Most of us Europeans have heard about the different political and social issues of the USA, but never do we really dive into the various topics. Therefore, the 12th graders of our school were very lucky to have the chance of attending a presentation by Dr. Markus Hünemörder last Wednesday. The guidance counselor and adjunct lecturer at the university of Munich studied American and political science at the Universities of New Orleans and Munich, so he is an expert of American policy.

The professor started his USA Update with the social division and political polarisation within US society. To state his point, he enumerated some facts on why the political division in the US is increasingly reflecting the division of American society itself. Next, he talked about the course and results of the presidential election in 2020, but also mentioned the problems which are going to occur if the new government wants to introduce a new law, because these days Congress has just a slight majority in the house. Moreover, he also talked about Trump’s attempted “Coup D’état“ and its impact on US society when Trump was unwilling to accept his defeat in the election, no matter the results. This was the cause of the storm on the capitol on January the 6^th, 2021 when protestors managed to break into the governmental building. In this whole context, Mr. Hünemörder also speculated about the future of the Republican Party, which is deeply connected to Donald Trump. After all, the former president still has incredible political power and it seems likely that Trump will attempt to win the presidential election in 2024. 

Besides past events, the professor also spoke about Biden’s current presidency and the problems with his agenda, mainly because of the minimal Democratic majority in Senate and the conservative majority in the Supreme Court. Yet another very interesting topic of the USA Update was Biden’s immigration policy. Living is Germany, you would usually think that Biden, as a liberal democrat, and with his policy being so open-minded, works towards a reversal of Trump’s anti-immigration law. But in reality he rather carries on what Trump started. With the number of unauthorized border crossings having reached its peak in the summer and spring of this year, most of the unofficial immigrants, caught after crossing the border, didn’t have a chance to apply for asylum and were instantly expelled. There are a lot more aspects of the immigration agenda that you can criticize, but this topic is the most diverse and difficult one in American politics. 

Finally, Dr. Hünemörder talked about the Black Lives Matter movement and how the Biden administration wants to fight systematic racism in the USA. In his conclusion of Biden’s work as US president, Mr. Hünemörder pointed out that he disagreed with many of Trump’s controversial orders, because Biden didn’t quite accomplish the goals of his own agenda. 

We think that the presentation of Dr. Markus Hünemörder was really informative because it gave us an insight into the current situation of the USA. He didn’t just enumerate facts and numbers, but also integrated some clips of, for example Arnold Schwarzenegger, to show us what the citizens really think (even though most of the clips were recorded with an ironic tone). In addition, he also used cartoons to illustrate the current topics and problems. However, we still want to make suggestions for improvement. Some students of our class mentioned that there was too much text for each slide of Mr. Hünemörder’s PowerPoint presentation, which resulted in overwhelming first impressions. Nonetheless it must be noted that the professor managed to lead us through the show comprehensibly. Furthermore it is important to acknowledge his kindness of taking a lot of time to answer questions afterwards. All in all, it was a very informative and entertaining afternoon and we hope that Dr. Markus Hünemörder will give presentations as good as this one in the following years.

Lukas Helmer, Andreas Huber (Q12)