Education and science under attack by AMLO’s government

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has criticised various institutions of higher education in the country on at least eight occasions, describing them as “neoliberal” or “right-wing”, reports The Yucatan Times.

Specialists consulted by La Silla Rota expressed their concern about what is happening in Mexican academia, which constantly has to defend itself from the attacks of the government, one that also does not offer them a strategy to solve the problems they face. The first criticism, launched on AMLO’s morning show on 21 October, was against the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), when, speaking of what past administrations did, the president assured that the institution “lost its essence and became neoliberal”. López Obrador also questioned if the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE) was “as right-wing as the UNAM”, and answered in the affirmative.

Alma Maldonado, a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (CINVESTAV), said: “Now we have to spend a lot of time defending ourselves.” She said that since the first days of government, there has been a discursive attack on higher education institutions and research centres, arguing “that if we are privileged, we do not address national problems, etcetera”.
Full report on The Yucatan Times site