Someone has to retract and apologize

Now that Maria Paula Meneses has sadly passed away, tributes are pouring in for a brilliant intellectual, an upright social scientist, a teacher much loved by her students, and a courageous and supportive activist. Which is what she always was. CODESRIA's testimony is irrefutable. Eloquent tributes to the Mozambican intellectual are circulating on social media, and rightly so. After all, the infamous “watchwoman” of sexual harassment, labor exploitation, and academic extractivism that was supposedly practiced at CES never existed. Público, which gave so much publicity to the “scientific” chapter, has now published an excellent eulogy that cannot but ignore the defamation that led to the destruction of MPM and two other people. Was the removal of the defamatory chapter censorship, as dozens of academics protested at the time? Or rather a just imperative?Did those academics actually read the chapter? Based on anonymous, ignoble and shameful graffiti, and on resentful and invented rumors? Didn't the “victims” who took advantage of it demand in the sixth letter the brutal condemnation, with disciplinary proceedings and eventual expulsion, of the “watchwoman” and the other two colleagues? How did the “victims” organize themselves around so many lies? Haven’t they all been telling similar stories echoing well-known episodes from #MeToo, such as Rubiales' kiss and so many well-known episodes involving Weinstein and others? Why did the authors of the “Independent Commission” remain silent in the face of so much spurious commentary on “abuse of power”? Who accused whom and how? How did Isabella Gonçalves decide, 10 years after the events, that she had been “harassed”? If MPM was not the “watchwoman” after all, it was because there was nothing to watch. Neither the “Star Professor” practiced “extractivism”, nor did the “Apprentice” learn anything, as had already been realized. How is it possible that Liselotte Viaene is now quietly working in the Department of Human Rights at the University of Ghent? Routledge wisely removed the shameful chapter. But before that, its main author had already removed it from her CV, where she had briefly included it. Why? And why did co-author Catarina Laranjeiro not sign the sixth letter, give an interview to Agência Pública, or appear on the NOW channel? Why?

Someone has to retract! CES must apologize to the real victims!

Related and recommended readings by the Editor:

1) https://codesria.org/tribute-to-maria-paula-meneses/

2) De Elísio Macamo – https://www.publico.pt/2026/02/11/mundo/opiniao/habitar-historia-2164281historia-2164281