The Association of Researchers in Arts and Humanities questioned the presidential candidate of the Christian Social Front, José Antonio Kast, and the conventional Ruth Hurtado, for criticisms issued against the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
In a letter, the association’s board cited statements by the convention, who serves as a spokeswoman for Kast’s campaign. Hurtado told CNN Chile that if the far-right candidate reaches the government, the possibility of closing Flacso’s headquarters in Chile will be evaluated. This, because it would be one of the “institutions that are dedicated only to promoting or preparing activists, who are not there to train people in the academic subject” instead of dedicating themselves to academic issues.
“Ms. Hurtado slips that Flacso’s academics/cas would be ‘activists,'” they said.
“It seems to us that the statements made both in the program of candidate Kast, the comments that have circulated on social networks (…) and the ambiguity of the statements of the conventional Hurtado, threaten the freedom of education and research, making a biased use of the notion of ‘ideology’,” they added.
In this line, they maintained that the sayings of Kast and Hurtado demonstrate “an absolute ignorance of the functions and contributions that Flacso has made for the production of knowledge, and to improve the lives of people and peoples in Latin America.”
Meanwhile, about the UNDP, Kast had expressed – in a video published by the Twitter account El Censelio – that “we do not want more collaboration agreements than the only thing they do is spread an ideology that ends up destroying our national identity”.
“It is important to remember that UNDP, as a member organization of the UN, has promoted the 17 sustainable development goals which aim for countries to work in coordination to end poverty, protect the planet and that people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030,” they commented from the association.
“It is very dangerous to confuse the contribution that the social sciences, humanities and other areas of knowledge make in these institutions, for the well-being of the peoples, with political indoctrination, since it threatens the necessary critical work that these areas carry out with the aim of identifying problematic aspects of our societies,” they emphasized in the letter.
“We hope that the candidate and his team will not continue to spread misconceptions and false information about the work carried out by the social sciences, humanities, arts and sciences in international and national organizations. Dialogue and critical thinking are threatened when the exercise of criticism is confused with partisan ideology,” they concluded.
Read the full letter at this link.
