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One year later the annulment of the case law which guaranteed, for half a century, the right to abortion in the United Statesthe American Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, will deliver other highly anticipated decisions in the coming weeks, in particular on the thorny issue of positive discrimination.

>> Lire: After the abortion, the Supreme Court of the United States returns with burning cases

In the early 1960s, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) was the first president to use the term “affirmative action”, the English expression to speak of positive discrimination, which amounts to favoring minorities, to erase inequalities.

“At the heart of the matter is whether all Americans should have the same rights and opportunities,” declared JFK in 1963as the stakes grew with the civil rights struggle and the race riots.

More black students

In 1968, four weeks following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Harvard University, one of the most prestigious in the country, promises to increase the number of black students. A policy still relevant today.

Individuals should be judged as individuals, not as members of a racial group

If the quotas are prohibited in the United States, ethnicity remains a factor taken into account in the candidacies. This is what is being attacked today before the Supreme Court by the conservative strategist, Edward Blum, met by the RTS in his village in Maine, on the northeast coast of the country.

“You can’t cure the racial discriminations of the 1940s and 1950s with new racial preferences today. Harvard, Yale, Princeton: you have to stop using race in your admissions process”, calls the man who challenges the great American universities.

“Diversity under threat”

“No racial group has a monopoly on talent or intelligence, but some students have a better chance at the start, and positive discrimination helps to take this into account,” retorts Muskaan Arshad, a Harvard student, activist for positive discrimination.

“The diversity on campus has changed my life. I come from a very homogeneous and very white region in Arkansas, and coming here, with people from all over, has increased my confidence in myself,” she says. at RTS. “If things don’t go well at the Supreme Court, diversity will be threatened on this campus, but also across the country,” she adds.

The Supreme Court will decide, but the days of positive discrimination seem numbered.

Gaspard Kühn/jgal

Wagenknecht has been toying with the idea of ​​founding a new party for a long time. The party leadership has repeatedly sharply criticized this. “The future of the left is a future without Sahra Wagenknecht,” the board resolution continues. It is unacceptable that she uses resources from mandates that she has won for the left to build up a competing party. Wagenknecht has repeatedly stated that she sees no perspective for the left. “To this day, she has not complied with the request to clearly distance herself from a competing party project.”

The former faction leader Wagenknecht only confirmed on Friday that she wants to decide on her future in the left and a possible party foundation by the end of the year. She had previously declared that she would no longer run for the Bundestag for the left. On Saturday, when asked, she did not want to comment publicly on the decision of the party executive.

Party leader Janine Wissler said the board was fighting for the unity of the party and once morest all attempts to split it. Minority opinions would be respected. “But we expect that the party’s democratic resolutions will be taken seriously and that they will be observed and not that there will be threats of founding a party in order to put the party on a different course than the bodies that democratically decided on party congresses.” The decision of the board of directors was unanimously approved.

There has been a dispute over fundamental positions between Wagenknecht and the party leadership and other members for years. In refugee policy, she spoke out once morest open borders; she expressed skepticism regarding vaccination during the Corona period; in her book “The Self-Righteous” Wagenknecht settled accounts with the gender and climate-related part of her party, and when it comes to Ukraine, she also offends with her course, which some consider too close to Russia.

However, Wagenknecht also has supporters in the party and parliamentary group. The head of the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag, Amira Mohamed Ali, criticized her party’s board decision. “I consider today’s decision by the party executive of Die Linke to be a big mistake and unworthy of a party that is committed to solidarity and plurality,” she wrote on Twitter on Saturday evening. “We have an important task towards our voters and all the people who have no voice without us. Taking board decisions once morest our own members and publicly speaking out is not part of it!” Mohamed Ali leads the group together with Dietmar Bartsch.

Bochum MP Christian Leye, a former employee in Wagenknecht’s constituency office, said on Saturday: “Sahra Wagenknecht is many times more popular than the party, and today’s maneuver is another step towards the abyss.” Bundestag member Alexander Ulrich criticized: “Instead of thinking regarding why fewer and fewer people are interested in this party, you continue to work on one of the few popular politicians in your own ranks.”

The left has 39 MPs in the Bundestag. In the 2021 federal election, she missed the five percent hurdle and only managed to get in through three directly won mandates. After that, the party suffered some bitter defeats in all state elections.