The new composition of the Scientific and Cultural Council of the Institute of Advanced Studies (IdEA) at Unicamp held its first working meeting on Thursday (1/9), concerned with the search for projects that point out ways out of the Brazilian crisis and ways to the development of the country. The meeting – scheduled to take stock of the management that began in 2021 – also aimed to project what the institution's next two and a half years will be like.
The new composition of the council was appointed in June this year by the rector of Unicamp, Antonio José de Almeida Meirelles, and should be maintained until 2024. The new advisors are diplomat Celso Amorim, geologist Álvaro Crósta, chemist Fernando Galembeck, economist Luiz Gonzaga Belluzzo, engineer Nelson Maculan Filho and physicist Sergio Rezende.
The sociologist Augusto Rodrigues, the physicist Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, the doctor Erney Plessmann de Camargo, the biomedical Helena Nader, the sociologist Maria Alice Setubal, the art critic Martin Grossmann and the engineer Wilson Ferreira remain on the board for the 2021-2024 term. Junior.
The Council is chaired by mathematician José Mario Martinez, professor emeritus at Unicamp, with teachers Christiano Lyra as coordinator and Isabella Tardin Cardoso as deputy coordinator.
“When I see a council made up of people who have played and play such an important role in education, higher education, science and technology and diplomacy in our country, I have great hope that we, as a University, can recover – or perhaps better , strengthen – the role that Unicamp has always had as an institution, but which had more visibility in other times – which is to think about Brazil”, said the rector. “And think about the future of Brazil in a way that includes values that are important to us as a whole – which are values associated with democracy, social justice and inclusion”, added the rector, at the opening of the work meeting.
One of the proposals that aim to think about the country came from sociologist Augusto Rodrigues. He suggested the creation of a program that would unite the Institutes of Advanced Studies of the three universities in São Paulo – Unicamp, USP and Unesp – in the construction of a development project for the country. “The idea is to reflect on a project for the nation. Discuss the crisis, see what crisis it is and debate topics such as democracy, corruption, climate change. And I think that the three advanced institutes at universities could do this”, he assessed.
Diplomat Celso Amorim, former Minister of Foreign Affairs (2003-2011) and Defense (2011-2015), believes that the Council can work on major national and global issues."One of the biggest reasons for concern today is war, and this is because nowadays there is a concrete risk of the use of nuclear weapons", he stated. “For the first time in 50 years, there is a real risk of the use of nuclear weapons and we must be aware of it. The University played a very important role back in the 60s and 70s [of the last century], in the fight for peace”, said the diplomat.
Amorim also stated that the world faces a very serious environmental problem and that climate-related issues are urgent and require global solutions. He also recalled that the world needs to prepare for new pandemics and, finally, that it must seek mechanisms to combat inequality. “These are issues that, without the contribution of Universities, we will never be able to resolve,” he said. He also defended greater dissemination of the work carried out at the academy. “Especially now that we live in a period of denial of reason,” he argued.
Also concerned with the dissemination of this topic, geologist Álvaro Crósta argued that it is necessary to expand the forms of interaction between academia and society and suggested the creation of the Institute's own magazine focused on scientific dissemination, “with journalistic characteristics”, in the words from him.
Sociologist Maria Alice Setubal stated that she is concerned about the possibility that society knows little about what is produced in universities. Physicist Sergio Rezende – who was Minister of Science and Technology in the period 2005-2011 – drew attention to the role of governments and businesspeople. He said that public and private organizations should try to get closer to the university.
interdisciplinary
The president of the Council, professor José Mario Martinez, said he wanted to reinforce the characteristic of interdisciplinarity at the Institute.
“Our mission here at IdEA is to support scientific and cultural activities and, evidently in our way, we seek to ensure that all of this has characteristics of originality, depth and relevance. But we want to strongly add the characteristic of interdisciplinarity”, stated the president.
“This is a topic that is talked about a lot in the academic world, but, unfortunately, little is practiced, because it is very difficult to practice. We [academics], due to our training, are intrinsically subject to discipline”, he argues. “Mathematicians distrust engineers and vice versa; the physicist distrusts everyone; those in Humanities [are suspicious] of those in Exact Sciences. We even have a colleague who calls the groups 'inhumane and inaccurate'”, jokes the professor.
“Therefore, here at IdEA, we try to create an environment so that this does not exist, so that interdisciplinary working groups are formed that are creative, imaginative and that essentially feel free to make proposals and promote meetings. Along these lines, we hope to deposit a grain of sand towards enabling the development of a viable world”, he concludes.
thematic groups
“The idea of the meeting is to create, together, the plots of good”, summarized the coordinator of IdEA, professor Christiano Lyra. The coordinator recalled the activities carried out by IdEA over the last two years and cited examples of the breadth of the work, saying that the Thematic Groups addressed absolutely different issues.
He cited, as an example, the group “Som e Processos Criativos”, which combined music and ecology. Another axis, he recalled, was concerned with evaluating conflicts, risks and impacts associated with the environmental disasters in Mariana and Brumadinho, in Minas Gerais.
Lyra also mentioned the group that works on the theme “Ethics, Diversity and Democracy in Public Schools” and the one that created the Philology Theory Center, which has as its central object the epistemological study of activities included in the study of philology.
The coordinator also spoke about the Public Health Study and Action Group, created this year and which brings together professors, students and researchers from various areas at Unicamp.
Collaborative consortium
The professor also recalled that Unicamp began dialogues to establish an exchange with the Consortium Collaborative Del Sur (Conusur), which brings together national universities in Argentina. He also talked about the visit of the Conusur delegation to the Institute of Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery (IOU) – the most modern institute of its kind in Latin America and which is on the eve of going into operation.
In the retrospective, the professor also spoke about the “Hilda Hilst” programs of the Resident Artist and “Cesar Lattes” of the Resident Scientist. The first welcomes – from March until September – the Pernambuco multi-artist Antônio Nóbrega.
The second will receive – from mid-September until November – the Brazilian electrical engineer Mario Veiga, elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) of the United States, an election considered one of the most important distinctions in the world in the field. .
Veiga completed a master's and doctorate in systems engineering (optimization) under the supervision of professor Nelson Maculan, who is also a member of the IdEA Board. Between September 14th and November 9th, Veiga will give a cycle of four lectures as part of IdEA activities.
