translated from Spanish: “I force ergo protego”: five proposals to reinvent the academic freedom

“Protego ergo obligo” “, thus characterized the disturbing Carl Schmitt, following Thomas Hobbes, the fundamental relationship between the State and its subjects. The phrase establishes a link between the rights and duties and points to his inseparable spirit. It is by virtue of the relationship between rights and duties that human beings are not mere “beings” but citizens who respond from their actions. If the political space is nothing but a jungle where we seek only our survival, would also say “I force ergo protego”. The Covenant always involves two parts that are mutually conditioned. Human beings are citizens only if the legitimacy of the political organization rests on its ability to guarantee security to the governed.
The maximum applies to the justification of the State and all the relationships he establishes with the governed. Expected from the State that it legitimises in each of their acts in that it manages to express the principle: in that forces because it protects, in that the extent of its competence in the various fields of social life is justified in its ability to ensure certain conditions NES of existence in which the governed expand its capabilities. In turn, the fulfilment of a duty is not an act of subordination to a tyrannical State. It is what gives citizenship and freedom.
For several decades, the academic freedom is put in check by a surreptitious and growing asymmetry between duties and rights. Competitiveness and also the institutional fragility make the criteria for evaluations of teachers changing and not always in accordance with the needs of the research. At some universities, there remain precarious contracts that keep researchers in situation of uncertainty (e.g., in the regime of “contract”). Notions of rights and duties lose more and more sense to dominate economic needs dismissed a legal framework clear. In addition, State agencies can even conditional transfer of funds for research to the signing of a promissory note and forcing researchers to pay even if they have licenses for postnatal.
The situation expresses the difficulty of articulating economic political. When the economic is exercised at the expense of the political, is dominated by a fatality in which we lose political aptitude. What is needed today is not to affirm the State reason against the reason for the market (this opposition keeps us in a dualism that ora refers to old metaphysical systems, ora is supported from new metaphysics not yet conceived), but find ways of articulation between economic and political, as well as rights and duties. By the way, the policy is not limited to distribute rights and duties: she is the reinvention of the articulation between rights and duties in order to create new spaces of citizenship and freedom.
The situation of precariousness of the status of researchers and their institutions, which end up undergoing a State bureaucracy, which does not respond anymore to the maximum of the “protect, then I force”, but ends up imposing asymmetrical way, become required reforms. The issue becomes especially meaningful insofar as enforcement is carried out on institutions and charges that have on him, too, the task of hosting the most reflective thinking and critical conscience of society, work which are very sensitive to the existence or non-existence of stable conditions of preparation.
The State must recover its legitimacy in the University and field research.
It is striking that the reform of the education system implemented in recent years and that the draft of an education that responds to the objective of establishing a universal free, not made in function of the meanings which may be charged today the idea University, but, instead, on the basis of technical and economic requirements that end up determining the meaning of education and who are, increasingly, extrinsecamente aims to impose. No reform of the educational system reaches its end if you put in check the academic freedom and precarization is increased in the field of research.
Taking into account the next installation of an Advisory Council for the improvement of university institutions, the Ministry of education, and the recent establishment of a Ministry of science, seem conducive to propose relevant measures, that allow, at the same time, improve the status of research in Chile and promote it, within a framework in which the intervention of the State is legitimate.
First, a categorization of institutions of higher education that, more than the character State or private of the respective House of studies, especially consider a system of Government where there is effective division of power, as well as a statute that ensures internal pluralism and academic freedom. The universality of knowledge to which it aspires the University and unconditionally to the new openness are incompatible with the capture of the institution by visions of reality that are restricted to such an extent that they impede the free exercise of research and teaching. The categorization of the institutions must be linked to support clearly differentiated universities that guarantee, thanks to its system of Government and the status of teachers, such pluralism and freedom.
Second, the creation of a standardized academic career and a status reinforced for researchers who achieve ownership and have a track record of proven research; something resembling a “tenure”, corrected, that Yes: linked to measurable performance still, but not subject to external criteria, imposed by the current National Commission for accreditation. With this, it is affirming the value of paths that are made at the time and not only assess productivity each year – what actually ends up ignoring a condition of research.
Third, the creation of a new category in Fondecyt, that allows to develop long-term projects, renewable, for researchers from path (that have, for example, been responsible for two or more regular projects), and the establishment of new modalities for collaborative projects, in Sciences and Humanities, from medium to long, renewable terms, in charge of groups of researchers of history and which allow and require the incorporation of young researchers.
Fourth, a major reform to the National Committee on accreditation, which ensure, at least by: the simplification of complex required reports and the criteria and sub-criteria of evaluation and operating procedures; the competence of its members (today, for example, 11 of the 16 commissioners lack doctoral experience and accredited doctoral programs); the symmetry relations of accrediting and accredited; certainty and relevance of the evaluation criteria.
Fifth, the establishment of basic institutional guarantees for the research and teaching free, including: the definition, such as permanent, of a system of funding from mixed sources, ensuring greater independence of the houses of study with respect to their material conditions of subsistence; the strengthening of the State institutions of universities and research (needed having a professional bureaucracy, equipped with adequate qualifications and resources to fulfill their tasks on time); a clearer nomination system of the researchers working in the ministries of education and science, which prevents the production of conflicts of interest, which is representative of academic and institutional plurality, and that can give an account of their performance (condition of the renewal or non-renewal of a mandate), as well as of the objectives achieved in each term.
These reforms would restore a reasonable balance between rights and duties and would strengthen the University and research institutions. More beyond mere normalization or attachment to any old maxim, it is having a legitimate political power in the field of research and higher education, and creating new spaces of political freedom and openness the unknown.

Poured in this op-ed content is the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial line or po El Mostrador stura.

Original source in Spanish

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