The Civil Death of Boaventura de Sousa Santos. By Maria Irene Ramalho

It all started with the publication of the article “The walls spoke when no one else would: Autoethnographic notes on sexual-power gatekeeping within avant-garde academia,” by Lieselotte Viaene, Catarina Laranjeiro, and Miye Nadya Tom, one of the chapters of Sexual Misconduct in Academia: Informing and Ethics of Care in the University, ed. Erin Pritchard and Delyth Edwards (London: Routledge, 2023).

Was this a scientific article about harassment in academia? Or was it a pamphlet written in bad faith with a sordid and obvious goal? To destroy CES. To do so, it would have to destroy its Director Emeritus (as stated on p. 222 of the defamatory chapter).

Gay Seidman (Sociologist, University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Linda Gordon (Historian, New York University) are two distinguished feminist social scientists who know and admire the work that CES has developed under the leadership of Boaventura de Sousa Santos. The flagrant lack of scientific ethics in the chapter signed by Viaene, Larangeiro, and Tom, full of accusations based on rumors and anonymous graffiti, outraged them and led them to send a letter to Routledge denouncing it, hoping for an appropriate response from the publisher. Routledge responded promptly, thanking them for bringing it to their attention. What Seidman and Gordon's comments failed to do was to fully expose the bad faith with which the chapter is written and the purpose that motivated it. This is what the following critical analysis does, clearly showing the insidious choice of bibliography used by the authors and their biased reading of it. The chapter reveals more than just a lack of academic ethics. Pretending to be scientific in a reputable publisher, the chapter is anything but scientific. Why it passed the editorial review process remains to be seen. The title should have immediately alerted the peer reviewers. What did the “walls say” after all? That the “Star Professor” (Boaventura de Sousa Santos) is a “rapist.” The three authors of the chapter should have been immediately prosecuted by CES, which should also have immediately questioned Routledge about this publication. Why this did not happen is a matter that still needs clarification.

The authors admit that they took the designation “Star Professor” from an article by journalist Esther Wang, published inJezebel, an American magazine specializing in political and sexual scandals, about the well-known case of Avital Ronell, a professor of Comparative Literature at New York University, who was proven to have sexually harassed one of her students over a prolonged period of time.

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