On the other end of the line, the history professor at Uerj (in the State of Rio de Janeiro) announces that she has taken an anxiolytic before giving the following report. She prefers not to identify herself, fearing reprisals. It happened last November. The department was undergoing curriculum reform, and students wanted to incorporate gender and race studies into their subjects. The objective, they said, was to connect the course schedule to the students’ reality.
The teacher took a stand against the proposal, stating that her subject does not deal with current issues. In a meeting, he said that each person’s personal issues should be addressed in psychoanalysis. The students, she recalls, wrote a note of rejection, accusing her of having an “elitist stance that is detached from the concrete demands of those who live and study at a public university.”
Months before the electoral race, the university becomes a conflicted territory, the target of disputes, which replicate the polarization of national politics. Teachers published a manifesto, reporting episodes of censorship and banning of debate, with embarrassment and even physical attacks. According to them, attempts to silence come from the right and the left, in a context of intolerance.
There is, however, another group of professors who deny that there is growing censorship in academia. In a counter-manifesto, they denounce, on the contrary, the resentment of some professors at the entry of new social segments into the university.
“There is a perception that the growing ban on free debate must be publicized, especially in an election year, when emotions become more heated”, says political scientist Antonio Lavareda, professor at UFPE (Federal University of Pernambuco). “The extreme left and the extreme right have this thing in common, the vocation for authoritarianism.”
Lavareda is one of the signatories of the first document, . More than a thousand professors have already put their names on the petition, which defends dissent as the foundation of scientific production.
The manifesto also cites a survey by More In Common, a non-partisan and non-profit organization, showing society’s distrust of universities — 54% say that more ideology is promoted there than quality teaching. The document was created following a meeting of professors from different areas, held in April, at the Maria Antonia Center, at USP.
They propose a self-reform of academia based on institutional neutrality, pluralism and freedom. “There is a political dispute over the university’s land, so I think that administrations must manage this so that the university does not lose its mission”, warns Verônica Toste Daflon, sociology professor at UFF (Universidade Federal Fluminense).
“The attacks come from both sides, but we realize that the institutional response is faster when they come from an external agent, when they come from the right.”
Daflon says that the manifesto, also signed by her, was published now because there is a growing perception of censorship. Although it is still ongoing, the research “Restrictions on Academic Freedom”, carried out by UFF in partnership with USP and UFPR (Federal University of Paraná), would prove the thesis. There are already more than one hundred cases analyzed, from 2014 to 2026.
The study points to an unusual trend. While the former president (PL) was in power, the silencing came, most of the time, from the right. With the return of (PT) to Planalto, the situation was reversed. The database compiles some episodes that became known in this decade.
In 2018, the attempted silencing came from the Bolsonaro government: the then minister of , Mendonça Filho, intimidated the political science professor at Unb (University of Brasília) Luis Felipe Miguel.
Mendonça Filho accused the discipline of having a partisan bias and threatened to sue the AGU (General Attorney’s Office). “All of this occurred in disagreement with the freedom of the professorship, the right tried to prevent my course by force”, recalls Felipe Miguel.
In his view, there is a background to the demand for more pluralism now — and this deserves a digression. It all starts in the second half of the 20th century, with the criticism of positivism and scientism. In the last two decades, he says, the inclusion of other expressive forms in the university has intensified, in decolonial criticism or gender studies, for example.
But now, says Miguel, compliance with traditional scientific criteria is required of these groups, causing conflicts. An example, according to him, occurred two years ago with the lecture “Educating with the ass”, by historian Tertuliana Lustosa, at UFMA (Federal University of Maranhão). The activity caused controversy and was cancelled. Its defenders, however, valued it as the expression of another knowledge.
Returning to the party fight, USP students wrote, in 2023, a letter against Janaína Paschoal () returning to law school. One of the authors of the request for impeachment of former president Dilma Rousseff (PT), Paschoal was, at that time, ending her term as state deputy for São Paulo. She denies that impeachment contributed to increasing the climate of intolerance.
“On the contrary, impeachment gave visibility to people who think differently and felt strengthened by it”, says the now São Paulo councilor. “I’m worried about what the debate will be like in this election year.”
There are more recent cases. In June last year, disinviting speakers and banning tables with LGBTQIA+ themes. In a statement, Mackenzie said at the time that he was committed to freedom of expression and the production of knowledge from different perspectives.
In September, left-wing students prevented the lecture “The STF and Constitutional Interpretation” from taking place at UFPR, with the participation of Jeffrey Chiquini, and Curitiba councilor Guilherme Kilter (Novo).
“Polarization caused the university to exchange, in many cases, the culture of pluralism for the logic of the trench. With the extreme right growing outside the campuses, progressive sectors began to treat the university as its own moral bastion, and not as a common space of freedom and dissent”, says Wilson Gomes, professor of communication at UFBA (Federal University of Bahia).
On the new right, the (Movimento Brasil Livre), which launched the Missão party with Renan Santos as its pre-candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, is a central entity for the debate. MBL’s modus operandi is already known.
An MBL member enters the university and films the confrontation with left-wing student leaders to post on social media. In February, MBL activists painted a mural at Unicamp, decorated with students’ art, white. The act ended in a fight.
The national coordinator of MBL, says that “what we see in practice is a single current of thought that, when minimally confronted, results in aggression and deliberate violence.”
“MBL’s actions in universities are intimidating and come from an elitist and hygienist perspective”, which is linked to PSOL.
Maia says she is against the manifesto for pluralism and academic freedom. She says that the university is not and cannot be neutral. In the student’s view, campuses should not host, for example, events organized by groups with opposing views on human rights. The manifesto, he says, gives space to apolitical thinking.
The student leader’s vision is endorsed by 700 academics in the document entitled .
Taking a more left-wing position, the text denounces the “neoliberal rationality” behind the original manifesto and a certain resentful stance. It stresses the meaning of pluralism, saying that the concept must be understood in light of the current historical period and in contact with notions such as democracy and equality.
“The entry of new groups brings new ways of thinking to the university. Students have subjects that erase their trajectories, it is necessary to create bridges. The problem is how to think about plurality. Cancellation should not be legitimized, but teachers need to deal with new rights”, says psychology professor Marco Aurélio Prado, from UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais).
One of the signatories of the counter-manifesto, he also states that the cases of silencing he is aware of involve prejudiced speech and attitudes on the part of academics.
“That manifesto serves the right, it’s like a School without a Party. When you don’t do politics, you do politics. It’s strange that Janaína Paschoal demands some kind of neutrality with all the politics she does. The university needs a DR [discussão de relacionamento]I agree with that, but not with freedom as a totalitarian value”, , professor at Unisinos and Unesa, another signatory.
UFRJ political science professor João Feres did not sign the counter-manifesto, but wrote an article to refute the original document. Initially, Feres rejects the thesis of symmetric polarization, arguing that the radicalization of the right was accompanied by the moderation of Lulism.
“The manifesto is insidious, because you understand that, for those who sign, the big threat is the identitarian left. I believe that the university today is more plural than it used to be. There were only white and middle-class people, today there are working-class people.”
As for the Uerj professor accused of elitism, she, who calls herself a communist, claims to see the university as more intolerant since Dilma’s impeachment. Today, he even says he avoids certain clothes, fearing accusations of cultural appropriation. He states that, in 15 years of profession, he has never been happy at university.
