Government will respect 1st on the list for university presidents, says Lula

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) said he will nominate professors chosen by federal universities as dean. The posture will represent an inflection in relation to the government of Jair Bolsonaro (PL), which adopted an open policy of appointing ideologically aligned leaders.

The president participated this Thursday morning (19) in a meeting with deans of federal institutions of higher education at the Planalto Palace.

“Don’t think that Lula is going to choose the rector he likes. It’s the university professors who have to like the rector, it’s the university employees, it’s the university community that has to know who can manage the university”, said Lula, which guaranteed respect for the will of the community and promised an annual meeting with rectors.

The meeting at Planalto was attended by around 100 deans of universities and federal education institutes. Ministers Rui Costa (Casa Civil), Márcio Macedo (General Secretariat of the Presidency), Camilo Santana (Education) and Luciana Santos (Science, Technology and Innovation) also participated.

Camilo also said that “the government will respect and appoint all the rectors who were chosen by the community in its consultation”.

Bolsonaro broke, in his administration, a tradition of nominating the first place from a triple list produced by universities after consultation with the community. The former president disregarded the most voted in at least 40% of nominations for dean, according to a balance made up to 2021.

The number of times Bolsonaro disregarded the most voted candidate and the political and ideological motivations behind these choices led professors to point out an attack on the constitutional principle of university autonomy. At UFRGS (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul), for example, the choice of Carlos Bulhões, in 3rd place, was announced in advance by Bolsonarist deputy Bibo Nunes (PSL-RS), explaining political interference.

At the opening of the meeting, Lula said that the meeting with the rectors was a “meeting with civilization” and poked Bolsonaro for not having received the leaders.

“You need to know that a meeting with you is a meeting of civilization. I have never been able to understand the difficulty that the President of the Republic had in meeting with rectors once a year. [não] received a set of deans and the only explanation was fear that you would make claims”, he said.

Lula also attacked Bolsonaro when he said that the deans lived four years of “obscurantism”. And she pointed out that this is a new time for Brazilian higher education.

“There is no country in the history of mankind that has managed to develop without first having managed to solve the problem of training its people.

So we are starting a new moment. I know the obscurantism you’ve lived in the last four years. I want to say that we are coming out of darkness to return to the light of a new time, “he said.

Lula defended respect for university autonomy. Camilo, in turn, promised to resume the stopped works. According to the minister, there are abandoned works on 259 campuses of federal institutions.

He promised to resume investments in inclusion policies aimed at private higher education, such as Fies (Student Financing) and ProUni (University for All Program).

In four years, Bolsonaro has not held a joint meeting with the deans of federal higher education institutions. In addition, his government maintained a focus on attacking universities.

Federal institutions underwent systematic budget reductions. Some, such as UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), threatened to stop activities due to lack of resources.

One of Bolsonaro’s Ministers of Education, Abraham Weintraub, maintained strong criticisms of federal universities, which, according to him, would be places of drug use, waste of money and stage for leftist ideologization.