Government seizure of Nicaraguan university a blow to science, researchers say
Source: Science Magazine
Researchers in Nicaragua say the government’s takeover of a prominent private university has dealt another serious blow to academic freedom and scientific autonomy in the country.
Last week, President Daniel Ortega’s administration confiscated the assets of the Central American University (UCA) in Managua and closed its campuses, alleging the Jesuit-run institution had become a “hub of terrorism” and that its leaders were “traitors to the country.” It then reopened the campus with new leadership and a new name: the Casimiro Sotelo Montenegro National University, in honor of a Sandinista student leader assassinated in 1967.
The 15 August move was the latest in a yearslong effort by Ortega, who has led Nicaragua since 2007, to consolidate power and crack down on perceived political opponents, including academics. In recent years he has closed some two dozen other, mostly smaller, private universities and the nation’s National Academy of Sciences.
UCA officials have rejected the government’s allegations. But faculty members fear the move eliminates one of the nation’s last relatively independent centers of academic research and will result in more researchers and students leaving Nicaragua.
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