MOVING TO FRONT FROM FRIDAY--SOME INTERESTING INFORMATION IN THE COMMENTS, MORE WELCOME
Last month I spent a week in Brazil, participating in conferences (one on Nietzsche, one on "Genealogy and Critique") at the Federal Universities of Goiânia and Rio de Janeiro. We've noted previously the attack on the universities by the fascist Bolsonaro, but now having had the opportunity to talk to faculty and students "on the ground," I can give a more vivid sense of what is going on and what will happen barring some dramatic change in political fortunes. (Bolsonaro is already much less popular, but he has three more years in office, and while most people I talked to were optimistic he will be ousted, that prospect is too far off to be much consolation.)
The first thing to note is that faculty at the public universities are "civil servants," and their positions and salaries enjoy constitutional protection, so they are insulated from Bolsonaro's whims. Unfortunately, Bolsonaro can affect nearly every other aspect of the university's budget. Goiânia, for example, is about a 1 1/2 hour flight inland from Rio; when I was there, the daytime temperature approached 100 degrees farenheit every day, and while it was the proverbial "dry" heat, it was so dry that government officials issued warnings to drink liquids on a regular basis regardless of whether one was thirsty. Because the federal government has been withholding monies for the operating costs of the university, the university declared that instructors could no longer turn the air conditioning on in classrooms because the university was having trouble paying its electricity bills. (How is that for fascist viciousness? Force the faculty and students to teach in Arizona desert weather without relief.) In Rio, one department at the Federal University has stopped purchasing office supplies to save money: no paper, no pens, etc. They are seeking donations of such supplies.
As destructive as such forced austerity measures are, there is an even more serious threat on the horizon. Almost all graduate students in all fields are on scholarships which the federal government controls. In one department in Rio, one third of the graduate students have already lost their government scholarships. Many graduate, and undergraduate, students in philosophy I spoke to fear they will soon lose theirs. (Some undergraduates receive scholarships that provide, for example, free meals and accomodations on campus.) But even in "professional" fields like law, students are losing their scholarships as well. This is an obvious attack on the research mission of the universities, all the more tragic because of the great strides Brazil's major research universities have made over the last generation.
Things are already bad, but everyone I met expects them to get worse next year. (Indeed, my visit occurred only because the 2019 budget was set before Bolsonaro took office. Even so, the federal government did not deliver some of the funds to the university until after I had arrived.)
I am opening comments for those with more information, perspective, and/or concrete suggestions about what we can do to help our colleagues in Brazil.
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