There were a few Mary couldn’t locate, she says, “but those whom I contacted were so warm. Their reactions encouraged me to keep doing this. They had wondered about me, too.”

I met Mary during a Sisters in Solidarity discussion session for Harvard Business School alumnae of color, and we have since become friends. When I heard Mary describe her lockdown activity, I realized that several people had recently called me as if out of the blue. The calls were from an art dealer, whom I hadn’t been in direct touch with for more than two years; a colleague from my very first job; and a young man who had been ill with symptoms of COVID-19 when I last saw him at a Zoom birthday party. He wanted to let me know he had recovered.

Trends in friendship

Individuals are just beginning to assess the impact of the last 18 months of the pandemic’s forced isolation, even as some policymakers in the U.S. and abroad are issuing new mask mandates and other restrictions in the face of the Delta variant. Some are saying pandemic guidance is “in moonwalk mode, facing forward but sliding backward,” as the Brown Estate Vineyards’ August newsletter phrased it.  

Lockdowns isolated people from their friends and relations, exacerbating a trend that is being called “America’s friendscape crisis.” May polling by the Survey Center on American Life, a project of the American Enterprise Institute, found that only 13% of U.S. adults say they have 10 or more close friends, versus 33% in 1990. Also, today, 59% say they have a best friend, versus 75% in 1990. Perhaps those declines explain why only 16% say they turn first to a friend when a personal problem arises; in 1990, 26% reported doing so. 

The “friendscape crisis” is thought to be the result of Americans being more geographically mobile, marrying later, and/or working longer hours. The pandemic has had some impact, but the survey results present a mixed bag. Almost half of Americans (47%) said they had lost touch with at least a few friends. (I know that I have lost touch with several, and I just couldn’t muster the emotional energy to send out holiday cards in 2020 for the first time in almost two decades.) On the other hand, almost half of Americans in the survey (46%) said they had made a new friend during the pandemic. 

Pandemic pursuits

Indeed, Mary became one of my new friends during the lockdown, and her example prompted me to conduct my own informal poll. I asked several longtime friends what new activities they started during the lockdown that they plan to continue. Not all responses related to friendships. One friend began bird watching with her local historical society. Several mentioned taking long walks; another noted that she’s going to bed earlier and therefore getting more sleep. 

Like me, one friend has been purging his closets. We both began giving away “beautiful and long-beloved” household items, as he puts it, to young friends just starting out. In my case, I must confess, I was taken aback when my offer of a Wedgewood soup tureen was rejected. Janelle then gently reminded me that some New York City apartments have limited storage space.

But the biggest cluster of my friends’ responses concerned relationships with family and friends. One is holding weekly Zoom calls to stay current with family members. Another plays weekly mahjong games digitally with friends. In addition, she says, “My husband and I developed a ‘pod’ of friends and we would meet for outside dinners as well as hikes.”

My closet-purging friend is also preparing for the return of in-person gatherings by refining dinner party menus and mastering dishes that will require only 15 minutes of time away from his guests to get the meal onto the table. 

Finally, one friend emphasized being kinder to people. She says, “I saw how stressed people alone were. It feels good to me to help others with that random act of kindness or a call on a weekend for a wellness check.”

I wonder if that might have been part of the motivation behind Mary’s decision not only to reconnect with people but to stay in touch with them. She has sustained many of those renewed friendships through calls, text messages, video calls, watch parties, other online activities, and even occasional in-person visits – “a meal, a visit to a museum, or a walk,” she reports. 

So the question is, could being apart bring us closer and strengthen fraying friendship connections? In many cases, the answer may be yes.

Welcome to the world’s newest UNESCO World Heritage Site, a breezy hillside town perched above the Jordan Valley that is celebrated for, well, its legendary hospitality.

In Salt, history and economics have helped create a unique mix of cultures and faiths and a harmony of yellow-gold stone buildings and community.

Don’t believe it? Simply ask the city’s elders.

You can find them every day gathered in the Ain Plaza, formerly the site of fresh springs and now the town square in the twin shadows of Salt’s Great Mosque and Anglican Church.

They will gladly tell you how their hospitality and way of life were passed from generation to generation – if they have time.

For most of the day, they huddle around stone tables locked in intense games of backgammon and mancala, exhibiting the steely concentration of professional athletes.

They say they welcome the UNESCO designation as a chance to share what they call “hospitality and harmony” with the world.

“Here we welcome all, and we embrace every person,” says Abu Ali, awaiting his turn at backgammon. He pointed to his compatriots of different faiths and tribes embroiled in matches. 

“We don’t see Muslim, Christian, tribes, or urbanites – we see each other’s humanity, and the humanity in all who visit.”

Taylor Luck

Town elders are locked into their daily game of backgammon in the town square of Salt, Jordan, the latest UNESCO World Heritage Site, on Aug. 18, 2021.

Dating back to the Iron Age, Salt is located strategically on the trade and pilgrimage routes between Damascus and Jerusalem, and between the Mediterranean Sea and the Arabian Peninsula. The agricultural village grew into a flourishing hillside city in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, attracting residents from across the Levant, Turkey, Arabia, the Caucasus, and west Asia.

The constant, diverse flow of visitors and merchants created neighborhoods in which each street and hill had a mix of Christians and Muslims – Palestinians, Syrians, Turks, Circassians, Chechens, and members of local tribes all building their homes together.

No need for hotels

For centuries, Salt families would house and feed travelers, including merchants, Christian pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem, or Muslims heading east for the Hajj – offering at least three days of lodging, no questions asked.

Not a single hotel was built in the town, as it was considered “shameful” not to host a guest in one’s home. Only in the past two years have guest-houses emerged; but the idea of a guest paying for lodging is still highly controversial.

“Please have lunch with me,” strangers told Jordanian visitors and a reporter, during a visit in mid-August.

In its announcement in late July that Salt had been added to the World Heritage list, UNESCO highlighted the city’s unique makeup as a “Place of Tolerance and Urban Hospitality.”

“In Salt, there is not a single area here that is segregated by race, religion, or origin,” says former Mayor Khaled Al Khashman. “This is very rare in this region and, historically, rare in the world.”

Taylor Luck

Yellow sandstone is typical of the over 600 buildings that remain unchanged from Ottoman times, in Salt, Jordan, Aug. 18, 2021.

The town’s traditional architecture has long encouraged community.

Most of Salt’s yellow sandstone homes consisted of a single room with a domed roof, with two or four homes sharing a communal courtyard, walls, rooftop, and entrance.

Families would sit in their communal courtyard, cooking or drinking evening tea together while their children played. Neighbors shared food, drink, and supplies, and took part in each other’s celebrations, religious holidays, and family milestones.

The layout meant neighbors were often closer than blood relatives.

“Our houses share walls, share roofs, share stairs – there is no physical separation of buildings and the families that inhabit them whatsoever,” says Salt historian Ibrahim Masri.

“As a city we are completely connected, we beat as one heart although we all come from different origins.”

Salt resident Nadia Abu Samen, a Muslim, restored one of these compounds, she says, to “preserve the Salt of my childhood.”

She says her mother was raised by her family’s Christian neighbors, and her uncles and aunts were given Christian first names to honor their neighbors.

Taylor Luck

Local resident and cultural researcher Nadi Abu Samen wears a traditional khalaga dress at her cultural exhibition, Zamanak Ya Salt, located in a traditional home compound in Salt, Jordan, Aug. 18, 2021.

For the past decade Ms. Abu Samen has carefully preserved an abandoned compound of four joined rooms – two homes belonging to Christian families, two homes belonging to Muslim families – and turned them into a cultural center, exhibition, and cafe.

She traces Salt’s trademark harmony to the “uniform simplicity of traditional life,” which she and others now share with visitors from the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Persian Gulf.

“People today love experiencing our heritage in Salt, because you return to a simpler life where there is no difference between me and you,” she says, pointing to a black and white photograph of families sitting in a communal courtyard. “There are no barriers.”

Eclectic architecture

Salt’s community-building architecture is itself a “melting pot.”

When the Ottomans decided to make Salt an official governorship and administrative capital for then-Transjordan in the 1860s, authorities allowed local leaders to select the style in which the new government buildings would be built.

From books and paintings, Salt’s elders cherry-picked from a mixture of architectural schools, creating an eclectic blend of Baroque, European Art Nouveau, Ottoman, Byzantine, Neo-Colonial, and Gulf Arabian styles.

Salt residents then chose local yellow sandstone – its soft texture easy to carve into curves, domes, arched windows, Corinthian columns, flowers, and other designs – for this new urban blend of East and West.

Shortly thereafter, all buildings and shops took on this new architectural style, transforming Salt into a golden town of arches, columns, and domes that would be at home in Italy or Istanbul.

Buildings were erected in close proximity: The Great Mosque and the Anglican Church share a stairway; the Latin Church and the smaller mosque are meters apart.

Taylor Luck

At the St. George Church in Salt, Jordan, Muslims and Christians alike light candles and leave messages and prayers on a site where St. George is believed to have appeared hundreds of years ago.

Most of these buildings – around 650 houses, shops, mosques, churches, schools, guesthouses, banks – remain that way today, unchanged from Salt’s 19th-century glory years.

Multiple projects by the Japan International Cooperation Agency and U.S. Agency for International Development have aided in their restoration and encouraged a new generation to enter the tourism industry.

A hit with Jordanians

Since UNESCO’s announcement, hundreds of Jordanians have flocked to Salt – many of them visiting for the first time – to walk through its historic souk, or marketplace, and along its carefully marked out heritage trails.

Salt residents see this budding tourism as an extension of their traditional hospitality.

“Here, all that matters is how you treat others and that you are a good neighbor, not where you come from. Visitors really respond to this,” says Nagat Hyari, who has volunteered as a tour guide since 2015.

While history is an important window to the past, Salt residents say there is plenty on offer in the present.

“Archaeological sites and monuments are important, but here in Salt we also offer something unique – an intangible living heritage that is being practiced, protected, and shared with anyone who visits,” says Khaldoun Khreisat, director of the Salt Development Corporation, which renovates historic buildings and supports heritage-based projects.

“You can view heritage, but here you can live the harmony.”

Reuters

Laura Codruta Kovesi, Romania's former chief anti-corruption prosecutor, is now the European Union's first chief prosecutor.

In the last two months, both the European Union and the United States have tried a novel idea in transnational justice. They have each set up a capacity to investigate corruption across borders. Their goals are quite different. The EU wants to plug an estimated $73 billion hole in its budget from fraud in its 27 member states. The U.S. seeks to curb corruption in Central America, a prime source of migration. Yet they are both setting a precedent for supranational honesty in governance.

In June, the Biden White House declared the fight against corruption to be a “core” national security interest. To show that it is serious, it struck an agreement with Guatemala that would allow U.S. prosecutors and law enforcement to “advise” and “mentor” Guatemalan prosecutors in specific corruption cases, such as human trafficking or transnational drug deals.

The U.S. would like to do the same in El Salvador and Honduras in hopes that cleaner government will be an incentive for citizens in those countries to stay put. “We will not make significant progress if corruption in the region persists,” says Vice President Kamala Harris, who is in charge of stemming cross-border migration.

The EU is further along. Its first chief prosecutor, Laura Codruța Kövesi from Romania, has launched more than 1,000 cases since June against criminals in member states that cheat the EU of revenue or misuse its funds. The new European Public Prosecutor’s Office, EPPO, is especially needed as the EU plans to spend about €2 trillion to boost its pandemic-hit economy.

EU leaders know that the wealthier states in the union do not want that money stolen, which would add to other tensions within the bloc. A poll in June found a third of people in the EU say corruption has gotten worse over the previous year. EPPO was set up as an independent agency to work within member states – in case those states fail in their anti-corruption efforts.

Ms. Kövesi gained fame in Europe for sending thousands of Romanian officials to prison for corruption. She sees EPPO as “the first really sharp tool” to defend rule of law in the EU and to remind citizens of equality before the law. Such universal precepts make it easier – and necessary – for anti-graft prosecutors to sometimes operate across borders.