“D.
From 1968 to date, the UNAM, Carlos Monsiváis wrote in 2004, has gone through too many contingencies (the most regrettable: the 10 months of the General Strike Council) and has faced government harassment, sectarian outbreaks, the demographic explosion, bureaucratization, neoliberal broadsides and the academic economy of self-consumption.”
“In all this time, and despite the attempts to sanctify it in order to better manipulate it, Autonomy, as a guarantee of freedom of thought and dissidence, is an indispensable element, if not the one it was before – to the extent that criticism is already a national decision -, then the one required by an institution threatened by the frailties of the budget and defended by its absolutely necessary condition in the country.” (Carlos Monsiváis, “Four versions of university autonomy”, Free LettersNovember 2004).
I bring up Carlos’s quote because as a result of the criminal aggression recorded on September 22 on the southern campus of the CCH, our National University lives immersed in a climate of uncertainty and fear, a favorable terrain for outbreaks of irrationality and anomie that are not always foreseen. The treatment of the authorities in many schools and colleges by angry youth groups indicates this.
Intimidating messages spread on social networks have been followed by anonymous notes in bathrooms and stairs warning of bombs or violent attacks on students, which has led to the take or closure of several faculties and schools. Requests are presented that range from demands for security measures to cleaning materials, to breaking off relations with Israel. In short, outbursts without a channel that usually land in the search for paternal channels symptomatic of greater pathologies that we now summarize in hasty diagnoses about our mental health.
It is certainly not the first time that our university has found itself under excessive harassment and irrationalities. Therefore, Rector Lomelí’s call to close ranks and reflect on our citizen and university commitments is entirely legitimate.
As on few occasions, it becomes urgent and even vital to make our universities hard and strong voices, not dissonant or strident, but articulated by a legitimacy that we tend to disdain from the privilege of the campus. Legitimate expressions legitimized by society that demand rational deliberation and justice.
Given the global circumstance, asking for rigor and loyalty, genuine cultivation of knowledge and respect for others is no longer an expedient, but a crucial reference aimed at strengthening the community and its institutions. Channeling the youthful authoritarian arrogance towards serene deliberations and with the desire to build productive spaces and civilizational encouragement is not an illusory mission, but rather a daily task.
Today more than ever, if possible, it is necessary to value the commitments of the State and society with the university and, beyond, with a basic education that once again experiences daily tragedies, as the scholar Gilberto Guevara has rigorously pointed out – and points out. It is not, therefore, about erecting illusionary walls, but about inscribing at the center of university work the serene and firm defense of freedoms in contexts overwhelmed by destructive polarizations.
The defense of our highest house of studies commits university students to be better: “(…) the university must contribute to providing proposals for issues such as inequality, redistributive policies, health, migration (…)”, as our rector Lomelí pointed out in an interview with Rosa Elvira Vargas and Lilian Hernández (“The tragedy at the CCH Sur marks ‘a before and after’”, The Day7/10/25). It will be in these fields where the youthful desire for solidarity creativity can unfold and never isolated in illusory ivory towers.
Hence the urgency of closing ranks in the face of confrontations subdued by an irrationality that corrodes because it shackles dialogue between equals and corners the cultivation of knowledge and knowledge that makes up the core of university work.
The so-called anti-authoritarian rudeness has become a costly encounter to the point of clouding the authentic duties of the university communities of Mexico. It is vital to recover respect for our tasks to put at the center of our anxieties and ambitions the reconstruction of a historical commitment to the cultivation of knowledge to transform our realities. This should be about.
