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Shareholder activism is in full roar as hedge funds prowl and companies retreat, but Nelson Peltz’s campaign to replace four directors at DuPont may just be where corporate America finally draws the line and tries to stem the activist tide.

Activists are flush with money from investors who have found that activism works at prodding companies to improve their bottom lines — more than 400 funds now have more than $100 billion, according to estimates by Preqin — and they have been searching far and wide for targets.

DuPont is one of the most prominent. In August 2013, Mr. Peltz’s hedge fund, Trian Fund Management, announced that it had taken a stake in DuPont, one that would grow to 2.7 percent. Trian called for a breakup of DuPont while also arguing that it could cut $4 billion in expenses.

DuPont is a 200-year-old company with a $65 billion market value and more than 58,000 employees. Trian is only its fifth-largest shareholder, according to Standard & Poor’s CapitalIQ. But just because a company is big does not necessarily mean that an activist will not strike. Apple, the world’s largest company by market value, was pushed by Carl C. Icahn to distribute more of its cash. Trian’s call for a full breakup is almost antiquated because shareholder activism has been focused largely on financial engineering. Hedge fund employees with spreadsheets in New York have been busy advocating that companies pay out extra cash in dividends, sell themselves or spin off a distinct business. The spinoff in particular is a Wall Street phenomenon, with the idea that the parts are bigger than the whole and if they were only separated, Wall Street could finally value the companies properly.

Trian is arguing for DuPont to improve its performance, but DuPont’s stock has gained nearly 20 percent over the last year, beating the S.&P. 500-stock index. DuPont also puts total shareholder return at 78 percent over the last three years, again beating the stock market indexes. By almost any measure, DuPont has beaten the benchmarks over the last three years and throughout the five-year tenure of Ellen J. Kullman, the company’s chief executive.

DuPont is a well-performing company that should be receiving credit for its actions, not pressure from activists.

But there is no justice in the ever-expanding world of shareholder activism. Trian — which has traditionally avoided proxy contests, preferring to cooperate with companies — is arguing that the company is still bloated and can do better, by firing more employees, for example. DuPont should also spin off its materials and other low-growth businesses and cut more in costs, it argues.

Trian’s call is the siren song of activism. It is no understatement to say that shareholder activism is transforming the corporate landscape. In recent years, hedge funds have challenged the boards of Apple, Microsoft and eBay, among others. Companies have responded by slimming down, restructuring, adopting defenses, spending millions on advisers and doing just about anything to prevent an activist attack.

Activism has changed companies and ignited a furious debate over whether the activists are out to improve companies or are just 1980s corporate raiders in updated clothes, looking for quick paydays at the expense of not just the companies they single out but also employees and communities.

Like the rest of corporate America, DuPont has taken steps to pacify Trian and other shareholders, spinning off its performance chemicals unit and announcing $1 billion in cuts. DuPont has even “engaged” with Trian to discuss further steps. But Trian has not gone away, and it has nominated four directors to DuPont’s board, which will be up for election in April. (DuPont did provide some ammunition for Trian on Tuesday, forecasting lower-than-expected revenue and profit for this year because of a stronger dollar. Yet, there are macroeconomic issues that finance engineering cannot make disappear.)

The easy route these days is for companies to settle when faced with an activist attack of this type. Yet DuPont has refused to compromise any further. Sotheby’s and Darden Restaurants had clear performance problems when they were confronted by the demands of activist investors, but DuPont does not. Another way to put it: Why should DuPont adhere to the wishes of its fifth-largest shareholder, including having that shareholder place a director on the board? Why not first reach out to the four shareholders larger than Trian?

The activists are still coming, though, and, if anything, the successes of the last year — which the corporate lawyer Martin Lipton termed the Year of the Wolf Pack — have only emboldened them. Hedge funds emerged victorious in fights at Sotheby’s and Darden while also pushing eBay to spin off PayPal and Allergan to sell itself. Everyone seems to want to join the party. Just last week, James C. Woolery, the chairman-elect at the Wall Street law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, and Douglas L. Braunstein, a vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase, announced they would rather start their own activist hedge fund, raising $250 million, than continue in their day jobs advising companies on shareholder activism.

So DuPont is setting up a clash of civilizations, a battle that could perhaps define shareholder activism, setting limits on who controls corporate America.

For if DuPont, a solid company with good returns, is not safe, no company is. The underlying struggle is over who knows what is best for America: competent boards that perform well or hedge funds that are looking for the quick payoff. If DuPont goes down, then the rest of corporate America is fair game for hedge fund tinkering.

The DuPont battle also illustrates that companies are starting to push back against the activists. Companies are agreeing to spin off companies but arming them to the teeth with takeover defenses.

In a way, the backlash to shareholder activism recalls the 1980s, when companies responded to the hostile takeover wave by arranging for states to adopt wholesale anti-takeover measures. But shareholders were less organized and perhaps more sympathetic to fighting off hostile raiders.

Shareholders today are less likely to support companies against the activists. Consequently, companies have focused on quiet defenses, but behind the scenes they are waiting to break out and do more.

The battle for DuPont crystallizes this desire. If DuPont holds out — and every indication is that it will — the heated proxy battle between it and Trian will in all likelihood spur a more full-fledged public debate about shareholder activism and how far it should go.

To be sure, there is good and bad shareholder activism, and some companies deserve the prodding. And so a fight over the scope and consequences of shareholder activism is worthwhile, but both sides should be careful that DuPont, one of the successful linchpins of America, does not end up as a needless casualty.