LETTER FROM NEW YORK

There are three of them. Three rich, white men over 50, leading their own counter-revolution. The first is Edward Blum, a 73-year-old American conservative who has taken up the fight against affirmative action, which allowed racial criteria to be taken into account in university admissions. In the summer of 2023, he won his battle against Harvard and the University of North Carolina before the Supreme Court.

The second is Bill Ackman, 57, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management: He went to war with university presidents who had declared in December that calling for a genocide of Jews may or may not, "depending on the context," comply with university policy. He ultimately got the head of Harvard president Claudine Gay, the daughter of Haitian immigrants and a specialist in African American studies.

The third is Elon Musk, 53, who uses his megaphone, the social media platform X, to wage his crusades, once libertarian, now on the fringes of the far right. One of his tweets, published on January 3, summed up his new fight for 2024: "DEI is just another word for racism. Shame on anyone who uses it." DEI, which stands for "diversity, equity, and inclusion," are organizational framework seeking to promote "the fair treatment and full participation of all people", particularly groups "who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination" based on identity or disability.

In addition to universities, businesses have made major efforts following the #MeToo movement; they did so again after Black Lives Matter was reignited by the murder of George Floyd, an African American man suffocated by a white Minneapolis police officer in May 2020. That year, the world's companies took a political stand and spent $7.5 billion to be more "inclusive" – in other words, to better integrate minorities and combat discrimination.

Some progress has been made. At the top of the ladder today, eight African Americans head one of America's top 500 companies. That's twice as many as in 2020, but it's 1.6% of the total – while Black people represent 14.4% of the workforce. Black people account for 5.2% of CEOs, 5.7% of surgeons, and 6.8% of lawyers. The median income for Black households is $52,800, compared with $75,600 for the population as a whole. As for women, 52 head one of the top 500 companies, up from 24 in 2018. They account for 30% of CEOs, 20% of surgeons, and 40% of lawyers.

Soon it was time for a counter-attack, led in Florida by the state's governor, Ron DeSantis, and made possible by a Supreme Court that had swung to the conservative side. According to a count by the Chronicle of Higher Education, 71 pieces of legislation have been introduced in 25 states to ban DEI in publicly funded institutions, particularly in education; 25 have been rejected and eight passed.

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