Testimony as a student of the doctoral program Human Rights in Contemporary Societies (2017-2022) and postdoctoral stay at the Center for Social Studies (2023 to date)

I am a Colombian researcher and professor of law who did his doctoral studies at the Center for Social Studies. My first personal meeting with Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos was in a small debate in which I expressed my disagreement with the way of administering the scholarships assigned to students who came from countries of the global south. In my case, I lost the opportunity for a scholarship awarded by the (FCT) Foundation for Science and Technology in Portugal due to problems when validating my undergraduate degree. Professor Boaventura's attitude seemed humble and understanding to me, accepting that the realization of an alternative political and academic project such as the Center for Social Studies (CES) was mediated by forms of production and state understanding typical of the global north. Since then, I have maintained a cordial relationship with Professor Boaventura, through the exchange of e-mails in which he has always shown an interest in stimulating respectful, critical and scientifically rigorous exchange. Constantly supporting the organizational, academic and political processes, particularly those of us who come from peripheral countries.

I also had the opportunity to attend multiple lectures by the professor, all massive and ending in a "jantar", a collective dinner in which many of us were going to share good food, wine, poetry and exchange experiences with people from different backgrounds, which enriched my time in the city of Coimbra. That is why the facts described in the chapter of the book The walls spoke when no one else would, seem difficult to create, there is a portrayal of a pernicious environment that is difficult to accept for those of us who attend these invitations and even facts related to the geography of the place are narrated that are evidently imprecise, this is obvious for those of us who live in the small and cozy city of Coimbra.

Sadly, from my time as a student, I began to feel a smear campaign against Professor Boaventura, but in general against any form of "heteropatriarchal symbolic violence". However, I never managed to show that these complaints were advanced before the Portuguese legal system or that they were discussed in the academic scenarios that at that time were still open and tolerant in the CES.  I can exemplify this climate of cancellation by recalling that on one occasion, before the visit of a Spanish professor and political activist, a minority group of feminists were scandalized because the speaker had to quickly leave a panel accompanied by an indigenous academic from Guatemala. According to this group, the speaker had violated the academic by leaving her alone, showing traits of misogyny and devaluation of the role of women in the university. Now as a postdoctoral researcher I must state that this climate of moral censorship has expanded in the CES, at the same time academic research that implied an epistemic and political challenge has been relegated or made invisible because this group representing white European feminism sacralizes and purifies the "healthy academy free of gender violence" silencing the voice of other violence such as racial violence (one of the accused also happens to be one of the few non-white professors of the Academic Center.

In relation to the moral condemnation advanced against Professor Boaventura de Sousa, this seems to me precisely a condemnation and not a trial. In different academic circles, the person has been quickly canceled without due process guarantees, he has been condemned a priori through a book chapter that never mentions conclusive data that demonstrates the alleged responsibility for sexual harassment. As a human rights defender for more than fifteen years in Colombia, due process is a fundamental right in my work experience. Unfortunately it has been discarded from the beginning of the case, in fact a Colombian academic colleague has told me "after what happened with Professor Boaventura, we are all guilty until we prove otherwise in case we are accused of sexual harassment", this as a human rights defense lawyer has seemed nonsense to me and leads us to put at risk the way of conceiving the law as a guarantee system,  which would imply going back at least two centuries.

By way of conclusion, I have followed the career of Professor Boaventura de Sousa and I believe that a lifetime of academic and political commitment to the creation of a theoretical framework that highlights the knowledge and subjects of the global south are today at the crossroads. I have had the opportunity to share in the academic and cultural spaces in which acts of sexual harassment allegedly occurred, I have also maintained a cordial relationship and permanent academic and humanistic training accompanied by the teachings of maestro Boaventura.  Therefore, the teacher should have the guarantees of defense and presumption of innocence as pillars of justice and human rights. With the cancellation of Boaventura De Sousa, the legitimacy of alternative social and political movements is also undermined, replaced by groups with more limited and sectoral agendas that are not particularly involved or interested in the defense and emancipation of a more just global system.