The University of Minnesota, which President Trump’s Justice Department is scrutinizing for its handling of antisemitism on campus, largely barred itself on Friday from issuing official statements about “matters of public concern or public interest.”

The policy, in the works for months, was not a direct response to the Trump administration’s February announcement that it would investigate whether Minnesota and nine other universities had failed to protect Jewish students and faculty from discrimination.

But Friday’s vote by the board of regents nevertheless fit into the scramble by universities to undercut accusations that they have supported, or downplayed, antisemitic behavior or political activity.

Schools have come under fierce Republican criticism over their responses to protests over the war in Gaza. Campuses have seen bitter debates over defining antisemitism and the threshold for when political expression is intolerant or discriminatory, with university leaders often looking for a balance between allowing free speech and avoiding Washington’s potential ire.

Under Minnesota’s new policy, statements from the university — including ones from divisions like colleges and departments — about public issues will be forbidden unless the president determines the subject has “an actual or potential impact on the mission and operations of the university.”

The university senate, which includes students, faculty members and other workers, opposed the plan, and in early January, a university task force had urged a narrower approach. Critics have questioned whether the policy violates the First Amendment and argued that it grants excessive power to Minnesota’s president.

But during a raucous meeting on Friday in Minneapolis — the session went into recess twice because of protesters — regents voted, 9 to 3, to approve the policy.

“The university is not, and should not be, in the business of taking positions on these critical and controversial matters of public concern,” said Janie S. Mayeron, the board’s chair. “Individuals can do that. The university, its leaders and units should not.”

Another regent, Robyn J. Gulley, said she had received hundreds of messages ahead of Friday’s vote, with the feedback “largely” opposing the proposal.

“The First Amendment protects not only free speech, but the right to association,” Ms. Gulley said before she voted against the proposal. “There is probably nowhere in the world that that is more important than in universities, where it is not only the right but the obligation of students, faculty, staff to speak” about their areas of research and expertise.

The notion of “institutional neutrality” is not unique to Minnesota, where the new policy will cover five campuses, including the flagship in Minneapolis. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, at least 140 colleges have adopted such policies, according to a report released Tuesday by the Heterodox Academy, a nonprofit that has been critical of progressivism on college campuses.

Before the attack, the report said, only eight schools had neutrality policies.

The last few weeks have put new pressure on Minnesota, with the university among the schools that Justice Department antisemitism investigators said they would visit to weigh “whether remedial action is warranted.”

The department has not detailed why Minnesota made its list. Although Richard W. Painter, a Minnesota law professor who was the White House’s top ethics lawyer for part of George W. Bush’s presidency, told the Department of Education in 2023 about possible antisemitism at the university, he has speculated that the Justice Department’s interest may carry a political motive.

Tim Walz, who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in last year’s election, is Minnesota’s governor, and the district of Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat who has been a steadfast critic of Mr. Trump and Israel, includes Minnesota’s main campus.

Minnesota said in a statement that it was “confident in our approach to combating hate and bias on our campus, and we will always fully cooperate with any review related to these topics.”

In addition to Minnesota, the Justice Department is examining Columbia University; George Washington University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; New York University; Northwestern University; the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of California, Berkeley; and the University of Southern California.

But some misgivings about Minnesota, which contended with a protest encampment last spring, predate Mr. Trump’s return to power.

In December 2023, for example, Mr. Painter and a former regent, Michael D. Hsu, complained to the Department of Education that the College of Liberal Arts had allowed departments to use official websites for statements that were critical of Israel.

A website Mr. Hsu and Mr. Painter cited — featuring a statement by the gender, women and sexuality studies faculty — endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and called for “dismantling Israel’s apartheid system.” (After the statement’s publication, a disclaimer was added to note that it did “not reflect the position of the University of Minnesota.”)

It was not clear how much Friday’s vote would ease Washington’s skepticism of Minnesota. Some other universities that recently embraced institutional neutrality still ended up under investigation by the Trump administration, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and Southern California.

Stephanie Saul contributed reporting.

High school students in Oklahoma would be asked to identify “discrepancies” in the 2020 election as part of U.S. history classes, according to new social studies standards recently approved by the Oklahoma Board of Education.

The proposed standards seem to echo President Trump’s false claims about his 2020 defeat. They ask students to examine factors such as “the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states” and “the security risks of mail-in balloting.”

They now head to the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, which could take up the issue before its term ends in late May, or punt the issue to the governor’s desk.

The standards, supported by the state’s hard-charging Republican superintendent, have already received pushback, including from Gov. Kevin Stitt, also a Republican, whose office characterized the changes as a “distraction.” A spokeswoman said the governor had not yet seen the standards in full and it was not clear if he would support them.

The additions related to the 2020 election are among several changes that injected a strong conservative viewpoint to the state’s portrayal of modern American politics and Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump repeatedly denied the results of the 2020 election, a view that has been widely embraced by some Republicans, despite a lack of evidence.

An earlier version of the new standards — which were released for public comment in December — simply asked students to examine “issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new changes were made after the public comment period and quietly approved by the Board of Education last month. They were first reported by NonDoc, a nonprofit news outlet in Oklahoma.

The state superintendent, Ryan Walters, said that the standards were not meant to “support or negate a specific outcome” and that “a well-rounded student should be able to make their own conclusions using publicly available data and details.”

In a statement, he said, “We believe in giving the next generation the ability to think for themselves rather than accepting radical positions on the election outcome as it is reported by the media.”

Mr. Walters, a former history teacher and Trump ally, has emerged as a combative culture warrior in education and national politics. His push to put Bibles in every Oklahoma classroom is being battled in court, and he was briefly floated as a candidate for U.S. secretary of education, before Mr. Trump nominated the former pro-wrestling executive Linda McMahon.

But within his own state, Mr. Walters has clashed with members of his party, including Governor Stitt, who was once an ally. Most recently, the two went head-to-head over Mr. Walters’s plan to collect the citizenship status of public school children, which Governor Stitt vowed to fight.

Amid his feud with Mr. Walters, and after new national test scores showed Oklahoma remaining near the bottom in reading and math, Mr. Stitt last month replaced half of the state’s Board of Education. The board is made up of five governor appointees and Mr. Walters, who was elected. At least one of the new members said he had not been informed of the changes to the social studies standards, which were approved two weeks after the new members joined.

A spokeswoman for the governor, Abegail Cave, said the governor’s priority was transforming Oklahoma into “the best state for education.”

“He thinks a lot of what has happened over the past few months and past few years has been more of a distraction,” Ms. Cave said. The new social studies standards, she said, “follow the pattern of being a distraction.”

Standards for academic subject areas are rewritten every six years in Oklahoma under state law. They include lengthy outlines on what public schools are expected to teach and what students should know at different grade levels.

For example, U.S. history students in Oklahoma learn about the civil rights movement, including key court cases, tactics such as the Montgomery bus boycott and violent responses to the movement, including the Birmingham church bombing and the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The changes centered on more recent history. In examining significant events during Mr. Trump’s first term, an earlier version of the standards had asked students to “explain the responses to and impact of the death of George Floyd, including the Black Lives Matter movement.”

In the latest version, that standard was removed.

Another change involved the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic. Students would be asked to identify the source of the pandemic as coming from a Chinese lab. That theory has long been hotly debated, but is embraced by Republicans and increasingly favored by C.I.A. officials.

The earlier version was less pointed: “Evaluate federal and private response to the Covid epidemic, as well as its lasting impact on global health and American society.”

Mr. Walters said the various changes “give students the best opportunity to learn about history without leftist activists indoctrinating kids.”

His office did not respond to questions about why the edits were made after the period of public review.

State Representative John Waldron, a former social studies teacher who is now vice chair of the House Democratic caucus, said he would oppose the changes and accused Mr. Walters of subverting the typical process to insert his own political beliefs.

“The state superintendent campaigned to end indoctrination in our schools, but what he is doing instead with these new standards is promoting his own brand of indoctrination,” Mr. Waldron said in an interview.

The edits also made more subtle changes to a unit on “the challenges and accomplishments” of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration.

They removed bullet points on the country’s economic recovery in the aftermath of the pandemic and on a signature $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

Remaining were bullet points on the “the United States-Mexico border crisis” and Mr. Biden’s foreign policies on issues like the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war.