By CARLOS ZACARIAS OF SENA JUNIOR & MAIRA KUBÍK MANO*
When women, black people, LGBT people and people with disabilities accuse someone, it is unlikely that they will do so without criteria.
In an article published in the newspaper Folha de S. Paul Last Sunday, September 15th, Professor Rodrigo Perez Oliveira, our colleague from UFBA, argued that university professors have been targets of attacks from both the right and the left. According to Rodrigo Perez Oliveira, in the midst of the culture wars, university professors would be the victims, but capable of facing the attacks from the extreme right, which comes from outside the academy.
However, they would be vulnerable to the onslaught of social movements that, within the university, “promote the just agenda of defending the rights of social minorities to give a veneer of historical reparation to their offensives”. The colleague lists four cases, quite different from each other, to exemplify “cancellation practices without any administrative process”.
Rodrigo Perez Oliveira's argument is not exactly new. In fact, the “accusation” of fragmenting collective struggles through the mobilization of identities has been present for decades in the feminist, LGBTQIA, and black movements, but it has intensified as political disputes in society have become more acute, as we are currently experiencing.
More recently, in 2021, the magazine Piaui published an article entitled “It looks like a revolution, but it’s just neoliberalism”, which was based on the same premise used today by Professor Rodrigo Perez Oliveira. The 2021 text intended to denounce the attacks of militants organized by “identitarianism” that made the life of the poor university professor impossible.
Arguing in the same terms as his colleague from UFBA, Benamê Kamus Albudrás, in fact the pseudonym of a likely professor who would be at risk of being canceled by the university left, he started from the same thesis about the need to combat the right, to target the student movement and the minority majorities that become a threat when they organize and act according to collective interests.
We will not go into the merits of the cases cited by Rodrigo Perez Oliveira, because it seems obvious to us that excesses are occasionally committed and colleagues are victimized by ill-intentioned people who are willing to destroy reputations with interests that are often unspeakable. Furthermore, the climate of social fascism present in the country today inevitably contaminates all spheres of daily life, including our interpersonal relationships and also social movements.
However, it is impossible to assume that the university is a space of harmony and that teachers are untouchable and immune to criticism and contestation, even from students, so that forms of questioning and interrogation should not be a cause for concern on our part.
Academic knowledge and the university are governed by hierarchical norms and forms of meritocracy that distinguish all members of the university community; this is not in question. However, as a space that harbors conflict and contradiction, which are the essence of knowledge that needs to be critical, one cannot expect universities to not produce noise.
It is precisely this noise, or “chaos”, as former minister Weintraub said, that, partially heard by society, is used in a distorted way by the extreme right to attack it.
That said, it seems to us that by establishing a false equivalence between left and right on the subject of the university, Professor Rodrigo Perez Oliveira questions the legitimacy of students who organize and move to combat the oppression they are victims of outside the university and also within it. We say false equivalence because most of the time we do not see the student movement organizing to attack professors just because they do their duty.
It is rare to find cases of “cancellation” of teachers who do not act in an oppressive and intimidating manner on a daily basis, so it is very rare to see teachers who are not repeat offenders being targeted by social movements. When women, black people, LGBT people and people with disabilities move to accuse someone they see as an oppressor/harasser/authoritarian, it is unlikely that they will do so without criteria.
It is also important to note that, in the last decade, with the effective adoption of the quota policy, the profile of public universities in Brazil has changed: today we have more diverse institutions, with a student body that brings different life experiences, and this reverberates in the classroom. There is a demand from students for diversification of epistemologies and didactics, which has contributed to a more open, critical and plural university. It would be naive to think that such a transformation would not come without conflict on the part of those who are comfortable with their certainties.
At a time when the university as a whole is once again being attacked by the far right, including with questions about the right to quotas, it seems to be a serious mistake to point the finger at those who are usually the victims.
We may not have the university we want, but an institution based on various forms of hierarchy and meritocracy does not need to harden its relationships by emulating tensions and sugarcoating those who make the university environment unhealthy. Education needs to be a path and a practice for freedom, and this does not go hand in hand with harassment or any form of prejudice.
*Carlos Zacarias of Sena Junior is a professor in the History Department of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).
*Maíra Kubík Mano is a professor in the Department of Gender Studies and Feminism at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).
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