Students at PUC Rio accuse professor of racism and persecution against students

The Central Directory of Students of the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (DCE-PUC Rio) accuses a university professor of bullying, persecution and racism against black and indigenous students.

An open letter, signed by the entire class of the Master’s course in Social Sciences and by university entities was published this Wednesday (15th). In June of this year, students had already reported the professor’s behavior to the faculty, but according to the students themselves, so far, six months later, no action had been taken.

This Wednesday (15), after the letter was released, the Department of the Social Sciences course issued a statement stating that it was surprised by the document, and that, in their opinion, “an unpleasant episode of conflict in the classroom turned into a public denunciation. class, originally raised by a questioning made by students, the absence of black authors and authors.”

“From the beginning, the Faculty of the Department of Social Sciences understood that the debate raised by this episode should be held not as a personal and punctual issue, but as an institutional issue, compatible with the understanding that the logic of racism is structural and persistent.”, they state in a note.

Luísa Tavares, a student in the master’s program at PUC-Rio and one of the students in the master’s class, stated that she was embarrassed and persecuted by the professor. Given the lack of attitude from the university, Luísa hired a lawyer and will file, this Thursday (16), a request to open an administrative proceeding against the professor.

“May 27th was the trigger for something that had already been happening throughout the semester. There were already moments of stress, with this teacher, during classes. Not only with me, but with other black and indigenous students. To me, he directed acid comments when I was going to comment something and interact in class. He once said that it was a class on Brazilian political thinking and not on racial thinking.”, says the student.

Luísa’s lawyer, Bruno Cândido, stated that he will require the participation of social movements to compose and monitor the process, as the internal regulations of PUC Rio allow this movement.

“Since racism is a non-prescriptive crime and expands in its interpretation into other historical forms of subordination, we intend to offer the authorities a report of all discriminatory aggressions that are reported to us”, says the lawyer.

Racism not Brazil

Data from the Ministry of Human Rights show that up to November this year, 1,129 complaints of racial discrimination had been filed in Brazil. São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais are the states with the highest number of cases. Throughout 2021, November was the month with the highest number of complaints, 133. Most victims, 71.48%, are female. Most of the perpetrators of discrimination are male, 45.96%. 35.05% are female and 18.99% are unidentified.

On October 28 of this year, the Federal Supreme Court equated the crime of racial injury with the crime of racism, and it is now imprescriptible. That is, no matter when the crime was committed, it will still be subject to denunciation and punishment by justice.

*Under supervision of Helena Vieira

Reference: CNN Brasil

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