Academic freedom—the autonomy of any educational institution to produce and transmit knowledge—is a fundamental democratic imperative. The sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities give us the tools to understand our environment, to cope with our limits as a species, to study and criticize social inequalities, and to build a world based on solidarity and inclusiveness. For academic freedom to exist, researchers, teachers, and students must be guaranteed working and learning spaces that allow for their inquiries, dialogues, criticisms, curiosities, trials, and errors to take place free from political repression.

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We distinguish, however, between academic freedom and freedom of expression. Acquiring an education does not mean walking into a marketplace of ideas. Nobody is entitled, as the political Right in Brazil currently argues, to learn creationism in a biology class—because there is no scientific evidence for such a theory. Students should not expect teachers to say that there is “scientific controversy” regarding global warming—because no actual scientific controversy exists. The fact that Brazil experienced a dictatorship from 1964 to 1985 is not open to interpretation. It did happen, as did slavery and its horrors, and as did and do the oppression and violence of patriarchal power. These and other topics must be researched and taught so that Brazilian students—and, as a result, Brazilian society at large—develop the means to understand and combat the inequalities and violence that pervade our past and present. Academic freedom means rigorous interpretation—presented with the support of theoretical and empirical discourses of proof, constantly under critique by researchers, and always subject to revision.

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We thus stand for two main principles: scientifically driven inquiry, and the preservation of a robust and publicly funded university system. To fulfill these two principles also entails incentivizing the participation of a diversity of identities within Brazilian higher education, and condemning bullying and harassment of educators based on their gender, race, sexuality, or political beliefs.

Scientifically driven inquiry

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In the past few decades, Brazil has constructed a remarkable public federal and state university system. With their basic research and teaching activities almost entirely funded by the government using taxpayers’ money, these universities have enjoyed the necessary autonomy and independence vis-à-vis state and private interests, thus becoming major places for the production of scientific knowledge in all areas of investigation. During these years, Brazil also built an impressive national network of institutions to support and evaluate research and teaching. Research universities depend on financial resources to be made available on a competitive basis, on systematic peer evaluation of their activities, on regular national and international exchanges and collaborations, and on the assurance that their internal procedures for defining pedagogical methods and outcomes will be respected and not meddled with by the state or other external forces.

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A robust and publicly funded university system

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We stand with Brazilian universities and schools and are committed to supporting Brazilian educators and students. We will denounce and fight against the perpetrators of attacks against academic freedom in Brazil with all the resources available to us—that is, with the force of reasoning and persuasion, based on our conviction that academic freedom can only be secured through strong public funding of educational institutions; university autonomy over administrative and curriculum choices; and the elimination of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and intolerance of all kinds.