The University Council (Consu) of Unicamp approved in its last session, on August 2nd, the granting of the title of “Doctor Honoris Causa” to professor Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro. The initiative came from the Department of Political Science at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at Unicamp.
The authors of the proposal's opinion were professors Francisco Foot Hardman, from the Institute of Language Studies, Armando Boito Jr and Angela Araújo, from IFCH. Professors Luiz Gonzaga Belluzo, from the Institute of Economics, Maria Victoria Benevides, from the Faculty of Education, and Sérgio Adorno, from the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at the University of São Paulo (USP), formed the committee of experts who endorsed the proposal.
Diplomatic career
Paulo Sergio de Moraes Sarmento Pinheiro was born on January 08, 1944, in Rio de Janeiro (RJ). Graduated in Law from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in 1966, he planned to enter a diplomatic career the following year, but failed the competition for the Rio Branco Institute.
Moving to France, he began his undergraduate degree in Sociology at Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). He completed a doctorate in Political Studies at the University Paris 1-Pantheon Sorbonne, defending the thesis At the end of the Premiere République in Bresil: political crisis and revolution.
He returned to Brazil in 1971, becoming one of the first professors at IFCH, where he worked for around 15 years. In 1981, he also started working at USP's FFLCH, a faculty where he helped found, six years later, the Center for Violence Studies.
In 1983, he participated in the creation of the Teotônio Vilela Human Rights Commission (CTV), an important entity in the fight to strengthen human rights and combat repressive actions by the State. In 2018, he became involved with the founding of the Dom Paulo Evaristo Arns Human Rights Defense Commission.
He worked with the United Nations (UN), investigating the human rights situation in Burundi, Syria, Timor-Leste and Myanmar. Paulo Sérgio also worked at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights between 2003 and 2011. He was minister of the State Secretariat for Human Rights in the Fernando Henrique Cardoso government and was part of the National Truth Commission between 2012 and 2014.
Collection at AEL
The professor was one of the creators and founders of the Edgard Leuenroth Archive (AEL) in 1974. Between 2010 and 2013, he donated his own collection to the archive.
The collection has materials with themes relating to the world of work, human rights, violence, democracy, crimes of torture in Brazil and Latin America. There are books, articles, periodicals, reports for government agencies and international organizations.
The collection consists of 4.566 books, 311 periodicals, 46 leaflets, 45 videotapes and 22 rolls of microfilm containing American consular dispatches related to the communist movement in Brazil and the labor movement of the 1930s.
