Academic Collapse in Argentine Culture-A Hundred Scholars wrote a letter to Kirchner

To the President of the Argentine Republic

Dr. Néstor Kirchner



Dear Mr. President



The undersigned, artists, professors, researchers and scholars, from
different corners of the world, thanks to our Argentine colleagues, have
become acquainted with the critical situation which cultural institutions
in Argentina are going through.

For this reason, and based on four main documents deeply committed
with world culture and with a transparent and credible international
scientific community, we would like to ask you to consider a new
hierarchical organization of the Argentine cultural institutions (the
World Music Charter, Zone Franche, 2001,
www.zonefranche.com/pdf/CharteAnglais.pdf;
the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences
and Humanities, Max Planck Society, 2003,
www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html; the
Declaration of Bucharest about values and ethical principles,
UNESCO-CEPES, 2004;
www.cepes.ro/September/French/declaration.htm; and The
International Researcher´s Charter for Knowledge Societies,
IAMCR, 2005, www.petitiononline.com/iamcr/).

The facts and arguments leading us to this presentation, in solidarity
with our Argentine colleagues, are motivated on a series of shortfalls,
vice and symbolic violence which are publicly and globally known by
simply checking several sources of information, herein quoted through
multiple links, making it difficult for professionals to denounce them
within the country, and are listed as follows:

Degradation of Scientific and Cultural institutions

The increasing degradation of the artistic and scientific institutions
arises in part from these agencies not being hierarchically honored. This
sad situation could be reverted if the artistic and scientific
institutions are ennobled by giving them ministry status (like in Brazil,
http://www.cultura.gov.br), submitting the appointment of its authorities
to public competition with standing and independent judges, observing
the periodicity of their positions, and raising the nominations to
parliamentary hearings and control. Moreover, these appointments
should be supervised and evaluated by continental and international
auditors, without compromising national sovereignty.


Brain Drain

The anti-democratic mechanisms of appointment, evaluation, and
qualification of the national artistic and scientific bodies currently in
effect in Argentina and many other countries of Latin America, are
feeding illegitimate situations that lead to a state of deterioration and
obsolescence, detrimental to what should be modern, autonomous,
competitive and meritocratic institutions.

This regrettable circumstance happens when the idea flourishes that
people consume only goods and that the spiritual well being belongs
exclusively to elitist minorities. It also happens when the institutions
that accommodate the cultural patrimony do not invest in patterns of
excellence, capability and quality; or in the search, discovery and
dialogue between cultures and disciplines that could lead to true
advances or innovations, and not mere imitations.

This increasing deterioration, which also disseminates into higher
educational levels, causes profound uneasiness, and a cultural
backwardness that encourages unrestrained brain drain. This drain
does not only respond to economic motives, but essentially to
cultural and symbolic ones
(http://www.alternet.org/globalaffairs/13148).

Subordination to Geopolitics of Knowledge

This deterioration has nourished a cultural provincialism and an
ideological subordination to a geopolitics of knowledge and culture,
which undermines the incorporation of strategic fields from art,
science and humanities
(http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/argentina/falda-del-carmen.htm),
banning research and creativity as well as producing a digital regression
of modern methods and techniques; all of which has further deepened the
technological, scientific and humanistic prevailing gap with regard to
institutions of developed countries.

Lack of Electronic Transparency

The Argentine artistic and scientific system, which survives isolated and
fragmented, and whose actions have been assimilated to public
administrative routines, is used to surrendering to ritual simulations of
periodical artistic and scientific reports, which are neither published
nor otherwise made public.

The fact that these reports remain unpublished for years might have been
violating not only the principles about the publicity of official
documents but also the free access paradigm of information and
knowledge exchange, by preventing the local and foreign colleagues the
right -assigned by the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge
in the Sciences and Humanities (Max Planck Society, 2003)-- to
ascertain electronically their intellectual quality, as well as their
honesty and seriousness
(http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html). Thus,
it would be reasonable to assume the existence of numerous violations of
ethical codes.

Obstacles to Verify Scientific Frauds

Because of lack of electronic transparency of unpublished academic
production, abuse of confidential procedures and lack of appropriate
mechanisms to denounce fraud --which anybody can check visiting
Argentine official websites
(http://www.secyt.gov.ar; http://www.cultura.gov.ar;
and http://www.conicet.gov.ar/)-- evidences of scientific fakes or
uncontrolled results are very difficult to detect and reveal, and
therefore an external verification of Argentine public academic
institutions is full of obstacles extremely hard to overcome
(http://www.lafogata.org/04arg/arg8/art6.htm).

Besides the lack of electronic transparency, reports lack also linguistic
or semantic transparency because they happened to be extremely
hermetic ".to purposefully encrypt morally suspect information", often
lacking abstracts written for non-specialists, as a support to the
technical report, that only very few experts can follow.
Potential Artistic and Scientific Hoax


Thus, hidden behind the lack of electronic transparency and covered
by an hermetic jargon and an abuse of confidentiality in administrative
procedures, in an uncertain number of reports, its sources or data might
have been distorted, adulterated or falsified, and its methods and
conclusions do not fulfill a scientific truth or an artistic excellence.


It is also suspected that some reports might have been plagiarized,
produced through evil acts and/or simply constructed out of thin air. As
no system-wide control or checks and balances of these values exist,
violations are prone to multiply, with even cases of fraud occurring,
without its authors ever being investigated, or judicially prosecuted.


Low Ethical and Electronic Standards

Individual researchers and artists are not only morally responsible to
the research and representation process -selection of topics and
methods, and the integrity of creativity or research-but also to its final
results. According to the Declaration of Bucharest (2004) all scholars,
artists and scientists alike, should ".commit themselves to high ethical
standards and a code of ethics based on relevant norms enshrined in
international human rights instruments should be established for
scientific professions". The social responsibility of artists and
scientists requires that ".they maintain high standards of integrity and
quality control, share their knowledge, communicate with the public and
educate the younger generation"
(http://www.cepes.ro/September/French/declaration.htm.).

In that same ethical line, The International Researcher´s Charter for
Knowledge Societies (IAMCR, 2005) established that authorities should
promote ".open, collaborative and self-organizing publishing models and
software development methods that are accessible to researchers and
available in not-for-profit databases, libraries and archives; thereby
supporting researchers as content producers and as active participants in
the open access paradigm of knowledge creation and exchange"
(http://www.petitiononline.com/iamcr).

Decline in Quality in the Artistic and Scientific Competitiveness and
Productivity

The jurisdictional decline in quality, the geopolitical censorship and
curtailment, and the ethical and bureaucratic corrosion and decomposition
create a situation in which Argentine competitiveness in the
international ranks radically diminishes; local artistic creativity and
scientific productivity erodes; patented innovation abroad decreases; and
royalties which should accrue to national institutions simply disappears
(http://hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52579).

Hidden Authoritarian Factionalism

All these anomalies, anachronisms and obstacles such as the institutional
decline in quality, the geopolitical censorship or curtailment and the
academic corruption made possible a situation in which artistic,
scientific and higher educational institutions have become overwhelmed
by a hidden authoritarian factionalism totally devoid of any sign of
meritocracy, transparency and fair competition
(http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v12n6/).

In its place a policy of "pulling strings" and of awards, punishments and
personal vendettas; a hidden discourse of discrimination, destined to
silence critical opinions and supress dissidents; and obscurantist habits
inherited from different authoritarian regimes, that have cost the
Argentine people, in its recent past, numerous losses of their more
precious artists and scientists who disappeared in the fog of torture and
extermination
(http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/universidad/index-2003-11-26.html)



Illegitimate Symbolic Violence

The perversions of the cultural system (devaluations, censorships and
covering ups) have uncovered the phantom of an illegitimate symbolic
violence, that is to say. an ideological control and the mechanisms of
exclusion (discrimination, proscription, postponement and reprisal), that
without producing physical death continues castrating the soul and the
mind of what should be an independent intellectual community
(http://quebec.indymedia.org/en/node/23503).



Feeding of Violence and the Following Institutional Devaluation


This illegitimate apparatus of symbolic violence --which hinders the
dispersion of its captive clientele-- generating misconduct of different
kinds abets the silence and consent to anachronistic superposition by state
institutions; ignores the decline in quality production and the
fragmentation of artistic and scientific common spaces; censors or
curtails the editorial information and production; and silences the
abandonment, desolation and decomposition of institutions dear to
Argentine culture, such as CONICET, National Library, Colon Theatre,
National Archive, National Academies, National Museums (Natural
Science Bernardino Rivadavia, Miguel Lillo, Bellas Artes, etc), and
National Universities
(http://www.simon-bolivar.org/bolivar/un_barrio_para_ba.html).



Finally, we wish to confirm that no constructive or lasting policy could
be successfully implemented if in the agencies of art, science, research
and higher education, practices and habits do not have their organization
chart restructured in a way that would eliminate the corruption,
falsifying, genuflective behavior, opportunism, moral indifference and,
what is more serious and lethal, the self-censorship or fear to express
oneself freely.

Yours truly,

Sincerely,



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