I thank you for the honor of speaking to employees, students and colleagues at the Federal University of Roraima. I will remember, in a moment of danger for science and human life, aspects of our past since there are people and institutions linked to thought, whose etymology is linked to the scales: thinking comes from the act of weighing. Those who do not weigh words, concepts, methods, fall into charlatanry and violence. University thinking is critical or a gathering of certainties in the pay of obscurantist powers in the task of sowing death.
The university begins in the Greek Academies, especially those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Epicureans. There, thought acquires the ethical traits that we recognize in scientific, technical and humanistic work. Classical Greek research encompassed the spiritual and physical universe, always supported by mathematics. The saying in the Platonic Academy is famous: οὐδείς ἀγεωμέτρητος εἰσίτω (those who do not know geometry, do not enter). The friendly search for knowledge –Φιλοσοφία – encompasses existence without limits or rules that limit the search. It is opposed to hatred for thought, μισολογία, a term invented by Plato to designate the obscurantist and violent mind.
In the war between the search for knowledge and misology, there is a struggle between unhealthy curiosity and the search for what is. Plutarch indicates two paths: that of science and that of nefarious curiosity. The eyes bring together two forms of attention: research (zetesis) and curiosity, “polupragmosine”. The zetetés, investigator, uses his eyes to capture what is and achieves knowledge that is difficult to communicate. The curious seeks information about everything and everyone, things and acts that have no relevance to the Good. The cure for the curious would be research, a treatment that consists of “transferring curiosity, transforming it into a taste for honest and pleasant subjects: be curious about what takes place in heaven and on earth, in the air and in the sea, the secrets of nature, for nature does not get angry when they are stolen…” (From Curiositate, 5). In the Greek Academies, research (Zetesis) is practiced. The fact is attested by the apostle Paul. In contrast to the Jews who They demand signs, the Hellenes search: ῦσιν: Quoniam et Judæi signa petunt, et Græci sapientiam quærunt. For while Jews ask for a sign, Greeks seek wisdom (II Corinthians, 1, 22). The Renaissance takes over the Academies. They give encouragement to universities already trapped in the web of royal or papal control.
Let's look at universities. I use Jacques Le Goff. What is the intellectual? Person “who makes thinking his job and, his, the task of teaching”. They appear in the 12th century and spread throughout Europe. Bologna brings together intellectuals, but is supported by the guild of lawyers, hence its autonomy from feudal powers, the Church, and kings. It maintains the brands of professional corporations, closed to non-members. The others Universities in the 12th century are open corporations. Fiefdoms, whether clerical or secular, began to depopulate, with peasants fleeing. The members of the young university are mostly immigrants who flee the fiefdoms towards the cities. Commerce resumes the roads of the Roman Empire with the exchange of goods and ideas. The routes are resumed for something that cannot be refused by feudal lords: pilgrimage. Temples dedicated to the Virgin Mary appear, the Gothic cathedrals. The architects who build them follow Greek mathematical models as in Chartres, where Plato's geometric plane is used in the dialogue Timaeus. The vastness of the new religious buildings, their transparency with gleaming stained glass, all depend on calculation and skill. To meet this need, university meetings arise. The latter, according to Le Goff, claim to be “workshops from which ideas are exported as if they were commodities”. They organize themselves as corporations that welcome fugitives from the fiefdom.
By the thousands and thousands, young people speak the most diverse languages. Latin unites them. Teachers and students debate freely. Everyone presents questions, knowledge and expertise in logical analysis are more relevant than master's or doctor's degrees.
The teaching of Theology is followed by Medicine and Law. The Church and the new state apparatus need intellectuals to apply administrative knowledge (the first seeds of bureaucracy); regulate economic relations with law; cure the ills of the population in the fight against epidemics generated in the unprecedented urban agglomeration. Documents show offers from kings and popes to competent researchers, offering better salaries, adequate living conditions, autonomy in study and debate.
With the strengthening of state and ecclesiastical machines, their established bureaucracies, university freedom weakens, rigid rules of study and action emerge. Freedom gives way to orders emanating from external institutions that finance the university order. Campuses become complexes subject to rigid hierarchies. University knowledge becomes the servant of powers. Whoever pays the bill controls the form and content of the studies. Dean Gerson says brutally: the debate about justice doesn't matter “as long as the chicken owners sleep in peace”. The university world is the police of private property and state or religious rule. Censor of scientific or humanistic ideas and practices and united with the King and the Inquisition, he appears, in Jacques Le Goff's statement, as the “corporation of book burners”. Relevant intellectuals, from the 17th century onwards, are treated as their enemies. Research and thoughts develop outside and against the university. So it is with Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Spinoza and others. The campus defines itself as a factory for government technicians – an expression from Imanuel Kant –, a police force for ideas and science, a hidden knowledge.
In the 18th century, Denis Diderot, champion of the campaign for popular knowledge against state and religious tyrannies, indicated that the university of his time was a Gothic ghost. Strange to modern life in architectural terms – Gothic architecture still persists in European and North American universities – it is also foreign to the order of knowledge. In a project for a new university, requested by Catherine II of Russia, Diderot takes up Francis Bacon's program for the teaching to be built. Bacon – like Descartes – is against the “natural” aristocracy of knowledge. He trusts in the scientific method that would democratize culture. To draw a perfect circle requires enormous skill. Few achieve such a feat. With the compass everyone can trace it. The method equalizes intellectual forces. Bacon used biblical prophecy – in the book of Daniel, 2:12 – to justify humanity's maximum expansion of science. “And you Daniel, close these words and seal this book until the end of time; many will run from one place to another, and knowledge will multiply.”
Expansive brand of knowledge
Two elements are found in Bacon's reading of Daniel. First, the expansive brand of knowledge. It is impossible to enclose it in impregnable walls within which only a few enjoy science and technology. True knowledge, par excellence, can and should be communicated to the greatest number of human beings. Second: the spatial image matters a lot in the expansion of science, in teaching. To acquire knowledge the
Medieval students who open universities travel to unknown locations where they are welcomed as dangerous immigrants. While the medieval university is alive and free, it is the place of passage for individuals and groups of all origins. The university brings together immigrants. Most of them are poor, without their own resources, and depend on aid and scholarships granted by the Church or governments. Italian teachers teach in Germany, Germans in France, England, Holland. Over the centuries, until today, no university is made up only of natives, of citizens born on the borders of countries. The circulation of researchers, students and even employees is part of the very meaning of the university. Without foreigners, without immigrants, no university is viable. Chinese universities, today at the forefront of scientific and technical research, welcomed researchers from all countries, and still welcome them.
This fact, the constant movement of scientists and professors, students, employees, is essential to the university. A purely national campus goes against the university that, by its name, embraces all countries, cultures, languages, customs. Hence the double crime of European fascisms, all nationalist, in purging foreigners from their ranks. They commit an attack on humanity and kill the source that nourishes humanity. science in your own country. German scientific production during Nazism was greatly weakened, except in small departments linked to the war. And even in such sectors Germany weakened itself with the expulsion of opponents and foreigners. “The Nazis apply funds only to sectors that serve their purposes, reducing higher education to propaganda or censorship. Scientists leave Germany because they do not accept the regime. Seven Nobel Prize winners left the campuses from 1933 onwards. Anna-Maria Sigmund summarizes the German situation: “The Nazi State's abandonment of economic and intellectual potential (...) as well as the IIIrd Reich's retrograde attitude towards research and of science has had tremendous consequences in an astonishingly short period of time. While the Nazis in power were obstructing the work of serious scientists (...) nurturing enthusiasm for obscure theories (...) the physicists they expelled were preparing atomic war” (Roberto Romano, “Brazil, the Assassination of Espírito”, inaugural lecture at the Meeting of Rectors (Andifes) in 2020, reproduced on Journal of Unicamp).
The university reform proposed by Bacon was rejected and opposed by Oxford and Cambridge, which even resisted the neoliberal barbarism of Baroness Margaret Thatcher. Among the prime minister's measures are obstacles to hiring foreign staff, except those who would contribute to the market economy. But then it is not a question of a democratizing reform of knowledge, but of its reduction to a commodity quantifiable, subject to “productivity” assessments for private profit.
Alongside the broad democratization of knowledge brought about by the Diderot method, in Plan for a University for Russia demands democracy when entering campuses. A university, he says, must be aimed at the poor sectors. The rich are able to buy knowledge. Using calculation, he says it is more likely to find geniuses in many hovels than in a few palaces. It is advisable to resume that project now, when the State and churches seek to privatize universities in favor of of the wealthy classes and throw those without resources on the margins of life.
Against the democratic tendency of the Enlightenment, national powers set up universities to dominate peoples by controlling law, medicine and theology. Immanuel Kant in The Conflict of the Faculties denounces the subservience of so-called higher schools (Law, Theology, Medicine) towards governments. During the French Revolution, universities did little for the democratic movement. In response, the Revolution suppressed 22 universities (1793). With the Reaction, state-dominated universities reemerged. They opt for technical and vocational education. Hegel says that in the Napoleonic invasion of Italy universities were treated like brothels.
In the 20th century, the worst university example comes from Germany. Not that North American, French and Italian campuses are models of scientific or ethical correctness. Eugenics comes from the United States, exported to Europe, welcomed by Nazism. The link between German higher schools and the Nazi regime goes beyond what one can imagine. Excuses arise for the behavior of teachers and students. Among them, the financial hardship brought about by the First World War and the crisis of 1929. The coffers are empty, there is no way to appoint new professors and obtain funds for research. A Most of the university falls into racist, xenophobic hatred, averse to science. Jewish and foreign scientists are banned, arrested, killed. Few teachers protest. The ultimate shame occurs in the election of Martin Heidegger to the rectory, when he joins the Nazi Party and swears allegiance to the Leader. Admonished by his colleague Jaspers who asks him “how can a man as uncultured as Hitler govern Germany?” he replies: “Just look at his wonderful hands!” Jarpers reflects: in teachers' and students' adherence to Nazism “the freedom of teaching was at stake, destroyed at its roots when teachers are allowed to be investigated due to their opinions”.
Severed plans in Brazil
In Brazilian colonial history, with the violence of the Portuguese State and its plundering of our wealth, censorship prohibits the publishing of books and industrial productions. The uprisings against El Rey demand the right to print, read and industry. The rebels have links with English, French and North American thought. Their libraries are filled with volumes of the Enlightenment. Just consult Eduardo Frieiro's book, The Devil in the Cônego Bookstore. A historian of the Inconfidência Mineira indicates: among the plans for the possible republic is the installation of a factory and a university.
Such plans are severed like Tiradentes' body. Only in the 40s of the 20th century, after the creation of the Ministry of Education and Health, did we reach a semblance of a university system. Important steps were taken for scientific policy in 1951, with the CNPq and Capes. Without them, universities would still be in their infancy. In São Paulo, Fapesp (Research Support Foundation) helps USP, Unicamp and Unesp to resist attacks from dictatorial regime governments such as Paulo Salim Maluf.
With the 1964 coup, the war against public universities was brutal. Teachers, students, employees dismissed, arrested, dead. Daily life on campuses is one of fear and terror. Rectors collaborate with repressive bodies such as the SNI. In the MEC/USAID agreement, the Brazilian university apparatus is placed in a secondary role. The civil/military government violates universities, but has interests in some fields of research. This is the case with experimental physics, when nuclear energy plans emerge with Germany. But the choice of rectors follows oligarchic practice: members of the regional elites, strong due to their dealings with powerful people in Brasília, receive funds, teachers, research and teaching grants. The rest remain with the saucer without coins.
The 1988 Charter proclaims the principle, still unregulated, of university autonomy. Even so, from one scare to the next, a university and postgraduate system was established. Article published in the Jornal da Fapesp, years ago, demonstrates that the aforementioned system can emulate Italian, French, English and others. After the persecution of the dictatorship and with the help of CNPq, Capes, Fapesp and similar in other states, Brazilian laboratories, libraries and classrooms produce research from the humanities to sciences and advanced techniques. Even so, problems in public administration and politics bring obstacles and reduce financial and human resources. The Brain Drain sucks in our researchers heading to countries that encourage science. It is sad to see that, in the current pandemic, Brazilian names are leading international research. They did not have the support required to continue their work here. In the Collor and FHC governments, there was an attempt to privatize universities, following the logic of neoliberalism. During the Luís Inácio da Silva and Dilma Roussef governments, persecution decreased. But in Roussef's final moments, research funds suffered considerable cuts.
We have reached today's debacle in federal policy regarding public universities. I do not comment on the attacks committed by the president of the republic through alleged ministers of education. Slander, lies, propaganda to demoralize science and the humanities revisit dramatic moments experienced by the university German campuses under Nazism and on North American campuses under McCarthyism. The cuts in resources are unprecedented, the rudeness against knowledge is the same. The Federal University of Santa Catarina is invaded by supposed defenders of public morals who, in violation of university autonomy and the country's common laws, arrest the Magnificent Rector Luiz Carlos Cancelier de Olivo without evidence, humiliating him to the point of suicide. The Federal University of Minas Gerais, one of the most noble and worthy of scientific and ethical respect, was violated by the police with humiliations and sordid attacks on the teaching staff and university authorities. Rehearsals of totalitarianism are renewed by the government and institutions such as the Public Ministry, in addition to the Judiciary Police, which should protect citizen and institutional rights.
In the middle of a pandemic, the federal government works against human lives, disregards the collective danger, practices scientific charlatanism, and persecutes competent researchers. The campuses continue to generate useful knowledge for Brazilians and Humanity. In them lies the hope of survival. It is against them that the hatred against science is directed. Without universities and the knowledge generated in them, mortality would certainly be worse. Institutes like Butantã are slandered by the maximum power of the republic. The latter boycotts its vaccine production in the name of absurd ideological pettiness. And also explicit racism against Chinese people, who provide us with the means to fight for our lives. The attacks on campuses resume, with the heirs of the 1964 dictatorship, persecutions that disgraced the world in the 20th century. How long will we resist? Will there be science in the future Brazil? Alceu Amoroso Lima, at the dawn of the regime imposed in 1964, spoke of “cultural terrorism”. The same terrorism attacks today, not only through official channels such as the Ministry of Education itself, but through the internet. It's as if we had Goebbels' techniques enhanced millions of times. Ministries are controlled by creationists who are opposed to science, who have a fanatical agenda and are unwilling to support rulers who praise dictatorship, torture and the death of their opponents. During the Army's attempted invasion of university facilities in Rio de Janeiro, Rector Calmon tells a young officer: “my son, you can only enter here with entrance exam". Unfortunately, many deans today do not follow suit. And the current method of appointing rectors, through the presidency of the republic, tends to increase the number of those who disagree with the respectable Pedro Calmon.
With the Internet – similar to what happens in Gutenberg's use of the press – information multiplies without critical analysis, without research, without prudence. The field has been formed from which the lowest senses of curiosity, kakourgia and misology emerge in advanced means of communication. This wave penetrates important areas of the university. There are doctors who adhere to fascism, to the procedures of scientific quackery. Supposed social networks deepen academic defects such as envy, unruly competition against peers, and murmurs in the corridors. But the network made up of universities, despite everything, radiates knowledge and hope. All over the planet, if there is a university, there is research and knowledge, hope.
Colleagues, students and employees at the Federal University of Roraima: courage! It is up to us to value the search for knowledge as in the Greek and Renaissance Academies, in schools whose work serves Humanity, not sects and tyrannical governments. Scientia vinces: with science you will win. This is the emblem on the coat of arms of a university that suffered most from the 1964 dictatorship, USP. It will continue to be valid after the end of governments that are enemies of knowledge. Good year of studies, good practices and compassion. That's what we need. Thanks.
