Dictatorships and Repression against the Universities: The Transition to Military Rule in Latin America and the Impact on Enrollments in the Social Sciences.

This paper focuses on the transition to military rule in Brazil (1964), Uruguay (1973), Chile (1973), and Argentina (1976) and examines the argument that the disciplines which lend themselves to analysis of the social order, such as the social sciences and humanities, are most often the target of political repression. Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile all had stable democracies for most of the 20th century, and each suffered an abrupt transition to brutal military rule. Brazil had a shorter tradition of democratic government when it fell to military rule in the 1960s. In each case the transition to military rule was followed by repression against academic freedom, including purging of university faculty and students, closing entire departments and universities, and at times the murder of students and faculty by the military. The social sciences suffer more than other disciplines under repressive regimes because they sensitize students to problems inherent in the existing social order. In order to determine if student enrollment in social sciences decreased under authoritarian regimes, data were analyzed for each of the countries. The results tended to support the contention that the social sciences suffer under dictatorships. (SM)