Ambivalent Liberalism: Socialist Students and Academic Freedom in Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

• In Event: 30468 - Interrogating the Relationship between Politics and Culture

Abstract

Socialist projects in Latin America have a complex relationship with academic freedom. On the one hand, liberalism in terms of checks and balances, rights and liberties, and nonpartisan state institutions is generally thought of as anathema to socialist projects that seek the integration of state and society. On the other hand, over the past 150 years, academic freedom has been at the center of struggles for democracy and a central tenant of Latin American liberal discourse, but also as the preeminent space for leftist and Marxist organizing. Our study of Chavismo and socialist student supporters in Venezuela reveal elements of this tension. The socialist student activists we interviewed showed ambivalence toward both liberalism as a broad concept and academic freedom in its concrete instantiation in Venezuela. On the one hand, most of our socialist students embraced liberalism as an historically important ideal, as well as academic freedom. On the other hand, they argued that Venezuela’s autonomous public universities were not spaces of open debate but rather actively marginalized and repressed leftist ideas. They suggested autonomous public universities basically served to educate privileged young people and serve the needs of capital. Our socialist respondents tended to believe in open spaces of research, teaching and debate as long as they were “constructive” and well-intentioned, and preferably in line with the societal and national goals. A control group of non-socialist student activists did show a more robust embrace of liberalism and academic freedom. We suggest that our socialist students understand socialism more as a rejection of the inequality and obstacles they have faced than a wholesale rejection of liberalism.

Authors

• David A. Smilde, Tulane University

• Hugo Perez, Biblioteca Pública de León