Dr. Augusto Raúl Paulino, Judge of the Supreme Court of Mozambique, retired.
The accusations of sexual and moral harassment against Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos and some members of the team he led, as director of the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, came to light and were widely amplified by various media and active social networks. in the midst of the digital age and in a global world.
I have known Dr. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, sociologist and jurist, professor at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, for many years, specifically since he directed a research in Mozambique whose result is a book in two volumes entitled: Conflict and social transformation: an overview of Mozambican justices. I was one of the interviewees and participated in the seminars to validate the results of this study.
Subsequently, I was one of his guests at the International Colloquium on Justice in the 21st Century, where I presented the topic: "Global crime and local insecurity: the case of Mozambique"[1], with relevant repercussions both nationally and internationally. In fact, this article is frequently cited by academics and national and international media. Here in Mozambique, it has been the private television channel STV that has consistently quoted him, both in terms of approval and criticism, which is not without relevance.
Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a great friend of Mozambique and has often been invited to give free lectures on various topics, such as human development, citizenship, political economy and justice. As I have often quoted him, he is the mentor of several texts on the politicization of justice and/or the judicialization of politics. As part of his friendship with Mozambique, he was godfather to President Joaquim Alberto Chissano, when he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Coimbra.
Our friendship began in the 2000s, and later, he agreed to be my supervisor for a doctorate that took a back seat because I decided to prioritize a doctorate in law. And I will return, with him as supervisor of that doctorate, as long as I have the grace to wander through this beautiful earthly homeland.
That said, I have credentials to say that I know their level of demand well. Professor Boaventura is very demanding. Really very demanding. It poses demands in accordance with its academic dimension. This requirement is often misunderstood by some candidates. I said right: candidates, and I am not referring to the candidates yet.
Let us suppose, if only as a hypothesis, that when the same demands that are made on a man are made on a woman, the female psychological picture can be triggered and fed by the idea that the supervisor is trying, by demanding too much from her for her academic activity, to condition and create fragility, because of her condition as a woman. for passionate purposes. Therefore, we must always give the benefit of the doubt, as long as there is no contradiction. I will refrain, for now, from discussing the substantive issues, but I will limit myself to pointing out that their counsellors are normally adults, with ample freedom of conscience and action, and with freedom of use of reason and with access to all ordinary legal means to present their case in record time, if not, at least in a timely manner, especially in a university with more than 734 years of history [2], such as Coimbra (the oldest in Portugal).
The mass psychology of just one spark and the rest will follow in a chain can be dangerous. In fact, the production of substantial evidence for crimes of sexual harassment or moral harassment is very demanding, with the risk of reaching the end and concluding that the mountain gave birth to a mouse. Which, of course, would be good for the teacher. But always with the feeling that all that could have been saved.
At this point, for those who know Professor Boaventura, they know that he is very frequented, because he likes a type of approach that goes outside the status quo, that is outside the box, he likes an innovative and challenging approach, and for this reason, he rejects many requests for guidance, when they do not have to go down that road. when it is to say or defend more of the same. If it wasn't so good, it wouldn't be so requested. If it were all that painting that the media magnifies, it wouldn't be as crowded as it is. He would be an ordinary academic, with nothing going for him.
Professor Boaventura is an enviable universal academic heritage. It has been the voice of the voiceless. In fact, through its social interventions at world social forums, it has contributed to positively influencing national and international social and economic policies. The sharpness of his interventions in multilateral forums in Europe, America and Africa has earned him not only the prestige of his ideological associates, but also the antipathy of those who distort his positions. But if an academic of his caliber were not irreverent, he would not be of interest to his followers (students), nor to academia and Portuguese society in particular, nor to global society in general. Although he retired, he never stopped teaching; In fact, a man of his stature does not retire to stay at home scratching his navel, as long as there is knowledge to spread.
Life on earth is not about putting one's hands in the fire for someone. I don't abandon my friends, even in difficult circumstances. Unless they abandon me, as has happened with both of them. What's more, I don't abandon my teacher. I am not like Peter, who denied his master three times. Whenever I wanted a letter of recommendation, Professor Boaventura gave it to me; When I asked him to be my supervisor for that Ph.D., he gladly agreed. Because of this connection, I cannot turn my back on it and participate, in advance, by omission, in this festival of public destruction of a man's character, unless subsequent, consistent, unequivocal, and irrefutable proofs call me to accept a just legal censure.
I question that this article be published, in the middle of Good Friday, on my website My love for legal gossip, with some readers. On this holy day, our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified at the expense of an irresponsible mob who, in a summary trial, without the right to defense or counterargument, demanded the death of an innocent man. The report of the Commission of Inquiry is not binding. Only a responsible trial with a firm and unappealable sentence can lead us to a conclusion from any perspective, but a trial in the public square cannot be defensible in the 21st century. If there is sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial, it may not even be justified to bring it to court due to the fragility of the evidence.
I also regret that a Mozambican doctor, who has been working for many years at the Centre for Social Studies of the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra, as a professor and researcher, has been dragged into the same mire. I prefer to omit his name to protect it, since he has not had as much publicity among us as the teacher, to whom I express my solidarity and hope that his integrity remains intact, regardless of any public vilification.
To both of you, my fraternal embrace from the heart, with the certainty that we are and will always be together.
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