“An anti-university discourse has taken hold throughout the region”

Within the framework of the international forum "Inequalities in Latin America: tensions, debates and proposals", held from April 16 to 18 in Montevideo, Uruguay, Rodrigo ArimThe Rector of the University of the Republic spoke with CLACSO.tv.

Regarding the attacks that public universities are suffering throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, Arim noted that “universities, in some sense, have always generated discomfort for political systems or power systems in general. It is part of our operating logic. And it has had more or less virulent expressions at different times in history. However, my perception is that an anti-university discourse has taken hold, accusing the authorities throughout the region, with varying levels of relative development, of indoctrination.”

Regarding the Argentine case, the Rector of the University of the Republic (Udelar) opined that President Javier Milei's accusation that the University of Buenos Aires is a center of indoctrination "is very serious coming from the highest political authority in the country." He added that in the region, "other factors are beginning to emerge that make the outlook unfavorable. If the political system begins to deny the relevance of discussions like the one we just had at CLACSO, such as the emergence of research agendas linked to inequalities, and if the central actors within the political system deny inequality as a subject of research and relevance for policy design, there will be a clash. It's impossible to imagine that there won't be a logic of confrontation."

“I believe we must be vigilant and offer healthy resistance, striving to create a space for reconstituting reasoned discussions that uphold deliberative democracy. This is a democratic space where not everything is acceptable. It is valid to defend different, and sometimes irreconcilably different, positions, but it is not valid to denigrate others or use disinformation as a mechanism to build prejudice,” he concluded.

Interviewed by Gustavo Lema.