Democratizing democracy: Latin America and the university

Abstract

We take as a starting point the recent student movement in Chile and Colombia in order to demonstrate the need for reform of the university in Latin America; we distance ourselves from those who conceive the university as an enterprise and seek to modernize it within the framework of neoliberal economics. We look for an alternative from the Córdoba Manifesto of 1918, which defended the university autonomy in the political, academic, administrative and financial way; the university co-government, the opening of the university to emerging social strata and the social mission of the university, as well as other student movements. In particular we examine the idea of Humboldt University and its influence on the thinking about the modern university in the West. We conclude that a university reform that seeks to strengthen the political culture, democratization and empowerment of citizens in Latin America, should take into account those ideas of the university that marked its development in the West in the 19th century. That this idea of the university is in crisis could mean that its nature is precisely to be sensitive to the crisis both regarding individuals and society as a whole. In what terms and at what time in recent history has that crisis been identified, is secondary to the question of the development possibilities of the idea of university as a project, that we take today from the Latin American university in our social and political situation.