A covert battle is being fought these days: unfortunately, it lacks glamour and spectacle, as it involves the scientific elite, a few opinion leaders, and a handful of politicians who know something about this controversy, as well as a government that provoked it.
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It is an important battle, as it fully describes President José Antonio Kast and his anti-intellectualism, his Government, and a minister who knows a lot about technology and nothing about science. No one is unaware of her meritorious career in entrepreneurship, but to claim that she is knowledgeable about the scientific ecosystem is an abuse, and that she has been a producer of scientific knowledge is a fantasy. Different is the problem of whether she has the authority to alter the direction of scientific policy in Chile: there is no doubt, she does, which allows a clear conclusion about the absence of counterpowers in this area.
It all started with the Ministry of Science setting new priority areas for the FONDECYT program for the next postdoctoral competition, which eliminated social sciences and humanities, as well as basic sciences, in addition to the possibility that excellent foreign doctors could come to develop their postdoctoral research agendas in Chile due to a clumsy prior residency clause. I will not say that a massive criticism of this new policy was unleashed, but the Council of Rectors of Chilean universities (CRUCH) reacted strongly: it is not evident to claim, as it is a naive attitude, that the minister backtracked after a declaration of good intentions, since the truth of these matters is measured in formal policies, budgets, competitions, and final rulings. The minister may have perfectly informed the rectors that she will study the CRUCH’s objections, and in the end persist in her orientations: this is typical in governments that covertly affirm their illiberal nature.
The Chilean scientific moment is fatal.
This decision could well be prefiguring what will be the next ruling of the competitions through which research projects in the aforementioned areas are funded: if this suspicion is confirmed, not only would the prejudice that the right is not interested in social sciences or humanities, nor in basic sciences, but in applied knowledge, be verified, which was highlighted through a letter by the academic from the University of Los Andes Daniel Mansuy, who cannot be accused of being leftist or activist. Both the suspicion and the prejudice gain credibility when this government decision is related to another decision in which the budget of the Book and Reading Fund is cut by 32.2%. How not to interpret these defunding decisions in light of the presidential hostile and contemptuous judgment towards books, and the knowledge transmitted through them, for not generating any employment? President Kast was much less brutal than Milei in Argentina, recognizing that books financed by the State can be “precious” on a shelf, but are totally inefficient in terms of job creation: the libertarian president on the other side of the mountain applied the chainsaw with an unrestrained discursive stridency, without caring about the forms. The problem is that we are facing the same ecosystem: anti-intellectualist and (more evident every day) illiberal. For a while I doubted: today I am convinced, by accumulation of policies whose orientation is fatal. One could enter into a discussion about the job creation argument (knowledge production not only involves authors and creators, but also an entire intellectual and editorial infrastructure that can be measured in the number of jobs, direct and indirect), but what the Chilean government omits is the social and cultural importance of producing interpretations, explanations, and meanings about reality. Some Chilean colleagues, few, academically recognized but marginal beyond their positivist reception niches, have bought the government argument, endorsing the criticism of parasitism of social sciences and humanities: in this sense, they are not very different from far-right activists both in Chile (Axel Kaiser) and Argentina (Agustín Laje), whose publications read diagonally, transversally, or entirely (which is not worth it) do not withstand enlightened judgment. Both Kaiser and Laje have expressed their contempt for science in general, and for social sciences in particular: what sense does it make to publish in indexed journals that “nobody reads” (except the peer niches who, let’s agree, care about disseminating conquered knowledge), or to take advantage of public funding to intervene, as public intellectuals, in the struggles of their time? The difference is made by the origin of the funding and the freedom it causes: that freedom can be infinite when the entire life of Kaiser and Laje is funded by a couple of businessmen, who do not worry about whether their employees publish ideas based on verified knowledge or personal delusions. In the public scientific ecosystem, what matters is publish or perish, where publishing means being recognized by peers, under penalty of perishing. When private funding is infinite and indiscriminate, perishing is not an option.
A good part of this terrible moment for social sciences and humanities was caused by the Government of Gabriel Boric, who paved the way towards anti-intellectualism by making it possible for the University of Chile to be completely defunded regarding centers of excellence, and for a significant proportion of general research in social sciences to be defunded. Not due to anti-intellectualism, but due to negligence: it is not normal that there have been four science ministers in four years, a sign that in science matters there was neither a project nor an idea.
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