The debate demands a strong academy

Attacks from the far right and “unparalleled” disinvestment threaten Brazilian universities, says researcher

Abstract

A renowned researcher in the field of ethnic-racial studies, Luiz Augusto Campos was drawn to the topic by the “heat of the debate on quotas” in the 2000s, when he enrolled in the undergraduate program in Political Science at the University of Brasília (UnB). His personal experiences as a black man in a racialized society did not seem very significant to him until he arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 2007 to pursue a master’s degree in Sociology and Anthropology at UFRJ. There he also found himself “in one of the academic centers most opposed to quota policies.” Today, he sees the term identitarianism as an accusatory category that disregards two elements: first, that markers such as race and gender only matter because they are linked to socioeconomic inequalities; second, that these movements still have to fight for respect for basic rights. “What unites women, gays, lesbians, blacks, and indigenous people is that these groups simply want to stop being privileged victims of violence,” he says. For Luiz Augusto, it is no surprise that the left has performed poorly in municipal elections, which he believes are generally focused on more pragmatic issues of providing public services; but he agrees that the parties in this field “have become politically institutionalized to the point of distancing themselves from more local social movements,” which would be a typical political trend that should be monitored. Faced with an academy threatened by government disinvestment and confronted by the proliferation of “pseudo-intellectuals” and the cult of coaching, he argues that serious public debate cannot do without a strengthened academic environment that interacts with society in general. Check out the interview, conducted by email by the organizers of the dossier “Old social markers, new political approaches,” Andréa Lopes and Edlaine Gomes.