Thread by @OrangoQuango

Some friends have written to ask about the Brazilian government's announcement of an attack on the humanities (tiny.cc/d10t5y) –– and, very kindly, how/whether that affected me personally. As I thought other people might be interested, here's a thread.

There is no decision as such yet, and the announcement is quite vague, possibly because they still have no clue how to implement it. "Decentralising funds" doesn't really mean anything, and public universities have autonomy to employ their resources as they see fit.

So "defunding the humanities" is not something Brasília can decide like that. What this can mean in the long run, however, is two things, both already somewhat expected. First: a substantial cut in research funding across the board, but especially for the humanities.

This does have an impact on non-public as well as public universities, since the vast majority of research in Brazil is publicly funded, particularly in the humanities. Second: that the government will cherrypick chancellors for federal universities who are >

politically and ideologically aligned with it and this policy. Because of the notoriously perverse way HE recruitment works in Brazil, the humanities tend to be the courses of choice for the students for poor, black, brown, indigenous students), as they're easier to get into.

So defunding the humanities is indirectly also a policy of restricting access to HE, further reverting the positive trend of expansion of access established in the last two decades. With the economic crisis, of course, that reversal had already begun.

This government's ideological core is not just anti-intellectual, but made up of wannabe alt-right ideologues, conspiracy nuts and ressentis who managed to square a belief in free competition with utter failure in life by constructing the fantasy of a communist-globalist plot.

Less charmingly, they are historical revisionists (regarding the dictatorship, the Nazis, slavery...) and climate denialists. It is therefore in their interest to eliminate anything that refers to a reality other than the one they have fabricated or deals with critical tools for>

analysing evidence. This extends to state departments that deal with statistics and applied research. The more they can make the world inaccessible by either fact or interpretation, the freer they are from the resistance imposed by reality >

–– including from the very possibility of statistically assessing the impact that their actions will have. (h/t @carapanarana). Why now, though? Bolsonaro is too divisive and politically inept, his programme potentially too harmful, to build a stable majority.

It’s still unclear whether he can deliver a pension reform, key to big capital's continuing support, nd his popularity rates have taken a considerable fall since January, especially among the poor. (See: tinyurl.com/yyl2kff7). His greatest asset, on the other hand, >

is a very engaged core base of true believers. People will be familiar with this behaviour from Trump: whenever the boat rocks, he will throw his base a bait, and this is mostly what this announcement is. Unlike Trump, Bolsonaro doesn’t even have economic recovery going for him.

But there’s another political rationale to this attack specifically. As more poor people were making it into university, especially in the humanities, the left was also losing most of its direct presence in the peripheries and favelas.

This means that this layer of the university-educated poor, who have increasingly taken on a protagonist role, have become central to any future left strategy in the country. This was the background from which hailed Marielle Franco, an object of vicious hate for Bolsonarismo >

, and in relation to whose death they still have serious questions to answer (tinyurl.com/y3btg54d). If you’re worried and you'd like to help, stay tuned to this story, stay in touch with colleagues in Brazil or in your countries/institutions who are doing stuff on Brazil.

In these first few months, many a scabrous measure has been announced and then retract once there was pushback, so it's likely there'll be a room for pressure coming from abroad, motions from prof associations and union branches etc.

There'll especially be room for people putting pressure on their govnmnt's to put pressure on Brazil. In that light, please consider sharing this manifesto demanding that the EU hold Brazilian trade to minimal indigenous rights and environmental standards: science.sciencemag.org/content/364/64…

(Finally, to those who worried about me personally: thankfully, my institution is under a much more stable authority –– the Vatican. But as said, the effects will be felt across the board.)

(Well, technically it's the Jesuits, not the Vatican –– but let me tell you, one really comes to appreciate the charms of actual warrior priests when faced with the Holy Crusade LARPers we currently have in power.).