The 
Weiser 
Center 
for 
Emerging Democracies hosted a 
panel on Wednesday discussing 
the 
state 
of 
Brazil 
under 
President Jair Bolsonaro and 
reflecting on how his rule has 
impacted higher education in 
the country. 
About 45 students, faculty and 
community members attended 
the event, which consisted of 
presentations and a question-
and-answer 
session 
from 
three professors and historical 
professionals. Benjamin Lessing, 
assistant professor of political 
science at the University of 
Chicago, 
highlighted 
the 
politics of crime and violence 
in 
Brazil, 
while 
WCED 
Postdoctoral 
Fellow 
Marília 

Corrêa spoke on the history of 
Brazilian military dictatorship. 
Guilherme Casarões, lecturer 
in international relations at the 
Fundação Getúlio Vargas São 
Paulo Business School, focused 
on how Bolsonaro has reshaped 
Brazil’s national identity. 
Brazilians elected Bolsonaro, 
a 
far-right 
politician, 
as 
president in October 2018 after 
a controversial and polarizing 
political race. Since his election 
into 
office, 
Bolsonaro 
has 
angered many Brazilian citizens 
and people across the globe with 
his contentious policies. In a 
video address, he threatened 
jailing 
and 
banishing 
his 
political opponents, and in an 
executive order, he undermined 
the rights of indigenous people 
and the LGBTQ community.
Panelists 
discussed 
the 
controversies 
surrounding 

Bolsonaro 
with 
his 
administration’s 
attacks 
on the press, loosening of 
environmental protections and 
cuts to education spending.
Panelist Casarões described 
the corruption present in the 
Brazillian cabinet, especially 
due to Olavo de Carvalho, self-
described Brazilian philosopher, 
and his strong influence on 
Bolsonaro’s administration. 
“The most important feature 
of Bolsonaro’s narrative and 
Carvalho’s 
role 
in 
shaping 
Bolsonaro’s narrative is the fact 
that he was able to appoint a 
number of different people to 
Bolsonaro’s cabinet,” Casarões 
said. “So it called people’s 
attention when the government 
was being formed that Carvalho 
was able to appoint at least three 
ministers out of 24 ministers 
in Bolsonaro’s cabinet, even 
though Carvalho had no 
vote at all.”
Casarões 
described 
how one of the positions 
Carvalho appointed was 
the Minister of Education 
Abraham 
Weintraub. 
Three 
of 
Carvalho’s 
former 
students 
are 
also 
in 
Bolsonaro’s 
administration, 
filling crucial roles in 
international 
affairs 
and 
foreign 
relations. 
Bolsonaro’s sons hold two 
of these three positions. 
Many 
have 
been 
angered by the corruption 
within 
Bolsonaro’s 
administration, especially 
in regard to the lack of 
focus on higher education. 
In May, tens of thousands 
of 
students, 
teachers 
and academics stormed 
the streets of São Paulo, 
protesting the Ministry of 
Education’s plan to cut 30 
percent of the funds to the 
discretionary 
expenses 
budget 
for 
universities 
in Brazil. This freeze is 
equivalent to over $1.8 

billion of Brazil’s education 
budget. 
In April, Bolsonaro tweeted 
a 
tweet 
which 
originally 
appeared in Portoguese, stating 
that the Minister of Education 
planned on reducing investment 
in sociology and philosophy 
courses in order to “focus on 
areas that generate immediate 
return to the taxpayer,” like 
engineering and medicine. 
Lessing 
described 
the 
disorder present within the 
Brazilian education system and 
the issues with Bolsonaro’s lack 
of emphasis on the humanities.
“To me, a huge risk that we 
haven’t talked about yet is what 
I see as an attack on the federal 
university system in Brazil,” 
Lessing said. “The attack on 
higher 
education 
— 
which 
(Bolsonaro) sees as infiltrated 
by communism and basically in 
need of flushing out — it’s really 
trying to create chaos within the 
federal university system and 
it’s kind of a vision of you don’t 
need humanities, you don’t need 
social sciences, you just need 
technical education.”
As a Brazillian herself, Corrêa 
described her hesitation with 
teaching in Brazil in the midst 
of the unsupportive education 
system promoted by Bolsonaro.
“So for me particularly, I am 
Brazilian and people often ask 
me if I want to go back to Brazil 
to teach there, but right now, as 
one of the speakers spoke just 
a little bit ago, the Bolsonaro 
government has been kind of 
moving against the university 
system there,” Corrêa said. 
“They have been cutting costs, 
so we’re actually seeing brains 
leaving Brazil to go elsewhere 
in the world that value what 
they’re doing... it’s a really hard 
time right now for the research, 
in the sciences too but especially 
in the humanities.”

SCIE NCE IS COOL 

2A — Thursday, October 3, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
MICHAEL BAGAZINSKI/Daily
Laura Johnson of Case Western Reserve University discusses the impact of massive spin-2 gravitons on a multitude of spacetimes including de 
Sitter, anti-de Sitter and flat space as a part of the HET Brown Bag Seminars in Randall Laboratory Wednesday afternoon. 

PARNIA MAZHAR
Daily Staff Reporter

Historians, political scientists examine Jair Bolsonaro’s effect on higher education in country

Panel discussion looks at impact 
of Brazil’s right-wing president

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