Science is a war zone: some comments on Brazil

1. Political turmoil

Latin America is on fire. Political turmoil has hit the region in a wave that has not been seen in decades. Chile,¹ Bolivia² and Colombia³ are just the latest cases, but recent months have seen turmoil in Venezuela,⁴ and deep political strife in Argentina⁵ and Brazil (Alves and Mutsvairo 2019). All over the region, political polarization of a new virulent strain has drastically changed the political landscape: extreme right-wing movements have successfully emerged as a new political force, with Brazil being at the helm of this new “movement”⁶ with a global scale. Argentina has so far become the only noteworthy exception, recently electing left-leaning president Alberto Fernandéz; sadly, one that confirms the rule.

This recent rise of a new extreme right is connected to new forms of “digital populism” and online activism in the region (Cesarino 2019), which in Brazil are genealogically connected to the larger June 2013 protests (Peruzzo 2013). But these new social movements are also related to a persistent questioning of science in new and problematic ways. Changes in politics and in truth-making practices are thus (as they always are) deeply intertwined, challenging the place of both democracy and science in contemporary Brazilian society. As Brazilians continue to endure the near-daily doses of bizarre and violent attacks to institutions connected to democracy, culture, indigenous rights, education and science, scientists and researchers have been forced to rethink how they practice and understand science as a way of life, for the present and the future.

This distinct and troubling anti-intellectual flavor demands much more reflection as we continue to spiral into political and social instability. Our fragile democratic tradition continues to be put to the test, both by significant sectors of society and by some of the highest authorities of the country, who directly cite the more violent policies of the 1964 regime⁷ as possibilities for the present. Such reflection about science and democracy should, in order to be more effective, better situate the many continuities of present phenomena with our recent dictatorial past and our longer-term authoritarian history. At the same time, we need to better grasp the new trends in social movements and public opinion, which include the emergence of anti-science and anti-democratic positions.

2. Anti-left, anti-science

The association of anti-science sentiments and authoritarianism is not new in Brazil: during the military rule in the 1960s, for example, as was the case in many other Latin American countries, intellectuals and scientists were particularly targeted by the regime for being dangerous to national security. Brazil’s universities were purged of progressive and left-leaning individuals (Motta 2014), even as this same regime increased investment in science and incorporated many reforms proposed by progressive intellectuals (Moreira 2014).

Scientists of all disciplines were targeted: many were forcibly exiled, tortured or murdered. This marks our scientific and intellectual landscape in very concrete ways: it is near impossible to attend the best universities in Brazil and not encounter former victims of the dictatorship, an experience maybe uncommon to North American or European universities. Albeit not the focus of this piece, these elements are relevant in order to begin to reimagine a place for science beyond the critique of current government science policies.

Anti-science is very visible in today’s Brazil, and in many ways has become part of official policy: one very visible example is Abraham Weintraub,⁸ our current Minister of Education. In addition to his constant online rants against the left (materialized in his public hatred of Brazilian intellectual Paulo Freire), his unique view of the world has been affecting Brazilian science in structural ways. As most science in the country is performed in public universities (most of which are currently funded in large part by his ministry), his attacks have created an atmosphere of dread and fear among scientists critical of his policies, albeit with some support among researchers. Along with the fact that these attacks have resonated with society and public opinion, who don’t always have a positive view of universities and intellectuals, many in universities feel pushed up against the wall with no way out.

Weintraub has made countless controversial claims which paint a very negative picture of intellectuals: he claims that university professors are well paid but don’t do much work; that professors have turned universities into ideological factories, producing communist and leftist militants,⁹ among many others. This has understandably angered scientific societies, university professors and students,¹⁰ but has met with approval from many elected officials and federal authorities, along with a significant portion of society. Accusations of a supposed “leftist hegemony” in academia equate critical thinking with political and social “subversion,” while silencing and even legitimating the violence perpetrated in the past by the military regime.

Another very visible case is Environment Minister Ricardo Salles, who drew international negative attention to Brazil as fires raged in the Amazon in 2019. When the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) alerted of significant increases in deforestation, and as scientists and politicians repeatedly warned that illegal loggers were being emboldened by president Bolsonaro’s political stance, openly hostile towards NGOs and indigenous peoples, the government’s response was to dismiss the head of the Institute, Ricardo Galvão.¹¹ A well-respected scientist, Galvão spoke out against government policies, helping to make very visible the way robust scientific advice to government was being pushed aside for political and ideological reasons.

This paranoid battle with what they call “cultural Marxism,” “gender ideology” and a generic “left” has been a uniting force of the new extreme right movements, making Brazil’s political landscape especially challenging for those of a progressive stance. Perhaps more so than other countries with similar alliances between extreme right, religious extremism and white supremacy,¹² due to the radical nature of this government and lack of robust institutional checks and balances.

This ideological turn against science and scientific institutions has been coupled with drastic budget cuts, which have strained the capacity of the research system to cope with its basic activities (De Negri and Koeller 2019), putting at risk decades of investment in science and technological capabilities. Such sustained and drastic attacks coming from different directions have of course been met with resistance from scientists, politicians and portions of public opinion, but the dilemmas posed by this current climate have stunned many political actors contrary to current forces in power.

3. Dilemmas for science in Brazil

These dilemmas can be interpreted, among many other things, as an expression of a deeper crisis in science’s place in Brazilian society, as has been argued elsewhere (Reyes-Galindo, Monteiro, and Macnaghten 2019). Facing these dilemmas involves, in my mind, some honest reflection about the many contradictions present in scientific institutions which were overlooked in the recent past. Debates around these flaws in our science system are not new: research on the Brazilian university has already pointed to some severe problems with which we have yet to fully engage (Vessuri 1986).

These involve, to mention just Hebe Vessuri’s analysis (which unfortunately still remains fresh), our deeply entrenched colonial tradition, which was for long periods contrary to freedom of thinking and restricted education to small parts of the elite. It also relates to the problematic forms of governance within these institutions, which are top-heavy and technocratic, imposing a heavy load of bureaucracy draining energy from their central missions, which should be to produce robust research and promote teaching excellence. The fact that these elements are still present in our institutions speaks to our historic inability to tackle these contradictions, which unfortunately has been used against universities by current extremist leaders.

Such current attacks on science and the university should of course be strongly resisted, as they have been.¹³ But scientists (and society at large) also have much to gain by reflecting on the reasons why so many untruthful and absurd claims resonate with so many people, within public opinion and even in parts of the scientific community which support current policies. Such reflection becomes ever more urgent, as so much destruction has been already wrought by current policies but also by tragedy.

The burning of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro,¹⁴ for example, was one such tragic event, one of incalculable dimensions. A loss from which the country can never recover. Being such a symbolically catastrophic event for science and culture in Brazil, it could have (or perhaps should have) sparked major debates on the flaws of our current system, on rethinking how scientific institutions have been governed and funded, and on ways to avoid such irrecuperable losses. The lack of such a broad rethinking of scientific institutions in such a challenging context is telling of a deep incapacity to imagine this crisis and ways out of it.

Our inability to reform our institutions, the simplistic and dualistic debates around funding, and our sustained resistance to open up to societal demands, compose a complex picture where those critical of current developments nonetheless share some very problematic ideas about the place of science in society (Dagnino 2017). Many in the university, when confronted by attacks on science, fall back on traditional discourses of how investing in science and technology promotes social and economic development, a linear narrative which is increasingly unable to convince both the public and our elected leaders. Aside from this, the argument that states that we need to constantly fund science as it stands leaves aside the other many problems we have to face, which include rethinking how Brazilian science responds to societal demands; how and why our public institutions are still closed off to a majority of the population; and how we have to understand and engage with the very negative image many in the public have of science and scientists.

Economic truisms about the need for innovation through basic science are incapable of tackling these challenges, but so are simplistic social critiques of the extreme right or of neoliberal policies. A more creative capacity to rethink how the university is organized is urgent, including internal governance, funding and what it means institutionally to answer to “societal demands.” If we don’t do this reimagining, the extreme right will as they already have. By proposing radically reductionist and neoliberal solutions¹⁵ to reforming the university, current political forces promise to undermine our already strained capacity to do science and to even continue the exercise of critique within these spaces.

As a socio-material assemblage composed of institutions, individuals, practices and tacit understandings, truth-making and science have always been arenas of dispute. The image of science as a war zone, in that sense, does not stray from the basic premises of science studies. The specificity we should acknowledge now is clarity about what is at stake in such disputes: as democratic institutions are questioned, in Latin America and beyond, our place as scientists and intellectuals are also put to the test.¹⁶ And tackling one challenge means to also tackle the other at the same time. Reimagining the framing of current crises in science should be a crucial part of the more practical debate around science policy: as we engage with attacks on science, as we question funding cuts, as we denounce lies used to justify the unjustifiable, we should also be attentive to how the terms of the debates are being produced and reinforced. If we don’t succeed in reframing at least some of these issues, we might just lose our timing to be able to do any reforms at all.

Notes

1 https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/23/chile-upheaval-protests-model-muddle-free-market/.

2 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/16/bolivia-protests-five-killed-in-rally-calling-for-exiled-moraless-return.

3 https://www.dw.com/en/colombia-protests-call-for-general-strike-after-protests-claim-fourth-victim/a-51414309.

4 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36319877.

5 http://theconversation.com/as-latin-america-revolts-in-argentina-the-insurrection-was-at-the-ballot-box-125630.

6 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-02/jair-bolsonaro-s-son-joins-steve-bannon-s-nationalist-alliance.

7 https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/11/26/world/americas/26reuters-brazil-politics-guedes.html.

8 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/09/brazil-replaces-far-right-education-minister-with-conspiracy-theorist.

9 https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/educacao/weintraub-ministro-educacao-entrevista-exclusiva/.

10 https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/educacao/2019/12/reitores-vao-a-justica-para-que-weintraub-prove-falas-sobre-droga-em-universidades.shtml.

11 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/world/americas/bolsonaro-amazon-deforestation-galvao.html.

12 Understood here as structural racism of different types, including white nationalisms and other organized racist groups, but not restricted to them.

13 https://www.andes.org.br/conteudos/noticia/aNDES-sN-aciona-justica-contra-declaracoes-de-weintraub-sobre-professores1.

14 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2018/09/news-museu-nacional-fire-rio-de-janeiro-natural-history/.

15 https://www.andes.org.br/conteudos/noticia/entidades-do-setor-da-educacao-programa-future-se-representa-a-extincao-da-educacao-federal-publica1.

16 https://sites.library.queensu.ca/transmissions/science-politics-and-post-truth/.