«I'm António Branco, 52 years old, born in Angola, son of a teacher and a journalist, adopted son of the Algarve. Temporarily rector».
The new rector of the University of Algarve, who took office this Wednesday, is this and much more. A man of letters, the first to hold the position, who devoted much of his speech to social issues, internal and external financial difficulties, teachers and students, but also non-teaching staff, whose work will be "less visible". but no less important for that.
António Branco took advantage of his first intervention as Rector to launch a reflection on many issues. The crisis we are going through, the difficulties experienced by the Portuguese, the role of the Government, the pedagogical quality and the need to give new impetus to the academy were just some of the topics covered, in an eloquent text, where the artistic vein of the new leader of the UAlg.
Artistic expression is, moreover, something that has accompanied António Branco throughout his life. Music, as a performer and composer, writing, with a published book of poetry, and theater are passions he nurtured from an early age.
In music, in addition to several years of musical training, he participated twice in the Festival RTP da Canção, in 1980 and 81, with songs of which he was co-author and composer. This musical vein may well have been inherited, since the new dean of UAlg is the nephew of singer José Mário Branco, who was present at its Taking of Possession.
In theater, he is an actor, director, playwright and even founded a Lisbon theater company, the professional group Teatro do Mundo, in 1979.
All this connects to a vast professional curriculum, the result of an already long academic career, largely at the University of Algarve.
At yesterday's Inauguration, where the Minister of Education was represented by the Secretary of State for Higher Education José Gomes Ferreira, the Government and the austerity policies were the target of much criticism from successive speakers, namely the outgoing Rector João Guerreiro, the president of the General Council Luís Magalhães and the president of the Associação Académica Filipa da Silva.
The new dean was no exception and didn't wait long to “touch the wound”. Right at the beginning of his speech, he spoke about “the suffering of those who the crisis hits the most and about the contrast between the situation of those many and that of those few to whom the crisis has benefited so much”. He also referred to “the inhumanity that is coldly treating the salaries of civil servants as “a factor in the expense of the State”».
António Branco guaranteed that he will not be indifferent to the weight that the cut of 23 euros in salary will have on the budgets of many civil servants who have a "poor income of 675 euros". “I remembered what an employee of this house confessed to me a few days ago: that she had taken a leave of absence because she had no money for transportation to come to work”.
António Branco also referred to “fear”, that “paralyzing monster of individual and collective creation”. «Fear has to be banished from the academy with determination, because this is a place specially created for Man to give himself up to the exercise of reason – and reason, the reason for the fuller knowledge and experience of the Democracy that it provides, is our best weapon against fear,” he said.
There were also words for "men and women who dedicate themselves to the institution as if they were taking care of their own home", whom they like to call "caregivers", starting with those "who are less visible". In other words, “those who change a burned-out light bulb, repair a leaky faucet, clean cabinets after we leave or before we arrive”, among many others.
Finally, António Branco recalled the words of the young Pakistani victim of the repression of the Taliban Malala Yousafzai, during an intervention at the UN. “On October 9, 2012, the Taliban shot at me, hitting me on the left side of the forehead. And they also shot at my friends. They thought the bullet would silence us, but they failed. And from the silence, thousands of voices emerged. Let's get, let's get our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapon: a child, a teacher, a book and a pen can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first».
See the photographs of the Swearing in on our Facebook page.
Speech at the inauguration António Branco (in full):
UALG, December 18, 2013
I wondered a lot about what to say in this first official use of the floor as rector, before the Academy and its guests, at a ceremony in which we celebrate 34 years of the University of the Algarve and 21 years after the conclusion of its merger with the Polytechnic Institute in Faro.
In the first phase of this reflection, I went through the attempt to identify the expectations generated by my election on November 27th, some based on mistrust, others on trust and others on ignorance: what would I expect to say by all those who, legitimately, considered, of the three candidates, the least suitable for this position? And those who, with equal legitimacy, supported me in public or in private, explicitly or implicitly? And the many others who didn't or still don't have an opinion about it? And what would the students, the professors, the employees expect if I came to say? What words would the outgoing rector and rectoral team, the other members of the new rectoral team that took office by my side today, the heads of the various academic bodies, the service leaders, the regional and national authorities, the representatives from civil society, members of the media, friends?
First of all, I thought I wanted to talk to you about the suffering of all those who the crisis hits the most and about the contrast between the situation of those many and that of those few to whom the same crisis has benefited so much: because while some are impoverished, finding in In the background of this unforeseen impoverishment a shame and impotence that they did not know before, others are not ashamed to become excessively rich and to become more powerful. And I thought I wanted to talk to you about the inhumanity that is coldly treating the salaries of civil servants as a "state spending factor", thus contributing to launch a kind of curse and provoke a feeling of guilt in a social group in which, as in many others, we find the best and the worst, but it has been able to modernize itself, to put itself more and more at the service of citizens, to rethink and survive the toughest policies in memory in the domain of measures aimed at called "balance of public accounts". And I can tell you that at the University of Algarve we cannot be indifferent to the weight that, from 1 January 2014, the 23 euros and 63 cents reduction of their meager salary will have on the family budget of many civil servants. 675 euros, just to mention the lower limit of the new cut table that the recently approved State Budget Law will oblige all public bodies to apply.
And that in our assessment of what is happening, we cannot settle for what some numbers obscure: a 3,5% cut in earnings seems so little, but when we translate that percentage into 23 euros and 63 cents, we realize of another reality, this one concrete, which tells us about bread, milk, meat, fruit, medicines, electricity, in short, about the many basic subsistence products that these families will no longer be able to acquire. And that is why I tell you that we cannot be alienated from the serious shortages in which many students and University employees already live. And I remembered a recent sentence by Professor Adriano Moreira: «Hunger is not a constitutional right». And I remembered what an employee of this house confessed to me a few days ago: that she had taken a leave of absence because she didn't have money for transportation to come to work.
Then I thought I wanted to talk to you about alienation. Alienation is the state of the one who is not master of himself and which can take many forms: that of alienation, that of distraction, that of drowsiness, that of isolation, that of flight. Caused sometimes by selfishness and indifference, sometimes by the need to anesthetize an unbearable pain, sometimes by the feeling of impotence, we should be able to expel it from within the walls of the Academy, because our reason for existing is completely contrary to the slavery of spirit and life that alienation leads us to when we do not resist it.
The voice of alienation is secretly expressed through phrases we utter every day: "It's nothing to me" or "My problems are good enough for me" or "Oh yes, I've heard they're discussing it, but it's there's something about them, THEY decide" or "I can't do anything against it". And it serves as a justification for hiding when we should appear, for being silent when we should be heard, for paralyzing when we should move, making room for others to decide for us, while we retreat restedly or painfully to the a field of servitude whose only possible outcome is to become servants of our own life and the lives of others, rather than being masters. Then I remembered some verses by Antero de Quental: “Do not dispute, your whole body bent over, / The crumbs from the table of the banquet; / Rise up! And take your place at the table…».
Next, I thought I wanted to talk to you about fear, that paralyzing monster of individual and collective creation. Fear of the past or fear of the future, fear of the boss, fear of not being able, fear of deciding, fear of losing. Of objective fear, provoked by the evidence of real dangers, and of subjective fear, created by the darkest imagination.
Against fears, prudence must be opposed, which is not fearful but sensible, which is not frightened but is on the lookout, which knows that no one protects themselves by being alone. The instigators of fear, those skillful manipulators whose strength feeds on the weakness of our own fear and who rely on our objective and subjective fears to make us give up, know that fear only grows in solitude and work consciously and competently to isolate us. And I remembered, unable to avoid a smile, the rebuke that Don Quixote addressed to his squire Sancho Pança, which I quote from Aquilino Ribeiro's translation: «How can you hear and see if fear puts spiders in your eyes and ears?! One of the effects of fear is to cloud the senses and make things look much different than they really are.”
Don Quixote is right: fear must be banished from the Academy with determination, because this is a place specially created for Man to surrender to the exercise of Reason // and Reason (along with Knowledge and the fuller experience of Democracy that it provides), Reason is our best weapon against fear. But talking about fear also helps to strengthen it – which is why I decided to be brief on this point.
Later, I wanted to talk to you about words that we are in danger of losing, through disuse or abuse: "transparency", "participation", "citizenship", "democracy", "justice", "solidarity", "civilization", “ethics”, “trust”, among many others; and expressions such as "rule of law", "moral scruple", "public service", "social state". And other words and expressions that invaded the public discourse and that, whenever we do not question them seriously, make us lose the sense of reality, of people and of life, transforming them into pure abstraction: «sustainable development», «structural deficit », «seasonal employment», «societal challenge», «crisis», «adjustment», «reform», «user», «emerging problem», «strategic partner», «requalification». Those who love words so much, like me, know how they can be our worst enemies, if they serve to mask or say nothing, or to institute mechanisms of power that confirm the population's low literacy performance, in short, to exclude. As Sophia de Mello Breyner says: «With fury and rage I accuse the demagogue / Who promotes himself in the shadow of the word / And the word makes power and play / And transforms words into currency / As was done with the wheat and the earth. »
And with you I also share this excerpt from Italo Calvino:
«Sometimes it seems to me that a pestiferous epidemic has hit humanity in the faculty that most characterizes it, that is, language, a plague of language that manifests itself as a loss of cognitive strength and immediacy, as an automatism with a tendency to level the expression in the most generic, anonymous and abstract formulas, to extinguish every spark that crackles from the encounter of words with new circumstances.”
No: I will not propose the expulsion of these words and expressions from the Academy. Because all words are necessary for those who learn and those who teach and because the words are ours, they are important and they are very old. Furthermore, an education professional knows that one of his noblest missions, in matters of language and ideas, is to find, in the pedagogical relationship he establishes with students, the difficult balance between the autistic elitism of yesteryear and the impoverishing massification of today.
Then I thought: I have to talk about the strategic plan, whose definition I will start working immediately, the short, medium and long-term measures that I intend to dynamize, the reorganization of the training offer, internationalization, thematic convergence in research, the transfer of knowledge and technology for economic activity and the organic connection to the region, the delegation of competences at the various management levels, the changes that I would like to see happen in university administration, the improvement of the legibility of the budget and the financial situation in which we find ourselves , the need to conserve buildings and equipment, the indispensability of expanding the recruitment of students, the improvement of our external image, the relationships (which we want fruitful) with the Council of Rectors of Portuguese Universities and with the Coordinating Council of Polytechnic Institutes - and, of course, also the doubts that all those responsible for the u Universities and polytechnic institutes have today on the real scope of exercising the various autonomy enshrined in the Constitution and the Law. Yes, all of this is certainly important for a rector to present and explain in his first speech. But in October I wrote a long text, which I called Programa de Ação, which became public less than a month ago. And that was widely discussed in debriefing sessions. And which was submitted to the scrutiny of the General Council at the public hearing on 26 November.
I have nothing new to add, except that, as it is not a mere propaganda or electoral marketing tool, it is useful for all those who want to know the dean's thoughts on the Academy and will serve as a guide for the action of the rectory team inaugurated today and for all the proposals that it will make to the academic community, in general, and to the General Council, in particular. I've already said too much about him. Now is the time for Awakening, Rethinking and Doing – and it is no longer the time for the Dean's programmatic speech, but the time of the Academy.
Then, another theme came to me, which splits into two: my love for the University of Algarve and the strength of the Academy. Grateful love: because this University welcomed me in 1991 as a guest assistant and helped me to grow as a professor, researcher and citizen. Here I did my PhD in Literature, here I have been teaching and researching, here I did my aggregation in Arts. Here I have found new teachers and new disciples, here I have been wondering about my humanity and that of others, here I have thought, here I have helped to think. Here I was chosen for roles where I could learn a lot about management and budgets and laws and regulations and how not to let all of that make you forget the most important things.
Here I met wise and committed men and women, true examples of the academic ethics that shaped me, men and women who dedicate themselves to the institution as if they were taking care of their own home. Caregivers, as I like to call them. You will forgive me for starting today with the least visible: men and women who change a broken light bulb, repair a leaky faucet, clean cabinets after we all leave or before we all arrive, print a brochure, prepare meals in canteen kitchens, organize and stamp and file documents, schedule meetings or make a phone call, prepare data, check bills and receipts, inventory equipment, photocopy or scan, send notices, prepare and maintain computers, assist people and solve their problems, conduct and take care of vehicles; women and men who do everything to ensure the success of ceremonies like this one, who send invitations and receive guests, reserve costumes, go looking for the necessary chairs and put them on the stage, work over the weekend so that everything is ready on the date combined; women and men who match their work schedule with the institution's needs, often sacrificing their personal life. They will only be less visible if we don't see them. But they are here, because, as we all know, when something appears done, it was because someone else did it.
I speak to you now of our strength. At the beginning of this ceremony, they were able to watch the parade of the academic procession to the sound of a choir that sang the following words in Latin: Vivat Academia! Vivant teachers! Vivat membrum quodlibet! Vivant member quaelibet! (Long live the Academy! Long live the teachers! Long live each student! Long live all the students!). Many do not like the academic procession, because they recognize in it traits of arrogance and authoritarianism typical of medieval scholasticism that the dictatorship took advantage of and preserved so well. Others, for only seeing in it a kind of display of ankylosed knowledge of the Academy. It is true that all this can be seen when watching the passing of the academic procession. However, not forgetting all this (because History is one of my companions), I would now like to draw attention to other important meanings of the academic procession. A procession is an organized solemn march. In this way, the procession ritualizes the dimension of the Academy in which it is a response to Chaos, while opening up a non-mundane time in everyday space. This other time is the time of Janus, a Roman god whose head is formed by two faces: one that does not take its eyes off the distant past and the other with its eyes fixed on the distant future. The procession reminds us all that, despite the fact that we are only 34 years old at the University of the Algarve, what we do here is very old, comes from very far and goes far away. The procession, in which teachers come to bear witness to society of their primary mission, reminds us that we are just a moment in a very ancient historical continuum that will survive far beyond us.
It began on that day lost in the times when, for the first time, a human being realized that it was necessary to pass on to the next generation the experience and knowledge that «labor, work and action», as Hannah Arendt would say, had given them. On that distant day, tens of thousands of years ago, this human being began one of the most beautiful and noblest activities in Humanity: Education.
Everything we do and everything we think at the Academy finds its meaning in the classroom, a word that in ancient Greek meant "free space". We are a School, in the etymological sense of the word: a vital space where the active and intense experience of discussion between teacher and students is practiced, free from external pressures.
We plan, investigate, budget, inventory, invoice, stamp, file, print, authorize, clean, tidy, celebrate in the name of this and for this: so that the meeting between teachers and students takes place in the best possible conditions. That is why it is the students who sing as the teachers of the procession pass: they sing the joy of that meeting. That's why the students are the nucleus, and we, all of us, are the caregivers.
And every time a student takes seriously their mission to learn – which means asking, always asking, not conforming to ignorance, not giving up on wanting to understand –; every time a teacher takes seriously his mission of teaching - which also means asking, to raise questions and more questions and more questions, not conforming to the lack of knowledge of his students, not giving up on giving them the means for them to understand more and more – each time this happens, a force is generated that no other can defeat: the force of the commitment to teaching that we assume with society. Therefore, it is an understatement to say that we prepare young people for the job market. Yes, we do, but it's much more than that. Therefore, it is an understatement to say that we transmit techniques and knowledge. Yes, we do, but it's much more than that.
It is no coincidence that the classroom is one of the most dangerous spaces for authoritarian powers: because the strength of Education, the strength that results from men asking themselves questions, the strength that results from men wanting to know more, wanting to understand better, wanting , in short, taking charge of your life, this force is frighteningly powerful. It's the opposite of what the song says: “to be a slave you have to study”, because a young person doesn't study just to get a job, but to become freer. This was discovered by Malala Yousafzai, the sixteen-year-old Pakistani girl who uttered the following words at the UN:
“On October 9, 2012, the Taliban shot at me, hitting me on the left side of the forehead. And they also shot at my friends. They thought the bullet would silence us, but they failed. And from the silence, thousands of voices emerged. Let's get, let's get our books and our pens. They are our most powerful weapon: a child, a teacher, a book and a pen can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first.”
I'm António Branco, 52 years old, born in Angola, son of a teacher and a journalist, adopted son of the Algarve, teacher. Temporarily dean. Count on it from me, for UALG and the rest.
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