When the university bothers you, it's because it's alive. The phrase can be said in relation to almost daily events in the economic, social and political scenario: rare are the days when someone backed by academia, an intelligence dedicated to teaching and investigating phenomena – in short, thinking – does not go out to field to act as a critical conscience of society.
It was nothing else that happened on June 17th, when the document entitled “The interdicted agenda – an alternative of prosperity for Brazil”, reached public opinion with the weight of 305 signatures of intellectuals and economists and, like a bomb with a positive moral effect, it forced a reflection on the direction of the economy, society or what could be called a national development project.
The genesis of this document, which will remain as a manifestation of the Brazilian intelligentsia at a given moment in its history, whatever the country's fortunes in the coming years, owes much to the intellectual initiative of the economist Plínio de Arruda Sampaio Filho, who reveals himself in it, more that an articulator of ideas and proposals, a catalyst for the dissatisfaction of the left which for decades thought it was carrying a distinct project for the country and which, according to the manifesto, is not the one outlined in 2003.
Whether the signatories of the “Banned Agenda” are right or not, only time will tell. But the simple existence of a reflection piece like this is enough to qualify the Brazilian debate and reestablish a tradition that was at risk of being forgotten, which is the habit of contradiction. Jornal da Unicamp seeks to add fuel to the heat of the discussion through Clayton Levy's beautiful interview with Professor Plínio, collected in his room at the Unicamp Institute of Economics.
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