Kornblihtt and Pecheny appointed directors of Conicet in Argentina
A year late, President Mauricio Macri finally signed the decree appointing Alberto Kornblihtt as director for the area of Biological and Health Sciences, already Mario Pecheny by Social Sciences and Humanities of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (Conicet). Elected in democratic elections by their peers in 2018, they only needed the National Executive to formalize their appointments to make their positions effective and for them to begin exercising their functions.
The delay in the appointments had prompted the Argentine researcher, sociologist, historian and feminist to speak out on May 9th. Dora Barrancos She submitted her resignation from her position on the board of CONICET, where she represented the Social Sciences and Humanities area. In this regard, Kornblihtt and Pecheny highlighted “Dora Barrancos’s ethics, which, with her resignation, revealed the government’s negligence regarding everything related to Science and Technology,” as well as the strong social pressure and the mobilization of the scientific community.
Argentina: Dora Barrancos resigns from Conicet
In an interview with the newspaper Página 12, Mario Pecheny stated that “We will pursue an agenda that addresses the situation of scholarship recipients, both those entering and those not yet entering the Research Career Track, as well as resolving some conflicts that affect the daily lives of those already on the Council. I am referring to outdated salaries and the administration of funds necessary for their work. We will seek to establish institutional channels for obtaining resources that allow researchers to carry out their tasks. In political terms, we will promote the discussion of the funding law for the sector, which has already passed one house of Congress, and we will also encourage candidates from different parties to commit to supporting science and technology in the lead-up to the October elections.”
Alberto Kornblihtt, in turn, warned: “We are going to find ourselves with an underfunded CONICET… It is an organization that can barely meet its obligations, with salaries and scholarships that are below inflation and with completely devalued subsidies. It will be a very tough fight to recover the role that the Council should have and to achieve the promised admissions to the Research Career in the Argentina Innovadora 2020 Plan… I am going to fight so that the young people who were trained in their doctorates by the state system are not left without opportunities.”
Last April, Mario Pecheny spoke with CLACSO Radio on the occasion of the meeting of Directors of Institutes of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research of Argentina, the Conicet in the City of Córdoba.
Argentina: For a rescue plan for CONICET
