Brazilian Universities under Attack: From the Biopolitical Pact to the Necropopulist Moment

Abstract

Brazil has around half of Latin America's twenty-five best-ranked universities, and allof them are public. Most Brazilian public universities are also socially embedded, building knowledge in dialogue with communities, and are involved in defending human rights, social justice, and environmental sustainability. They are a fundamental part of the Brazilian biopolitical pact that has prevailed in recent decades. Brazil's new, openly authoritarian government has chosen this public university system as a central target, pursuing two courses of action: one a radical neoliberal agenda and the other an ideological war on the production of critical, social, and scientific knowledge. For this regime and its necropolitical bias, public universities are no longer necessary institutions. Nevertheless, despite allthe attacks against them, universities have acted as important institutions in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic, defending life and human rights.