The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) will honor the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) with a special award in recognition of its contributions to the promotion and advancement of the social sciences in the Arab region during its 8th Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Social Sciences, which takes place on November 19-23, 2018 in Buenos Aires.
Titled “Struggles for Equality, Social Justice, and Democracy in a Turbulent World,” CLACSO’s 8th Conference will be part of the First International Forum on Critical Thinking, a large, diverse, and open gathering of world leaders; prominent political figures; progressive academics, intellectuals and students; human rights groups; organizers; and activists.
“The ACSS is pleased and honored to receive this important recognition from CLACSO,” said Seteney Shami, the Director General of the ACSS. “We have a great deal to learn from the 50-year experience of CLACSO in promoting and democratizing the social science and academic knowledge production in Latin America and globally.”
CLACSO’s tribute to the ACSS comes at a crucial time when academic freedom in the Arab region is increasingly at risk, as authoritarian regimes seek to shape Arab higher education and impose limitations on scholars’ freedom to inquire, research, teach, communicate ideas, and report facts, and external interventions and armed conflicts damage educational structures, inhibiting people’s access to education.
In 2016, a report published by the Academic Freedom Monitoring Project, a program of Scholars at Risk, based at New York University, documented over 30 actions against academics in 9 Arab countries over a 16-month period (May 1, 2015 – September 1, 2016).
“Our recognition of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences is also a tribute to all those Arab intellectuals who fight and have fought for the construction of a more just, freer, democratic and united world,” said Pablo Gentili, CLACSO’s Executive Secretary in announcing the award.
CLACSO’s 8th Conference will feature exhibitions, film screenings, keynotes, lectures, panel discussions, and roundtables with outstanding figures from the political, academic, and social fields, who are known for their contribution to the construction of a more democratic, sustainable, and free world.
“We look forward to collaborations, dialogue and exchange that will highlight the important historical and contemporary connections between Latin America and the Arab region,” said ACSS Director General, Seteney Shami, who will be taking part in several panels to discuss issues related to the democratization of academic knowledge, South-South cooperation, and open access scholarly communications.
In addition to Shami, ACSS trustee Mokhtar El-Harras (Mohammed V University), and researchers Hicham Ait Mansour (Mohammed V University) and Amina Al-Mekaoui (Mohammed V University) will be taking part in a special session exploring knowledge exchange between the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. El-Harras, Ait Mansour and Al-Mekaoui will be discussing their work on the 2nd Arab Social Science Report on Arabic publications between 2000 and 2016 for the Arab Social Science Monitor (ASSM), a project of the ACSS.