Rector of UFSB resigns and complains about the dismantling of the university.

Bahia 247 - In a letter released this Monday (2), the rector of the Federal University of Southern Bahia, Professor Naomar de Almeida Filho, requested his resignation from the position and complains about attempts to dismantle the university. In the letter, Almeida Filho also complains about the budget cuts promoted in federal universities by the Temer government.

Read the full letter: 
I am addressing not only students, technical-administrative staff, and faculty, but I also include in the UFSB community members of society, representatives of social movements, students' families, political leaders, supporters, and partners of our institution. Today I informed the University Council of my resignation from the position of Pro-Tempore Rector of this University. I am writing this open letter to explain the circumstances of this act. First, I will give a brief summary of the background. I assumed the Rectorship of UFSB in 2013. I invited collaborators from my time as Rector of UFBA to form the first management team. Together, we conceived its political-institutional project, drafted the Founding Charter and the Guiding Plan, conducted a survey of the territory, discussed the proposed model with the regional community, recruited the first groups of redistributed faculty, and conducted the first competitive examinations for faculty and technical-administrative staff. 

Reiterating the management style with which I led the rectorship at UFBA, I focused on conceptual, political, and pedagogical aspects, delegating the administrative dimension, particularly the day-to-day management and human resources management, to other leaders. In four years, despite the adverse context, we implemented a university model that was innovative in many aspects: broad territorial coverage through the creation of a network of university colleges, a multi-shift, four-month academic year system, a flexible curriculum model in training cycles, strongly integrated with basic education, based on active pedagogies mediated by digital technologies. Furthermore, the social integration model we practiced sought to promote broad ethnic and social inclusion, respect for the diversity of knowledge, and the engagement of society in institutional governance, with effective political representation in the university's advisory and deliberative bodies.  

From 2015 onwards, facing the worsening political crisis and subsequent reduction in funding for Brazilian public universities, we suffered profound internal strain, intensified by the suspension of new federal recruitment processes, fostering uncertainty and anxiety within the university community. Nevertheless, we honored our commitment to the population of southern Bahia by welcoming the same number of students annually since the beginning of our activities. Also in that year, mobilizing more than three thousand participants from all social segments, we managed to hold the most significant event in our short history, the 1st Social Forum of Southern Bahia, which elected the Social Strategic Council of UFSB. 

The following year, we started postgraduate courses and maintained the availability of undergraduate places, prioritizing University Colleges. Thus, we consolidated interdisciplinary teaching degrees and implemented the first Integrated Education Complexes, a key adjustment to our original project. By prioritizing the University's social mission, promoting the leading role of social councils at all levels, and maintaining open undergraduate places – made possible by the great dedication of a segment of faculty, administrators, and staff – we clearly defined the direction of UFSB as a socially referenced university. Acts of hostility and aggression, initially concentrated in a small group, began to appear in our daily lives, mirroring the deterioration of the national political environment. 

Actions of blatant sabotage, including from within the management team, created obstacles to our social integration agenda. This movement managed, for example, to cancel the UFSB General Congress scheduled for last year (making the II Social Forum this year unfeasible), in addition to boycotting both curricular innovations with greater inclusive potential and the articulation with basic education. After the election of the deans of the university units was concluded, I took the initiative to recover the deliberative agenda that was blocked, resolving more than two-thirds of the identified pending issues. At that moment, members of the management team revealed their detachment from the political-institutional orientation of the project. Some of these actions revealed opportunism, threatening to destabilize the university's management and compromising the very institutional viability of the UFSB project. In the context of defining the selection rules for the second cycle, a member of the central administration, without prior knowledge and evaluation by the management team, proposed granting all students currently enrolled in the BI-Health program access to the Medicine course, in a phased manner.

The basic premise of this proposal is the cancellation of admissions to the BI-Health program for six consecutive years, starting with the next selection process. In fact, the proposal delays and reduces the number of places offered in the second cycle for the classes following 2014, particularly harming the cohorts of students who entered the BI-Health program between 2015 and 2017. In 2018, after the admission of the 57 unclassified students from the previous year, only 23 places will remain for the graduating class of 2016. Maintaining the level of 80 places offered, note, in red, the annual deficit caused by the staggered admission in subsequent years of those who did not qualify in the selection process of their respective year of completion of the first cycle. The deficit grows proportionally, favoring the few who entered first and harming those who would join later. In the case in question, with the increase in the entry class for the BI program, entry for the 2015.2 class would be cancelled as early as 2019, resulting in a deficit of almost 100 places.

In this proposal, the last students of the 2017.2 class would only enter the Medicine course in 2026, nine years later. Therefore, this proposal will inflict severe damage on the UFSB project and the university's pedagogical model and, by extension, on the movement for the promotion of health, the SUS (Brazilian Unified Health System), the political project of a socially inclusive university, and public higher education. Furthermore, it confronts central points of the UFSB's teaching-learning model. In this respect, crucial values ​​capable of generating formative effects of the utmost importance for the field of Health stand out: political responsibility, social commitment, autonomy, honesty, and above all, ethics. In short, the proposal in question is a blatant disregard for the logic of the planning previously agreed upon at the university, and could result in a great deception, creating problems that are difficult to solve. Still believing in human nature, I hope that it was merely an impulsive act, with the good intention of effectively resolving dilemmas and meeting the demands of our brave and engaged student body. 

However, the launch of this proposal as a matter of opportunity reveals a serious issue of responsibility, perhaps explainable by the current context of our university, which is grappling with an internal crisis fueled by intrigues and maneuvers. Dissatisfaction, anxiety, resentment, unhappiness, displacement, and projections are being mobilized, fostering an environment of hatred, hostility, misunderstanding, and rancor. Furthermore, the sequence of events that generated this situation needs to be understood on a micro-political level. Last week, an electoral process was opened for the first Rectorship. This process has a mere appearance of legality, but it is clearly illegitimate. Restricted to the segments that conventionally comprise the university community—faculty, staff, and students—by excluding society from the territory as a fourth actor in the processes of choosing leaders, the process confronts the principles and values ​​of the UFSB's Founding Charter. 

And it only has a shell of legality, perhaps a camouflage, because it does not follow the rules and norms of the high-intensity democracy that we have been trying so hard to consolidate in the institution; it does not follow the University Statute nor the norms of the Social Strategic Council approved by the University Council. What kind of politics are those who promote this coup practicing? Certainly the lowest level, incompatible with the dignity of the millennial institution of the University. What is the difference between this and the tragic, lamentable and shameful political crisis in the country, after the sad spectacle of an unjust presidential impeachment, although protected by the mantle of legality? A process said to be democratic, because its actors were elected by popular vote? Since when does democracy dispense with ethics? Do nefarious ends justify the methods of betrayal? Rotten means for even worse ends? It saddens me greatly to see the serious negative impact of the political culture installed in the country: negotiation of positions, vote buying, influence peddling, corruption that is not only done with suitcases of money; Positions, favors, and privileges also serve as efficient bargaining chips. Is our educational institution far removed from this reality? Do acts of this nature, favoritism and shady deals, not occur on university campuses?

What pedagogical effects will acts of opportunism, ambition, and dishonesty have on our students and on society at this institution? Will they dismantle a counter-hegemonic project for a critical, popular, transformative university? Will they deconstruct a proposal because it deeply bothers those who want the bare minimum, those who intend to remain in their comfort zone and do more of the same? 4 When presenting the UFSB project in various national and international forums and hearings, I was frequently asked about the political viability of a project like ours, since similar proposals were harshly repressed on two occasions in Brazilian history. I was also questioned about how it would be possible to build something new with people trained in old practices, with outdated mental frameworks. I believe the answers I gave were misguided. Regarding the first question, I said: it's not the same moment anymore; the Anísio Teixeira projects faced dictatorships; today Brazil is different, we are a democracy that is consolidating itself every day.

Regarding the second point, I said and repeated: fortunately, our team includes honest people loyal to the project. We have a cohesive and faithful management group; we have nothing to fear. In just three years, the scenario has completely changed, because in the national context we are experiencing a clear political regression, bordering on social fascism, and in the local context we have suffered a hard blow, disguised as legalism. To the leaders who seek an individual project, articulated with a furious opposition, people who express hatred and engage in moral harassment, filling my inbox with messages, go ahead. Make your devious, surreptitious, and underhanded moves, political moves with rigged cards and pre-arranged agreements, with signs of treacherous conspiracy so evident that you don't need much life experience to detect them, even in this scenario. Since things are as they are, go ahead and see how far you can get, what you intend to destroy, and whom you can deceive. If the intention is to remove this public servant from office while he is temporarily in charge of a management role, there's no need to expend so much energy, engage in so much conspiracy, or play so many shadowy games. 

It's simple: the Rector's dismissal solves everything… I would like to quote Mr. Joelson Ferreira, a farmer, leader of the rural settlers, and representative of the Social Strategic Council in the UFSB University Council. It's a pity he's absent from this Council at this moment. Joelson has said that there's a lack of greatness in this internal struggle, this fight against the institution, lamenting that petty politics manifests itself in the smallness of conflicts that weaken and divide those who should be engaged in larger social struggles. And again, Joelson warns us that this university does not belong to us, it is not the property of faculty, staff, or even students. It is an asset of the suffering people of the territory that shelters and inspires us, especially those who are not within it. For this reason, and for so many other historical and political reasons, I advocate and defend intense social participation in the institutional governance of public institutions, especially in universities that, like ours, are defined by the broad democratization of their processes and the greatness of their mission. I am concluding this communication.

Notice that this is a thoughtful, considered, and thoughtful speech, but with emotion. I intended to show that many dedicate themselves to diminishing what we have done, without awareness of the greatness of this project, of what our University can represent for the disadvantaged population that needs education for its political liberation. We are all responsible for our actions, because history is there to judge us; sometimes it takes time, but it rarely fails. Two colleagues whom I greatly value, Álamo Pimentel and Fabiana Lima, often get emotional when talking about UFSB; I have heard them say several times that we are making history. I would like to reflect that, in addition to making history, our political practice also obliges us to write history, with acts and facts, and not as fiction. Society knows well who its interlocutors are, who to ask about what is happening at UFSB. Some of us are interlocutors of greater credibility and, therefore, are more often asked to produce narratives that will resonate, become memory, and be duly recorded. 

I am ready to tell and record this story. In this career as a professor, so rewarding and passionate, which is built on the constant recreation of this institution called the university, narrating is a task for those who have retired, those who are emeritus, those who in Brazil are called retirees, who are responsible for recording the memories that resonate and become history. In this meeting of the University Council, I reported on the institutional negotiations that, in recent days, resulted in the guarantee of the release of the entire 2017 budget and new positions for civil service and faculty recruitment. I also presented a report on the process of recovering the agenda items, mentioned above. The report is completed with my letter of resignation, already sent to the Ministry of Education. In this letter, I indicate the closing of a four-year cycle of contribution and express my feeling of mission accomplished.

I will not explicitly state the institution's internal problems, but I want to make clear the unilateral nature of this decision, as it does not concern a position placed at the disposal of the authority that appointed me. This letter was discussed with my closest management team, when we forged a pact for governability so that this dismissal would not harm the institution. I would like to conclude by stating that I am making this decision without resentment, without bitterness, with the firm desire that our young institution grows and achieves everything we dream for it. I remain at UFSB, during this time in my career, to consolidate some ongoing projects, collaborating in any way I can to enhance our institution. I thank everyone who has helped build what we have done best. I bid you farewell with hopeful, university-affiliated greetings.