Mexican academics, most of them members of the National System of Researchers (SNI) published a position in which they express their “concern and total rejection of any type of intervention that violates or puts at risk the autonomy and academic freedom of higher education institutions in Mexico.”
“In our country, a political-ideological, pseudo-legal and anti-institutional program is underway to cancel the freedoms of teaching, scientific research and dissemination and transfer of knowledge,” they said in the document entitled “Defending CIDE is defending freedom to culture, education and scientific research in Mexico.”
You may be interested: CIDE students ask to vote against the modification of statutes; rally announced
The hundreds of signatory researchers denounced that “in recent months, the General Director of Conacyt has tried to discredit CIDE by presenting it as a “right-wing” institution and co-opted by “neoliberalism”. It has intimidated its directors into resigning, putting in their place people without academic prestige or roots in their community.”
They also accused that the expressions of discontent on the part of the teaching and student community of CIDE, and their requests for dialogue, have been ignored, in addition to the fact that attempts have been made to modify the Statute “illegally, not only to legitimize the arbitrary appointment of its director, but to attack their sense of self-determination.”
National investigators speak out against the attack and arbitrariness committed by the current administration of the @Conacyt_MX in the @CIDE_MX pic.twitter.com/kNqnbM6HSn
— Fernando Nieto Morales (@fnietomorales) January 23, 2022
“This assault on CIDE is in addition to the disappearance of trusts and gradual but systematic budget cuts, the dismissal of directors of public research centers, the use of government institutions to persecute scientists considered as opponents. All these actions… show the interest in controlling and guiding the generation and application of knowledge from their ideological assumptions and political interests,” they said.
For this reason, they called for dialogue, but warned that they also have “another path: mobilization, resistance inspired by the idea that science and freedom go hand in hand, there is no one without the other.”
Read more: CIDE Community denounces conacyt’s new attempt to reform statutes
As part of the actions of resistance to these changes, and after vacating the facilities that they had maintained since November 29, the CIDE community called a peaceful rally outside the research center, on Monday, January 24 at 8:30 a.m., which is when the meeting of the Council of Associates would be taking place to discuss the changes to the statutes.
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