A van full of U.S. Special Operations veterans crossed the border into Mexico on a sunny day in July to execute a mission that, even to themye7, sounded pretty far out.

Over a period of 48 hours, they planned to swallow a psychedelic extract from the bark of a West African shrub, fall into a void of dark hallucinations and then have their consciousness shattered by smoking the poison of a desert toad.

The objective was to find what they had so far been unable to locate anywhere else: relief from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury symptoms.

“It does sound a little extreme, but I’ve tried everything else, and it didn’t work,” said a retired Army Green Beret named Jason, who, like others in the van, asked that his full name not be published because of the stigma associated with using psychedelics.

A long combat career exposed to weapons blasts had left him struggling with depression and anger, a frayed memory and addled concentration. He was on the verge of divorce. Recently, he said, he had put a gun to his head.

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“What he said or didn’t say is between him and the people of North Carolina,” said Mr. Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate. He added: “I’ve seen some of the statements. I haven’t seen them all. Some of them are pretty gross, to put it mildly. Mark Robinson says that those statements are false, that he didn’t actually speak them. So I think it’s up to Mark Robinson to make his case to the people of North Carolina that those weren’t his statements.”

Disciplinary proceedings against Dr. Wax tested the tenure protections of professors and whether such protections allow them to voice opinions that many might find inappropriate or downright insulting. Many students said that they could not trust Dr. Wax to grade students without bias. But many professors — even those who found her comments profoundly racist — objected to disciplining her on the grounds of academic freedom.

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