Brazil: Law students demand professor produce vaccination papers

A group of students at the University of São Paulo Law School are demanding to see a professor’s vaccination papers before she resumes teaching because she leans to the political Right.

Janaina Paschoal temporarily left her post as a criminal law professor in 2019 to serve as a state representative for São Paulo in Congress, where she joined Right-leaning former President Jair Bolsonaro’s Liberal Social Party (PSL). Bolsonaro was ousted last year in a presidential election which caused country-wide riots for over two months after significant voting irregularities were found. He was replaced in January by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former president and ex-convict who served 580 days in prison for corruption.

One of Bolsonaro’s trademarks which endeared him to the Right and demonized him to the Left was his stance on COVID-19 vaccines. While the rest of the world was imposing vaccine mandates, Bolsonaro remained an unapologetic vaccine skeptic, citing scientific grounds. 

“I decided not to take the vaccine anymore,” he said in October 2021, according to CNN. “I’m seeing new studies, my immunity levels are through the roof. I am going to get the vaccine for what? It would be the same thing as playing $10 in the lottery to win $2. That’s out of place." 

Importantly, Bolsonaro also refused to force the shots on citizens. 

“For me, [it is] freedom above all,” he maintained. “If a citizen does not want to get the vaccine, it is his right and that’s it.” 

Unlike Bolsonaro, President Lula has vowed to make people apologize for questioning the vaccine and announced last week he will make welfare contingent on child vaccinations. 

Now, as Paschoal prepares to end her term in March and return to her post at the University of São Paulo’s Largo de São Francisco Law School, a group of Leftist students are trying to bar her from returning due to her “Bolsonarism”.

The students signed a petition this month saying Paschoal is “no longer welcome” due to her “indecent contribution” to society, apparently referring to her role in impeaching Marxist former President Dilma Rousseff, who had also served as Lula’s chief of staff. They said the professor "has abandoned the democratic values that should permeate the classrooms of the country's leading law school."

"In the four dark years the country faced under Bolsonaro, Janaina presented herself as some sort of enlightened Bolsonarist," the petition said, according to Revista Oeste. "However, her supposed disagreements with far-right movements are minimal, and we consider there to be, on her hands, as much blood as on their hands.”

The students went on to say that “the USP Law School belongs to black and poor students”, and referred to themselves as “defenders of democracy”.

"Today, the university belongs to the defenders of democracy, not its detractors," they said. "This is exactly why you don't fit here anymore. Our classrooms have become too big for you."

But the students were met with backlash from Paschoal’s colleagues at the university, including former USP Law School Director Prof. Celso Campilongo and the vice-president of the graduate program, Prof. Ana Elisa Liberatore Bechara.

"It is in the wake of the constitutional mandates that guarantee the freedom of professorship and the free expression of thought of all its faculty members that the college reaffirms its continued and unwavering commitment to building democracy and growing respect for differences," Campilongo and Ana Elisa said in a joint statement.

Other faculty members and even government officials came to Paschoal's defense. One USP Law School lecturer, Prof. Floriano de Azevedo Marques Neto, said he is ideologically “absolutely opposed” to Paschoal, but chided the students for disrespecting the “history of plurality” at the school.

"Wanting to prohibit a professor from resuming his or her teaching, especially because this faculty member professes ideas with which we disagree, in addition to hurting constitutional freedoms, is a disrespect to the history of plurality that marks the Largo de São Francisco," the faculty member noted. "Janaina may represent everything I disagree with, but she is a professor and therefore should be treated with respect."

In response, the students attacked Prof. Marques Neto for defending diversity of thought and are now demanding to see Paschoal’s vaccination papers, although there is currently no vaccine mandate. São Paulo Governor Tarcísio de Freitas last week sanctioned a law which prohibits vaccine mandates in the state, a move cheered by Paschoal.

The Leftist students are also demanding Paschoal be declared “persona non grata” at the university for spreading “misinformation” about the pandemic.