CLACSO – Carolina Foundation Agreement

The Executive Secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences, Karina Batthyány, signed a Framework Cooperation Agreement on Monday, March 30, with Dr. José Antonio Sanahuja Perales, Director of the Carolina Foundation of Spain, an institution for the promotion of cultural relations and cooperation in the educational and scientific field between the European country and the rest of the world, especially the countries of the Ibero-American Community of Nations.

The text, signed virtually – given the confinement imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic – stipulates that the Agreement “aims to establish the bases for inter-institutional cooperation to develop, promote, encourage and execute research activities, publications and training within the framework of open science and the promotion of open access to knowledge of both Parties, in order to promote concrete actions for the benefit of citizens.”

Sanahuja Perales emphasized that “this agreement is very important to us for two reasons. The first is that, as the Carolina Foundation, it allows us to work jointly with one of the most important higher education research networks in Latin America and also to renew a relationship that existed between the Carolina Foundation and CLACSO a few years ago, which was interrupted, and which we can now resume. The second reason has to do with the content of the activities to be developed, and that is that we have a common agenda on a topic of great importance: access to knowledge, the conceptualization of knowledge as a common good, and open access to that knowledge. This is especially important at a time like this; we are in an exceptional moment, we are facing a pandemic, and what has become clear in recent days is that, in order to face this pandemic effectively, it is necessary to share knowledge, to do so in an agile way. The current model of knowledge privatization does not help; what is needed is a collective response, a multilateral response from international organizations, from science and technology, to face these global risks, these global threats that "represents COVID-19," he added.

In turn, Karina Batthyány affirmed that, “without a doubt, what we are doing today, which is renewing the commitment to cooperation between CLACSO and the Carolina Foundation, has significant importance for us in the current context. We consider the response from the social sciences, from the humanities, to this problem of the pandemic to be strategic at this time. And for this reason, this agreement will allow us to advance in many areas, especially in comparative research between the realities of our region and the realities of Europe and Ibero-America. In this sense, I would also like to emphasize that there is a common principle that unites us, which is the defense of knowledge, of knowledge as a public good and of open knowledge, without barriers, without any restrictions. And that is what CLACSO has always promoted and will continue to promote. In this sense, I would also like to highlight that we will collaborate within the framework of this agreement precisely in the defense of knowledge without barriers and of that knowledge as a public good. We will also emphasize the discussion surrounding the conditions of knowledge production in the field of the social sciences and the Humanities. Why do I say "in the conditions of knowledge production"? The conditions under which we work, the conditions under which we are evaluated, which, as we know, is a very sensitive issue in Latin America and the Caribbean, but not only there, also in the Ibero-American world. This is a particularly sensitive issue on which we want to join forces, contribute to discussions, and share knowledge and learning, which are increasingly necessary in the world we live in today and in this particular reality in which we find ourselves. We have high expectations for the joint projects that we will carry out between the Carolina Foundation and CLACSO.