===CARTA EM PORTUGUÊS ABAIXO DA VERSÃO EM INGLÊS===
POR FAVOR ASSINE NO FINAL DO FORMULÁRIO - Enviaremos a carta à Universidade em 28 de Julho de 2020.
PLEASE SIGN AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS FORM. We will send this letter to TC's administration on July 28 2020
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New York, July 23rd, 2020
TO:
Board of Trustees of Columbia University Teachers College
William D. Rueckert, Chair
Leslie Morse Nelson, Vice-Chair
Thomas Bailey, President, Teachers College
RE: PAULO FREIRE HALL AT TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Dear members of the Board of Trustees of Teachers College, Columbia University,
First and foremost, we want to thank you for the courageous decision of removing Edward Thorndike’s name from one of our halls. His eugenic, racist, anti-Semitic, and sexist ideas were incompatible with our institutional values and commitment to social justice, anti-racism, diversity, and educational equity.
We understand that the individuals that give a name to the College’s buildings represent, inspire, and reinforce the values of the institution. As important as moving away from Thorndike is to have a process to choose the new name that reflects TC’s commitment to open debate, democracy, and giving voice to all. It is also key to choose a new name that expresses TC’s core commitments in a global society. TC has grown from a US-facing institution to a truly global school: its impact today reaches the entire world. In this context, we request the Board to strongly consider to name the building PAULO FREIRE HALL, for the following reasons:
1. Paulo Freire’s views on Education reinforce one of TC's founding principles: “to provide a new kind of schooling for the underprivileged, one dedicated to helping them improve the quality of their everyday lives.” The pedagogy promoted by Freire is closely aligned to TC’s mission: promoting equity and excellence in education and overcoming the gap in educational access and achievement. These notions are exactly what Freire proposes in his work, highlighting that people, through education and the development of critical consciousness, might change the world for the better. Paulo Freire was also the pioneer in culturally relevant pedagogy, a hallmark of TC’s ethos.
2. Paulo Freire is one of the most influential education authors of all time. If academic influence is to be measured by current citation metrics, Paulo Freire stands out as the most cited educator of all times with almost 500,000 citations, and one of the most cited scholars across all fields. His seminal book Pedagogy of the Oppressed has more Google Scholar citations than Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” and Foucault’s “Discipline and Punish”, was translated into more than 40 languages, and is present in the syllabus of numerous courses at TC.
3. Praising non-US voices and recognizing equal value of leaders from the Global South. To be coherent with its Diversity Mission, TC should consider naming its building after a voice from the Global South and reinforce the President's and College's commitment concerning community, diversity, civility, equity, and anti-discrimination. Naming a building after Freire would stand out as a clear sign of adherence to diversity on a global scale, and to the idea that we, as educators, must consider different ways of knowing and being. None of the buildings at TC pay homage to international scholars, despite the fact that TC is, today, a highly international institution: 20% of students are international, and in some programs the number is well above 60%. In other words, in many programs, more than half of the students are international.
4. Reinforcing the value of sociopolitical consciousness and freedom in times of authoritarian governments. To accept that all individuals are entitled to be treated with dignity, have the same opportunities, and be more fully human is in contradiction with many of the current conservative and authoritarian ideas gaining popularity around the world. To name the building after Paulo Freire would be a means to advocate for the oppressed around the world and to reinforce the College's quest for a less unequal social order.
5. In 2021 Paulo Freire would turn 100. His centennial is an opportunity to not only pay homage to his legacy but also recognize the efforts of many communities around the world that are inspired by his work, from indigenous communities in the Amazon to the Landless Movement in rural Latin America. These communities are hit twice with global inequity, oppression, and racism: first, they are oppressed in their own countries, and second, by being outside of the developed world, they do not have the means to make their voices heard. Paulo Freire has inspired these groups for decades.
Acknowledging the timely and correct decision of changing the hall’s name, we also urge the Board to be coherent with TC’s commitment to open debate and to giving voice to all. We need to make sure that the process of choosing the new name for the building is transparent and democratic, where students, professors, researchers, and staff have a chance to actively engage in this process. A process without representation from international students, without allowing them to voice concerns and preferences, would be a disappointing follow up to such a momentous change at TC.
The engagement with the idea of the Paulo Freire Hall is a clear message against colonialist discourses that place the US and Europe at the center of academic debate. The Paulo Freire Hall represents the recognition that the US and Europe should not be always considered the locus of academic imagination and importance. This is what we learn at TC. We learn that discourses of racial, national, or gender superiority should be countered, and that the historical privilege given to developed regions of the world should not be reproduced indefinitely. The Paulo Freire Hall would be a clear recognition that TC, as a global institution, rejects these colonialist notions and looks at a scholars’ impact globally, especially from regions of the world that have been historically marginalized. The desire for social justice and equality cannot come at the expense of dehumanizing other peripheral populations such as the Latinx and Latin American community at TC.
The choice of the new name for TC’s building should be a display of our values in the decision-making process itself. We should not let anything overcome the need for an open debate. There are almost 1000 international students at TC. There are multiple discourses of social justice in the world, and to assume otherwise would be an unfortunate political act to the large community of Latinx and Latin American students at TC.
Formatted Version of the letter:
https://bit.ly/PFHLetter