Brazil by Rebecca Lemos Igreja

The Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme supports intellectual circles in countries marked by various obstacles to academic freedom. To this end, it supports researchers who are no longer able to carry out their activities with the necessary serenity or even security. Stress, surveillance, administrative blockages, racism, gender discrimination and even war have led them to move, protect, isolate or even hide. This diversity of obstacles, in turn, calls for just as many strategies of protection and circumvention on the part of researchers.

This collection of podcasts, "Zones contraintes", tells their stories.

Brazil by Rebecca Lemos Igreja

In this episode, Rebecca Lemos Igreja, anthropologist and professor at the University of Brasilia and laureate of the Themis programme, talks about the situation of universities in her country shortly before the 2022 presidential elections in Brazil.

Without neglecting any dimension of the crisis they have undergone, Rebecca Lemos Igreja goes back to the higher education reforms carried out by Lula and, beyond that, to the historical sources of a political situation marked by confrontation. In fact, she explains, universities have not only seen their ressources cut to the bone, but have found themselves at the heart of a veritable ideological battle.

The aim of this battle was to purge them of the influence of a supposed "cultural Marxism", and to establish a new education based on conservative values, for the benefit of a restricted elite.

In addition to financial and administrative pressures, the instruments of this attempted conservative revolution were massive support for evangelical teaching, surveillance of professors, denigration and incitement to violence on social networks, resulting in self-censorship, the renunciation of certain research and fear of speaking freely in front of students.