The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is an independent, 162-year-old nongovernmental agency tasked with investigating and reporting on a wide range of subjects. In recent years, diversity, equity and inclusion — collectively known as D.E.I. — have been central to its agenda.

But the Academies’ priorities changed abruptly on Jan. 31. Shortly after receiving a “stop work” order from the Trump administration, the institute closed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion, removed prominent links to its work on D.E.I. from its website’s homepage and paused projects on related themes.

Now the website highlights the Academies’ interest in artificial intelligence and “our work to build a robust economy.”

The quick about-face reflects the widespread impact that President Trump’s executive order on D.E.I. is having on scientific institutions across the nation, both governmental and private. The crackdown is altering scientific exploration and research agendas across a broad swath of fields.

NASA cut requirements for inclusivity from several of its programs. The National Institutes of Health removed the application for its new Environmental Justice Scholars Program. National laboratories under the Department of Energy took down web pages that had expressed a commitment to diversity, while the department suspended its promotion of inclusive and equitable research.

None of these federal agencies responded to requests for comment.

Many organizations initiated D.E.I. programs as a way to correct historical underrepresentation in the sciences. According to one report, in 2021, just 35 percent of STEM employees were women, 9 percent were Black and less than 1 percent were Indigenous.

“If we want to be the best country for the world in terms of science, we need to leverage our entire population to do so,” said Julie Posselt, an associate dean at the University of Southern California. D.E.I. programs, she added, “have ensured that the diverse population we have can make its way into the scientific work force.”

Federal frenzy

One NASA program affected is FarmFlux, a research initiative on agricultural emissions that redacted plans to recruit from “diverse student groups” for its team. Mentions of another, called Here to Observe, which partners with smaller academic institutions to expose historically underrepresented students to planetary science, have been removed from the space agency’s website.

Peter Eley, a dean at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical University who, in 2023, worked as a liaison for minority-serving institutions in NASA’s Office of STEM, noted that such programs often support students from lower-income rural communities, regardless of their racial background.

Many of these students “don’t know what’s out there,” Dr. Eley said. “They don’t have the opportunity to see what is possible.”

At the National Science Foundation, or N.S.F., an agencywide review of current awards supporting D.E.I. initiatives is underway. Part of the agency’s grant criteria includes “broader impacts,” defined as the potential to benefit society. That encompasses, but is not limited to, efforts to broaden participation of underrepresented groups in science.

According to a program director at the foundation, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, a software algorithm flagged grants that included words and phrases often associated with D.E.I., including “activism” and “equal opportunity.” Other words it searched for were more nebulous — “institutional,” “underappreciated” and “women” — or can mean something else in scientific research, like “bias” and “polarization.”

N.S.F. officials were instructed to manually review grants flagged by the algorithm. Some staff members, including the N.S.F. program director, made a point of removing the flag from most awards. “I’ll probably get in trouble for doing that,” she said. “But I’m not in the business of McCarthyism.”

The N.S.F. did not answer questions sent by The New York Times regarding its ongoing review of awards. Scientists funded by the agency whose research has D.E.I. components said that they had not received enough information about how to comply with the executive order.

“Do you drop what you’re supposed to do as part of your N.S.F. proposal, or do you risk being noncompliant with this very vague guidance?” asked Adrian Fraser, a physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Diana Macias, an N.S.F.-funded forest ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, worried that her involvement in recruiting people from tribal communities to manage the local environment would end. Threats to the forest “require a broad coalition of people” to mitigate, she said, adding that the executive order would have ramifications on the landscape.

‘Obeying in advance’

Several scientists expressed concern that organizations within the federal sphere seem to be overcomplying, prompting confusion and resentment.

“They’re obeying in advance, they’re going beyond what the executive order says,” said Christine Nattrass, a physicist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who conducts research at Brookhaven National Laboratory and emphasized that she was not speaking on behalf of her institutions.

According to Dr. Nattrass, internal documents at the lab are being scrubbed of references related to D.E.I. efforts. At least one code of conduct, which outlines expected professional behavior within research collaborations — such as treating others with respect and being mindful of cultural differences — has been taken down.

The community of people involved with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory — a worldwide group that includes independent scientists, data managers and other workers — noticed last week that private Slack channels set up for L.G.B.T.Q. members were quietly being retired. At Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, researchers noticed that a prominent rainbow Pride flag had been removed from inside the lab’s main building. Scientists at all three federal facilities were left uncertain whether the executive order actually extended to internal documents, internal communication channels or flags.

“It was devastating,” said Samantha Abbott, a physics graduate student who conducts research at Fermilab. To Ms. Abbott, who is transgender, the flag represented years’ worth of advocacy efforts at the lab. “And it’s just all gone in a matter of days.”

Neither the observatory nor the labs responded to requests for comment.

That sense of compliance appeared to extend beyond federal institutions. Two decades ago, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, or NASEM, helped to highlight the issue of racial disparities in health care, with a landmark report recommending that minorities be better represented in health professions. More recently, NASEM participated in an ambitious effort to root out the use of race in clinical algorithms that guide medical treatment.

The quick retreat this week from a core mission stunned many NASEM employees. “D.E.I. has been at the center of what the institution has focused on for the last decade,” said one staff member, who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution. “It shows up in everything we do.”

The Academies are privately operated, but they receive a majority of their support from government contracts. Fifty-eight percent of their program expenditures came from federal government contracts last year, according to Dana Korsen, a spokesperson for the institute.

The independent Howard Hughes Medical Institute, one of the largest basic biomedical research philanthropies in the world, recently canceled a $60 million program called Inclusive Excellence that aimed to boost inclusivity in STEM education.

A spokeswoman for the institute, Alyssa Tomlinson, said the institute “remains committed to supporting outstanding scientists and talented students training to become scientists” through other programs. Ms. Tomlinson declined to explain why the institution had cut off the funding.

Scientists abroad also worried about the D.E.I. rollbacks. One American working in Canada was concerned how his grant applications, which describe research that will be conducted on U.S. soil, would be received by Canadian funding agencies in light of the federal changes.

“With tariff threats, America first and no more D.E.I., there’s a lot less incentive for the Canadian feds to fund anything in the U.S.,” said the scientist, who asked not to be identified. “And then there goes 95 percent of my research program.”

Johan Bonilla Castro, a nonbinary Latinx physicist at Northeastern University who emphasized that they were not speaking for their employer, has decided to continue their D.E.I. initiatives, which involve promoting particle physics research in Costa Rica. They also have chosen to continue writing about their racial and gender identity in grant proposals, even if it ultimately results in being denied funding.

“I will continue to say it and have it rejected,” Dr. Bonilla Castro said. “I can sterilize my research, sure. But that impacts my dignity.”

A chorus of criticism greeted Friedrich Merz, the favorite to become Germany’s chancellor, last month when he broke a taboo against working with a hard-right party to pass legislation. But it was a lone voice of dissent that rocked the country’s political scene: Angela Merkel, the once-beloved former chancellor, who called Mr. Merz’s decision simply “wrong.”

Ms. Merkel and Mr. Merz have famously jockeyed to lead Germany’s Christian Democrats for much of this century. Ms. Merkel won the early rounds, served 16 years as chancellor, and retired in 2021. Mr. Merz finally has a chance to win her old job in elections this month.

But Ms. Merkel is complicating his efforts — both with her open critiques and, more important, with a policy legacy that German voters have soured on.

The German election is animated by concerns over a stagnant economy, a decade-long surge of immigration, high energy prices and tenuous national security, with Russia waging war to the east and President Trump threatening to upend NATO from the West. The problems have led to a reconsideration of Ms. Merkel and how she steered Germany.

It was Ms. Merkel who kept Germany’s borders open starting in 2015, allowing what became millions of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere to settle. That move has spurred a backlash among German voters. Many political leaders blame it for the rise of the hard-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which has campaigned relentlessly on deporting certain immigrants and sits second behind the Christian Democrats in national polls.

It was Ms. Merkel who agreed to shut down the country’s nuclear power plants and increase Germany’s reliance on imported natural gas from Russia, helping to create an electricity price spike and a security crisis years later, after Moscow decided to turn off the taps following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

And it was Ms. Merkel who, economists say, underinvested in revitalizing Germany’s critical infrastructure, contributing to what German business leaders often call a competitiveness crisis. She also pushed for deepened trade with China and the rest of the world. That bet on a globalized business model that has gone bad in a new age of populist protectionism by countries like the United States and increased competition from low-cost Chinese imports for Germany manufacturers.

In the waning weeks of the campaign, Ms. Merkel is taking criticism from all sides of the contest. Her memoir did not make the splash many analysts expected when it was released last fall. A poll released last week by the Bild news organization, conducted by the research agency INSA, found 43 percent of Germans now say Ms. Merkel’s policies were bad for the country, compared with 31 percent who say they were good.

In many ways, Ms. Merkel finds herself in a similar historical position to that of President Bill Clinton in America. She was once the most popular leader of her generation, on the strength of overseeing an economic boom. Now, like Mr. Clinton, who has seen public opinion turn strongly against his moves to sign NAFTA and throw open trade with China, she finds her legacy under attack.

She is responding with few regrets, and, with the election looming, by criticizing Mr. Merz.

That criticism has drawn a backlash, and a renewed focus on Ms. Merkel, even though she is not running for a parliamentary seat this month.

“Merkel’s book and her recent public statement are, unfortunately, more about insisting on being right than about providing working solutions to people’s current problems,” said Nico Lange, a former chief of staff to one of Ms. Merkel’s defense ministers. Her actions, he added, were “therefore perceived negatively, even by most of her former supporters.”

No single policy action is driving German voters in this election more than Ms. Merkel’s refugee decision in 2015.

At the time, Ms. Merkel praised the German public for embracing downtrodden migrants, even those who did not qualify for official refugee status. But German society has been strained by a decade-long influx of migrants who arrived with little or no German language knowledge, and who have often received significant social assistance.

A series of seemingly unrelated deadly attacks, carried out by immigrants in Germany cities over the last year, has vaulted migration to the top of voter concerns along with the economy.

Analysts roundly agree that attention has helped the AfD, parts of which have been classified as extremist by German intelligence.

Mr. Merz was attempting to address voters’ migration concerns when he pushed a package of tough-on-migration measures in Parliament late last month, breaking a postwar consensus against working to pass laws with parties deemed extreme.

Ms. Merkel’s decision to allow refugees to flow freely into the country “was just a big shock to Germany that we’re still grappling with, that explains some of the politics today,” said Cornelia Woll, a political scientist who is the president of the Hertie School, a private university in Berlin. “I think it’s fair to say, did we bite off more than we could chew?”

Economic research has generally found immigrants boosted the size of Germany’s economy over the past decade, by working and by spending money. By some measures, the nation has been more successful than many of its peers in helping immigrants integrate and learn the local language.

A report last year from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the employment rate for immigrants in Germany hit 70 percent in 2022, a record and much higher than most other European Union countries.

Still, polls have shown rising voter unease with migration and crimes committed by immigrants. Politicians, including a wide range of chancellor candidates in this election, have increasingly responded by denouncing Ms. Merkel’s policies of welcome.

Alice Weidel, the chancellor candidate for the AfD, repeatedly raised and disparaged Ms. Merkel last month in an interview with the billionaire Elon Musk on his social media platform X.

Christian Lindner, the chancellor candidate for the pro-business Free Democrats, said in an interview that some German parties “have still not recognized what the overriding interest of the people in this country is — namely, a break with Merkel’s policies.”

Even Mr. Merz has piled on. “We find ourselves left with the tatters of 10 years of misguided asylum and migration policy in this country,” he said last month, impugning both Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Ms. Merkel.

Mr. Merz and his Christian Democrats joined the AfD to pass a mostly symbolic migration measure late last month; a second vote, aiming to toughen the migration law, ultimately failed amid some defections by party members.

Mr. Merkel’s criticism of Mr. Merz came just before the final vote and further strained her relationship with the party they share. Ms. Merkel declined to take an honorary party position after her retirement, as is often customary, and rarely appears at party events.

It also contributed to an image of stubbornness that has defined Ms. Merkel’s time out of office.

“She really does not recognize her mistakes,” said Stefan Meister, the head of the Center for Order and Governance in Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “I think this is, for me, really crucial.”

In her autobiography, “Freedom,” Ms. Merkel seemingly blamed her successors in Germany’s mainstream political parties for aiding the rise of the AfD, by tacking to the right on its signature issue.

“The democratic parties have considerable influence over how strong AfD can become in practice,” Ms. Merkel wrote. “I am convinced that, if they assume they can keep it down by appropriating its pet topics and even trying to outdo it in rhetoric without offering any real solutions to existing problems, they will fail.”

And while she conceded few major errors on policy issues, Ms. Merkel’s book contained some broad admissions of fallibility.

“I know that I am not perfect and make mistakes,” she wrote, about halfway through its nearly 700 pages.

Near the end, she added, “A chancellor should never have to apologize too often, but neither should they shy away from doing so when unavoidable, for fear that it could be interpreted as weakness.”

Melissa Eddy contributed reporting.

Stephen James Hubbard left America behind decades ago, first for Japan, then Cyprus and finally Ukraine. He didn’t like the government — any government, really.

He was a wanderer, growing up in a small town in Michigan and traveling the world before ending up alone in the eastern Ukrainian town of Izium when the Russians invaded on Feb. 24, 2022.

Now Mr. Hubbard, a retired English teacher who turns 73 on Thursday, has become an unlikely pawn in an international war. The Russians arrested him shortly after invading and accused him of fighting for Ukraine. They moved him to at least five different Russian detention centers before putting him on trial on a charge of being a mercenary.

In October, a Moscow court convicted him and sentenced him to almost seven years in a penal colony.

His case has remained mostly under the radar. But last month the State Department said Mr. Hubbard was “wrongfully detained” — elevating his case and indicating that the United States believes that the charges are fabricated.

A State Department spokesman said he never should have been taken captive or moved to a Russian prison.

Mr. Hubbard’s sister and three former Ukrainian prisoners of war held with Mr. Hubbard dispute that he fought for Ukraine. The former prisoners say they believe he will die if he is not freed. They say he endured the same torture they did: repeatedly beaten, terrorized by dogs, forced to stand all day, every day, even stripped naked for more than a month.

“They’d beat our ankles and force us into the splits, tearing ligaments in the process,” said Ihor Shyshko, 41, who said he shared a cell with Mr. Hubbard. “Many of the men were injured, some permanently. The conditions were beyond inhumane.

“The same thing happened to Stephen, but it was even worse for him because he’s an American,” added Mr. Shyshko, who was freed in a prisoner exchange last summer. “They stormed in, shouting in the hallway: ‘We know you’re an American. You’re dead here!’”

The United States has accused Russia of inflating and inventing criminal charges against Americans so they can be traded for Russians held elsewhere or used as international bargaining chips. After a major prisoner exchange in August, Mr. Hubbard is one of 13 Americans now known to be held in Russian prisons. Mr. Hubbard is the oldest. He is also the only American known to be imprisoned in Russia after being taken from Ukraine.

Only one other American now being held has been publicly designated as wrongfully detained in Russia.

Mr. Hubbard’s family has not been able to find his prison. The Russian judge removed his case file, including even basic information like his lawyer’s name, from public view. The New York Times also could not locate him.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow has not seen Mr. Hubbard, despite Russia’s obligation to grant access, a State Department spokesman said. The embassy said it would not comment on his case because of privacy concerns.

Mr. Shyshko said he tried to ask the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv for help, but he could not get past the front door.

Patricia Hubbard Fox, 71, Mr. Hubbard’s only sibling, said, “It’s just really very upsetting,” adding, “And now they’ve taken everything from him, even his glasses.”

A Quiet Life

Mr. Hubbard had always been a solitary man. He liked his privacy. He didn’t like email and social media. He was suspicious of government agencies that might be spying on internet posts and of what the government spent taxes on.

He and his sister grew up in Big Rapids, a very small Michigan city. Their single mother sometimes abused them. “We grew up at the end of a bullwhip,” Ms. Hubbard Fox recalled.

As an adult, Mr. Hubbard always seemed to be searching: He enrolled in a Bible college in Tulsa, Okla., but lasted only a year. He married young, at 20.

Mr. Hubbard enlisted in the Air Force, but he left after three years of active duty and two in the National Guard, mainly in Sacramento, records show. He worked as an educational assistant with the local veterans affairs department and studied at a nearby business college. His marriage fell apart and Mr. Hubbard’s wife won custody of their three children.

Mr. Hubbard landed in Seattle, where he earned a master’s degree in English and met the Japanese woman who became his second wife, Ms. Hubbard Fox said.

In the mid-1980s, the couple moved to Japan, where Mr. Hubbard taught English and joined the Eastern Orthodox Church. The couple had a son before divorcing. After his son grew up, Mr. Hubbard moved to Cyprus, where a son from his first marriage lived and where he fell in love with another woman, Inna. She was Ukrainian.

In 2014, they moved to Izium. When he needed money, he told his sister, he taught English online. He spoke no Ukrainian, no Russian.

Ms. Hubbard Fox said she last spoke to her brother on Skype in September 2021, as he sat down to eat some porridge.

It’s not clear whether the couple had separated or whether Inna was on vacation. But when the Russians invaded in February 2022, Mr. Hubbard was alone.

Weeks later, the Russians captured Izium. The following day, April 2, 2022, Mr. Hubbard was detained, the RIA Novosti state news agency later reported.

The circumstances are murky. The Russian authorities said Mr. Hubbard had signed up that February — the month he turned 70 — for the regional territorial defense unit to defend Ukraine and received training, weapons, ammunition and $1,000 a month. They said he was arrested while manning military checkpoints.

That was unlikely, said Alyona Hryban, a civil servant in Izium. She said the territorial defense unit had few weapons. No one was paid. “There were no old men there,” she added.

Mr. Shyshko recalled that Mr. Hubbard said he was detained at a checkpoint while fleeing.

“He wanted to get out of there, but he couldn’t,” Mr. Shyshko said.

‘He’s Every American’

Mr. Hubbard’s first detention camp was five miles over the Russian border. Andrii Stratulat, another prisoner of war, said the Russians gave Mr. Hubbard two English books: “The Egg and I,” a 1945 memoir by a young wife on a chicken farm, and “The Lovely Bones,” a 2002 novel about a young girl whose spirit comes to terms with her rape and murder. He read them over and over.

Mr. Stratulat, who spoke English, was put in Mr. Hubbard’s tent in June 2022.

“He said that day he started to smile,” recalled Mr. Stratulat, 30.

They spent 42 days together, Mr. Stratulat said. Mr. Hubbard talked about his life: A trip he took to the Grand Canyon. His baptism into the Eastern Orthodox Church. His Japanese wife, Sumi. Their son, Hisashi. His partner, Inna.

Throughout his imprisonment, Mr. Stratulat would recite those names to himself: Hisashi. Sumi. Inna. When he was freed, he wanted to tell someone about the American he had met.

In late July 2022, Mr. Hubbard was transferred, Mr. Stratulat recalled.

A captured Ukrainian special forces officer with the call sign of Hacker met Mr. Hubbard in the Stary Oskol prison in Belgorod, about 80 miles northeast of the detention camp, in early September. After an interrogation that was more like torture, Hacker said, he was taken to a cell with Mr. Hubbard, who gave him water and prayed for him.

“It’s the first time some guy, an old guy, a wise guy, prayed for me,” said Hacker, 33, whom The Times is identifying by his military call sign because he is still fighting Russia.

Hacker said he met Mr. Hubbard again about a month later, in Novozybkov prison. For two months, they were housed in nearby cells. “I heard everything that was happening to him,” recalled Hacker, who was freed last spring.

Mr. Hubbard had problems with his kidneys, stomach and rectal tract, Hacker said. He was bleeding. The Russian guards beat him and forced him to learn Russian words, Russian poets, the Russian national anthem.

“The soldiers, guards and special forces looked at him as an archenemy,” Hacker said. “Because Stephen, he’s the American. He’s the American spider. He’s the American from Michigan. He’s every American.”

Because Russian officials have disclosed no information about Mr. Hubbard, the former prisoners’ accounts are impossible to verify. But they aligned with one another and with those of other Ukrainian prisoners of war.

In 2023, Mr. Hubbard was moved to a prison in Pakino, about 170 miles east of Moscow, where he shared a cell with Mr. Shyshko and 13 other men, Mr. Shyshko said.

There, prisoners were interrogated, often tortured, shocked with electricity, beaten and burned, Hacker and Mr. Shyshko said.

After the Russians found scabies on prisoners, they were all stripped and taken to a cold basement, where they were forced to walk naked in circles wearing only slippers for a month and a half, Mr. Shyshko said.

Mr. Shyshko said the doctor told him “‘the scabies mite can’t reproduce in the cold, it’ll die along with you.’”

Lunch was often boiled water with a few cabbage leaves; dinner, leftovers from Russian inmates, blended together. Mr. Shyshko’s weight dropped to less than 130 pounds from about 240.

“Stephen, though, he never gave in,” Mr. Shyshko said. “He kept telling us: ‘These people aren’t human. Don’t lose hope.’ He stood up to them and encouraged us to hold on.”

One day, Mr. Hubbard said he thought his sister might be looking for him.

A Prison Sentence

Ms. Hubbard Fox worried about her brother when the war started. But she couldn’t reach him. Eventually she found out the Russians had him: She saw an interview on Russian TV in which he echoed Russian talking points — prisoners of war often are told what to say — and another video, posted briefly on X, where guards hit Mr. Hubbard with a sandal.

She said she tried to talk to the American authorities, but got little help. And she wasn’t sure whom to call.

In mid-May 2024, Mr. Hubbard disappeared from the prison in Pakino and later surfaced in court proceedings in Moscow. At one hearing, before the judge closed the trial to the public, RIA Novosti reported that Mr. Hubbard had pleaded guilty to being a mercenary, saying from the dock, “Yes, I agree with the indictment.”

Early last October, Mr. Hubbard — bent over, his hair and beard roughly chopped, his glasses gone — was sentenced to six years and 10 months in a prison colony.

Ms. Hubbard Fox said she hoped President Trump could deal with the Russians. “He’s a doer, and they know that he’s not going to put up with their crap,” Ms. Hubbard Fox said.

She said that seeing her brother beaten with a sandal reminded her of seeing him abused as a child. She plans to sell her home in Colorado and buy one in Oklahoma, so her brother can live with her when he gets out.

“I love my home, but my brother’s lost everything,” she said. “So I’m doing this. I’m going to provide him a home.”

Reporting was contributed by Hisako Ueno from Tokyo; Dzvinka Pinchuk, Yurii Shyvala and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn from Kyiv; and Shawn Hubler from Sacramento. Susan Beachy contributed research.

Gyalo Thondup, the eldest brother of the Dalai Lama and a political operator in Tibet and the greater region, has died, the Dalai Lama’s office confirmed in a statement. He died on Sunday in Kalimpong in West Bengal, India, according to Tibetan media. He was 97.

“He was a good man who did his best for the Tibetan cause,” the Dalai Lama said in the statement. “I pray that he will take a good rebirth as a Tibetan again and that he will be able to serve the Tibetan administration that is a combination of spirituality and politics once more,” he said, referring to the Buddhist belief in the cycle of rebirth.

A prominent figure in Tibetan society and politics, Mr. Thondup has been called the second-most influential person in the small Himalayan territory, eclipsed only by his brother, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama and head of Tibetan Buddhism.

Together, the brothers defined a political era in Tibet, the increasingly isolated territory nestled in the Himalayas that has long battled Chinese influence and control. While the Dalai Lama has often been more public-facing, courting worldwide attention and accolades, Mr. Thondup was seen as a reserved, geopolitical operator who was more comfortable away from the spotlight.

For decades, Mr. Thondup advocated for paths to allow his brother — exiled since 1959 — to return to the territory. He kept the company of international leaders, hoping to leverage various stakeholders in the service of Tibetan independence.

One of six children born to farmers in the Chinese town of Takster, Mr. Thondup served as a lifelong adviser and advocate for his younger brother. Sent abroad to study, he was the only one of his siblings not destined for religious life.

Freed from spiritual obligations, Mr. Thondup spent his life working for Tibetan autonomy, sometimes more aggressively than others.

Mr. Thondup settled in India in 1952 and was an early mediator when the Dalai Lama fled there after the failed 1959 Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule. Mr. Thondup would later call his brother’s safe passage to India one of his greatest achievements.

Mr. Thondup would go on to cultivate some of the first official Tibetan contacts with Indian and American authorities in the 1950s and 1960s, asking for their support. In the 1950s, he aided the C.I.A. in an ill-fated attempt to arm Tibetan separatists against the Communist Chinese government.

Mr. Thondup periodically met with Chinese leaders in efforts to ease Chinese influence over Tibet. Even as talks broke down in recent years, he urged Tibetans to stay engaged.

“It’s essential for Tibetan people not to lose hope in pleading for our rights to the Chinese government,” Mr. Thondup said at a news conference in 2008. He published an autobiography in 2015, “The Noodlemaker of Kalimpong,” about his life of activism and the Tibetan struggle against Chinese rule.

The Dalai Lama led a prayer service on Sunday for his brother, his office said.

After the service, as the recitation concluded, the Dalai Lama rose from his seat, saluted a photo of his late brother and returned to his living space, the statement from his office said.

Mujib Mashal contributed reporting.