Three hundred academics and public intellectuals joined to launch a manifesto entitled “Lula da Silva is a political prisoner. #FreeLula!,” denouncing the detention of the former Brazilian president and current Presidential candidate Lula da Silva. The petition discusses in detail the arbitrary nature of the trial conducted by Judge Sergio Moro against Lula da Silva, stating that he is nothing less than a political prisoner. The document asserts that the international community should treat him as such and demands his immediate release.
The manifesto is supported by world-famous legal scholars, such as Karl Klare, Friedrich Müller, António José Avelãs Nunes and Jonathan Simon. Eminent researchers of law and lawfare, such as John Comaroff, Eve Darian-Smith, Tamar Herzog and Elizabeth Mertz, champion the manifesto. International labor lawyers and trade unionists, such as Stanley Gacek, also support it.
Additionally, the petition is backed by world-renowned public intellectuals like Tariq Ali, Robert Brenner, Wendy Brown, Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Axel Honneth, Fredric R. Jameson, Leonardo Padura, Carole Pateman, Thomas Piketty, Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Slavoj Žižek.
Leading sociologists as Fred Block, Mark Blyth, Michael Burawoy, Peter Evans, Neil Fligstein, Marion Fourcade, Frances Fox Piven, Michael Heinrich, Michael Löwy, Laura Nader, Erik Olin Wright, Dylan Riley, Ananya Roy, Wolfgang Streeck, Göran Therborn, Michael J. Watts and Suzi Weissman also have signed the petition.
The manifesto is embraced by famous specialists and directors of research centers on Latin American Studies like Alex Borucki, Aviva Chomsky, Brodwyn Fischer, Barbara Fritz, James N. Green, Victoria Langland, Mara Loveman, Carlos Marichal, Teresa A. Meade, Tianna Paschel, Erika Robb Larkins, Aaron Schneider, Stanley J. Stein and Barbara Weinstein.
Moreover, the petition is endorsed by distinguished economists like Dean Baker, Ha-Joon Chang, Giovanni Dosi, Gérard Duménil, Gary Dymski, Geoffrey Hodgson, Costas Lapavitsas, Marc Lavoie, Thomas Palley, Robert Pollin, Pierre Salama, Guy Standing, Robert H. Wade and Mark Weisbrot.
New subscriptions with academic affiliation are accepted at freelula.manifest@gmail.com
Below is the Manifesto and the full initial list of subscribers:
Lula da Silva is a political prisoner. Free Lula!
We hereby manifest our deep concern about the circumstances under which the former Brazilian president Lula da Silva was tried and imprisoned. There is abundant evidence that Lula da Silva was a victim of lawfare, that is, the abuse of judicial power for political purposes. Hence, the international community should consider and treat him as a political prisoner.
Lula’s trial was conducted as part of the so-called Operation Car Wash, an investigation of the payment of procurement kickbacks to Petrobras officials and politicians, some of which took place while Lula was president. While critics claim that “Lula should have known” or “Lula must have gained something,” there is no evidence of his participation in the kickbacks. According to Brazilian laws and legal doctrines, corruption is a quid pro quo transaction. To convict Lula for corruption, the prosecution should prove that he had participated in the procurement frauds and that he had been compensated for such illicit acts.
In 2016, Lula was accused of receiving a rather modest apartment from OAS, one of the Petrobras contractors involved in the corruption scheme. However, no wiretapped conversations, bank transactions, transfer of funds or title deeds have ever substantiated the case against Lula. He never used or profited from the apartment. Worse still, it later emerged that the same apartment had already been used as collateral by OAS in a long-term loan transaction when the accusation was made that Lula was the owner.
The lack of incriminating evidence was disregarded by Sergio Moro, the judge responsible for the case against Lula. Moro based his decision on the “informal collaboration” (not even a formal plea bargain) that offered a substantial reduction of jail time if Lula’s codefendant pleaded guilty and produced incriminating evidence against Lula. The co-defendant was Leo Pinheiro, OAS’s owner. Pinheiro had already been sentenced to 26 years when he decided to “collaborate” and implicate Lula. He stated that the apartment was “meant to be given” to Lula, an accusation which contradicted 73 other depositions. But his statement was considered enough for Justice Moro to convict Lula da Silva. Pinheiro’s sentence, in turn, was reduced to three years, and he was released from prison during the day.
Besides failing to prove Lula’s ownership of the apartment, the Prosecution could not point to any specific action or omission that Lula had undertaken to benefit OAS. Lula had been accused of benefiting the co-defendant with three procurement contracts with Petrobras. After months of investigations, no material proof was found. Moro then convicted Lula for performing “indeterminable acts of corruption” that benefited OAS. This categorization shifts the burden of proof and the presumption of innocence and does not exist in the Brazilian legal system.
Inadvertently, Judge Moro himself admitted that he lacked jurisdiction over Lula’s case. When deciding a motion filed by the defense, he declared that he had “never affirmed, not would be required to prove, that the money used to build the apartment allegedly given to Lula originated from contracts between OAS and Petrobras.” If the case has no relationship with the Petrobras corruption, it should not have been reviewed by Moro.
Simply put, Lula’s process was one in which the trial magistrate chose his defendant and, acting as the investigator, prosecutor, and judge, convicted him of having committed “undetermined official acts of corruption.” Such a sentence, by its very wording, is legally and constitutionally unsustainable, including by Brazilian standards, given the reference to undetermined. A sentence referring to undetermined crimes fails all logic and reasonable legal scrutiny and is thoroughly Kafkaesque. Moreover, the reference to official acts is unreal, since the unfounded accusations motivating Moro’s sentence refer to a narrative beginning in 2013, well after Lula was out of office.
The lawfare against Lula also included tactics to keep his case under Moro’s purview at all costs. In March 2016, Moro leaked illegally obtained wiretaps of the sitting president, Dilma Rousseff, regarding Lula’s appointment as Chief of Staff in her administration. He claimed, again without proof, that this appointment was meant to “obstruct justice,” since once appointed to the administration Lula would be judged by the Supreme Federal Court (STF) and not by Moro himself. Although Moro´s impartiality was questioned, the Federal Regional Court for the 4th Circuit (TRF – 4), the next tribunal to review Lula’s case in the hierarchy of the Brazilian judiciary, ruled that Operation Car Wash was “exceptional” and that “ordinary rules don’t apply.”
The Kafkaesque nature of Lula’s trial was reinforced when, in August 2017, the presiding justice of the TRF-4 declared that Moro’s sentence against Lula was “technically irreproachable,” while admitting that he had not even read the case. Meanwhile, his chief of staff posted a petition requesting Lula da Silva’s imprisonment on her Facebook page.
TRF-4 rushed its decision. The review of Moro’s sentence against Lula was placed ahead of 257 other cases that were pending. The reporting judge for TRF-4 took only six days to issue his findings for a case with literally thousands of pages of transcripts and hours of depositions. The TRF 4 panel took 196 days to decide. On average, it takes 473 days for similar cases. The TRF-4 also ordered Lula’s immediate arrest. Only 3 of the other 20 Car Wash defendants whose appeals were denied were sent to jail, and the incarcerations were implemented months after the decision.
Lula petitioned the Supreme Federal Court (STF), requesting a habeas corpus order against his immediate imprisonment because he still had the right to file appeals. According to the Brazilian Constitution, “no one can be deemed guilty until his or her last appeal has been decided.” Given this constitutional doctrine in Brazilian justice, it is important to note the following: the merits of Moro’s sentence against Lula, sustained and exacerbated by the TRF- 4 (extending imprisonment from 9 to 12 years), still have not been reviewed by the higher courts in the Brazilian judiciary system, including the STJ (Supreme Court of Justice) and the STF, the highest court in the country for constitutional questions.
In a tie-breaking vote denying the habeas corpus petition, a STF Justice declared that she would have voted otherwise if the Court had reviewed the constitutional doctrine in general, instead of its specific application to Lula’s case. The day before the vote, the Army’s Chief Commander tweeted out a message to the Court, saying that “the Army will not tolerate impunity.” For this thinly veiled threat, he got not a reprimand, but a “like” from the Twitter account of the very same TRF-4 that had confirmed Lula’s conviction.
The following morning, the judge presiding over the TRF-4 predicted that Lula’s detention could not occur in less than a month’s time, given all the legal proceedings still pending before the tribunal. In the afternoon, however, the TRF-4 requested Moro to order his arrest. It took Moro nineteen minutes to issue a decision that acknowledged that Lula still had the legal right to have another motion heard by the TRF-4, while declaring that this right to appeal was a “procrastinating pathology” that should be “wiped out of Brazilian laws.”
It should come as no surprise that a recent poll showed that 55% of the Brazilian respondents agree that “Lula is being persecuted by the Judiciary,” and 73% agree with the statement that “the powerful want him out of the elections” in which he still is the favorite candidate by far.
The abuses of judicial power over Lula da Silva are thinly disguised political persecution under a legal cover. Lula da Silva is a political prisoner. His detention tarnishes Brazilian democracy. The supporters of democracy and social justice in the East and the West, in the North and the Global South, should join in a worldwide movement to demand Lula da Silva’s release.
We demand: Free Lula, Lula Libre, Liberté por Lula, Freiheit für Lula, Lula Libero, حرية, 释放卢拉, 룰라 석방하라!, חוֹפֶשׁ, フリーダム, Свободу Луле, Lula Livre!
1. Tariq Ali – New Left Review (Editor), London
2. Dean Baker – Center for Economic and Policy Research (senior economist), Washington, D.C.
3. Fred Block – Research Professor, University of California, Davis
4. Mark Blyth – Eastman Professor of Political Economy – The Watson Institute for International Affairs – Brown University
5. Alex Borucki – Director, Latin American Studies Center, Associate Professor, History Department – University of California, Irvine
6. Robert Brenner – Director, Center for Social Theory and Comparative History – University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
7. Wendy Brown – Class of 1936 Chair, University of California, Berkeley
8. Michael Burawoy – Professor, University of California, Berkeley; Former President of the American Sociological Association (2004) and the International Sociological Association (2010-2014)
9. Ha-Joon Chang – Director of the Centre of Development Studies, Reader in the Political Economy of Development, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge
10. Aviva Chomsky – Professor of History and Coordinator of Latin American Studies, Salem State University
11. Noam Chomsky – Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Technology (MIT) and laureate professor at the University of Arizona
12. John Comaroff – Hugh K. Foster Professor of African and African American Studies and of Anthropology – Harvard University
13. Eve Darian-Smith – Professor Anthropology, Law, and Criminology, Law and Society; Director of International Studies – University of California Irvine
14. Angela Davis – Distinguished Professor Emerita – University of California, Santa Cruz
15. Giovanni Dosi – Professor of Economics and Director of the Institute of Economics at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa; Co-Director IPD – Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University.
16. Gérard Duménil – Université Paris 10, Paris, former Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, French National Center of Scientific Research)
17. Gary Dymski – Professor of Applied Economics, Leeds University Business School
18. Peter Evans – Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
19. Brodwyn Fischer – Director of the Center for Latin American Studies, Professor of History at the University of Chicago.
20. Neil Fligstein – Class of 1939 Chair, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
21. Marion Fourcade, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
22. Stanley A. Gacek – Senior Advisor for Global Strategies – United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) – Washington, D.C.
23. James N. Green – Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History – Brown University; Distinguished Visiting Professor (Professor Amit), Hebrew University in Jerusalem
24. Michael Heinrich – former Professor of Economics at Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft, Berlin
25. Tamar Herzog – Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs, Harvard Law School
26. Geoffrey Hodgson – Research Professor, University of Hertfordshire – Winner of the 2014 Schumpeter Prize
27. Axel Honneth – Jack C. Weinstein Professor of the Humanities, Philosophy Department, Columbia University; Director of the Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt/M
28. Fredric R. Jameson – Knut Schmidt-Nielsen Professor of Comparative Literature – Duke University
29. Karl Klare – George J. & Kathleen Waters Matthews Distinguished University Professor – School of Law – Northeastern University
30. Victoria Langland – Director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Brazil Initiative, University of Michigan
31. Costas Lapavitsas – University of London (SOAS Japan Research Centre; London Asia Pacific Centre for Social Science – Steering Committee Member)
32. Marc Lavoie – Senior Research Chair, Université Sorbonne Paris Cité
33. Mara Loveman – Director of the Sociology Department – University of California, Berkeley
34. Michael Löwy – Emeritus research director at the CNRS and lecturer at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris, France)
35. Carlos Marichal – Professor – El Colegio de México, Founder and President of the Mexican Association of Economic History (2000-2004)
36. Teresa A. Meade – Florence B. Sherwood Professor of History and Culture, Director of Latin American & Caribbean Studies Program, Union College, New York
37. Elizabeth Mertz, PhD, JD – John & Rylla Bosshard Professor Emerita, University of Wisconsin Law School, Research Professor, American Bar Foundation
38. Friedrich Müller – Emeritus Full Professor – Heidelberg University Faculty of Law, Germany
39. Laura Nader – Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley
40. António José Avelãs Nunes – Emeritus Full Professor – Coimbra University, Portugal
41. Erik Olin Wright – Vilas Distinguished Research Professor, University of Wisconsin – Madison
42. Leonardo Padura – Independent Author – Cuba
43. Thomas Palley – Independent Economist – Washington DC
44. Tianna Paschel – Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
45. Carole Pateman – Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), former President of the International Political Science Association (1991–94) and of the American Political Science Association (2010–11).
46. Thomas Piketty – Professor at EHESS (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales) and at the Paris School of Economics
47. Frances Fox Piven – Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology Emeritus, Graduate School of the City University of New York (CUNY)
48. Robert Pollin – Distinguished Professor of Economics and Co-Director, Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), University of Massachusetts-Amherst
49. Dylan Riley – Director of Graduate Studies, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
50. Erika Robb Larkins – Associate Professor, Sociology, San Diego State University
51. Ananya Roy – Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Geography and inaugural Director of The Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin
52. Pierre Salama – Emeritus Professor of Economics – University of Paris XIII
53. Aaron Schneider – Leo Block Chair/Director, Latin America Center and Program in International Development, University of Denver
54. Jonathan Simon – Adrian A. Kragen Professor of Law, Faculty Director, Center for the Study of Law & Society, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
55. Boaventura de Sousa Santos – University of Coimbra; Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School; Global Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick
56. Guy Standing – FacSS – SOAS University of London
57. Stanley J. Stein – Walter Samuel Carpenter III Professor in Spanish Civilization and Culture, Emeritus; Professor of History, Emeritus – Princeton University
58. Wolfgang Streeck – Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Germany
59. Göran Therborn – Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of Cambridge, UK
60. Robert H. Wade – Professor of Global Political Economy – Department of International Development – London School of Economics (LSE) – Leontief Prize in Economics
61. Michael J. Watts – “Class of 1963” Emeritus Professor of Geography and Development Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
62. Barbara Weinstein – Silver Professor of History and chair of the Department of History at New York University, former president of the American Historical Association
63. Mark Weisbrot – co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and president of Just Foreign Policy, Washington, D.C.
64. Suzi Weissman – Professor – Saint Mary’s College of California
65. Slavoj Žižek – University of Ljubljana; Global Distinguished Professor of German at New York University; international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities of the University of London
66. Bakhtiyor Abdulhamidov – School of Law, SOAS
67. Carlos H. Acuña, CONICET/Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad Nacional de San Martín
68. Paulina L. Alberto – Associate Professor, History and Romance Languages, University of Michigan
69. Guy Alain Aronoff – Lecturer, History Department, Humboldt State University, Arcata, California
70. Alexander Alberro, Virginia Bloedel Wright Professor of Art History, Barnard College/Columbia University, New York City
71. Bruno Amable – Professor of Political Economy – Université de Genève
72. Andrew Arato – Dorothy Hirshon Professor, New School for Social Research, New York
73. Rebecca J. Atencio – Director, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, Associate Professor of Brazilian Studies, Tulane University, New Orleans
74. Geri Augusto – Gerard Visiting Associate Professor of International & Public Affairs and Africana Studies, Brown University, Watson Institute Faculty Fellow, Fulbright Scholar
75. Bruce Bagley – Professor, Department of International Studies, University of Miami
76. Gianpaolo Baiocchi – Director of the Urban Democracy Lab, Professor of Individualized Studies and Sociology, New York University
77. Leandro Benmergui, Assistant Professor, Purchase College, State University of New York
78. Raimundo C. Barreto, Jr. – Ph.D., Assistant Professor of World Christianity, Princeton Theological Seminary
79. Sherna Berger Gluck, Emerita Professor of History, California State University, Long Beach
80. Tunde Bewaji – Professor of Philosophy, Department of Language, Linguistics and Philosophy, University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica
81. Cyrus Bina – Distinguished Research Professor of Economics, University of Minnesota (Morris Campus), USA & Fellow, Economists for Peace and Security
82. O’Neill Blacker-Hanson, Ph.D. – Visiting Scholar, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
83. Ernesto Bohoslavsky – Professor, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento
84. Scott A. Bollens – Warmington Chair in Peace and International Cooperation, Professor – Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy, University of California, Irvine
85. Benjamin H. Bradlow – Brown University
86. Joana Bragança Bastos – Visiting Scholar, Stanford Medical School
87. Howard Brick – Professor of History and Louis Evans Chair in U.S. History, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
88. Renate Bridenthal – Professor Emerita of History, Brooklyn College, City University of New York (CUNY)
89. John Burdick, Professor of Anthropology, Syracuse University, New York
90. Cornelia Butler Flora – Distinguished Professor of Sociology Emeritus, Iowa State University, Research Professor, Kansas State University
91. Jim Campen – Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Univ of Massachusetts Boston
92. Mariana P. Candido – Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Notre Dame
93. Cláudio Carvalhaes – Associate Professor of Worship, Union Theological Seminary – New York City
94. Bruno Carvalho – Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Cultures, Princeton Mellon Initiative – Princeton University
95. Sueann Caulfield – Associate Professor, University of Michigan
96. Sidney Chalhoub – Professor of History and African and African American Studies, Harvard University
97. Stephen Cole – Chair, Department of History and Political Science, Professor, History and Political Science, Notre Dame de Namur University, California
98. Nicholas Copeland, Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies, Virginia Tech
99. Carlos Cortez Minchillo – Assistant professor, Dartmouth College
100. Benjamin A. Cowan – Associate Professor, Department of History, University of California San Diego
101. Lisa Covert – Assistant Professor, College of Charleston, South Carolina
102. Raymond B. Craib – Professor of History, Director of the Latin American Studies Program (LASP), Cornell University
103. Chuck Davis – Professor of Labor Studies, Indiana University
104. Alicia Díaz, Assistant Professor of Dance, The University of Richmond
105. Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones – Professor Emeritus, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Princeton University
106. Edgardo Dieleke (filmmaker and professor) – Phd, Princeton University – NYU – Buenos Aires / Universidad de San Andrés
107. Elizabeth Dore – Emeritus Professor, University of Southampton, UK
108. Robert S. DuPlessis – Isaac H. Clothier Professor of History and International Relations Emeritus – Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
109. Eduardo Elena – Associate Professor, University of Miami
110. Marc Edelman – Professor of Anthropology, Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York
111. Jeffrey Erbig – Latin American and Latino Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz
112. Arturo Escobar – Professor of Anthropology – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
113. Joana Falcão Salles – Associate Professor in Microbial Community Ecology, Expertise group GREEN (Genomics Research in Ecology & Evolution in Nature), Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Netherlands
114. Toyin Falola – Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin
115. John Faulkner – SOAS, University of London
116. Gordon Fellman, Professor of Sociology, Brandeis University, , Massachusetts
117. Débora Ferreira – Professor, Portuguese Program Coordinator, former Member of the Faculty Senate and Chair of Faculty Development Committee, Utah Valley University
118. Roquinaldo Ferreira – History/Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Brown University
119. Denise Ferreira da Silva – Professor and Director, The Social Justice Institute (Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice), University of British Columbia, Canada
120. Carlos Figueroa, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor, Politics Department – Ithaca College
121. Carl Fischer, Modern Languages and Literatures Department, Fordham University
122. Marilyn Frankenstein – Retired Professor, Quantitative Reasoning and Media Literacy, University of Massachusetts, Boston
123. Elena Fratto, Humanistic Studies, Princeton University
124. Frederico Freitas, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor of History, North Carolina State University
125. Barbara Fritz – Institute for Latin American Studies/School of Business & Economics – Freie Universität Berlin
126. Leo J. Garofalo, Associate Professor of History, Connecticut College
127. Florencia Garramuño, full professor and the Chair of the Humanities Department at the Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina
128. Pablo Gentili – Executive Secretary – The Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO)
129. Gabriel Giorgi – Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures, New York University
130. David Theo Goldberg – Director and Professor, Humanities Research Institute, University of California Berkeley
131. Reena Goldthree – Assistant Professor of African American Studies, Princeton University – Professor of History, Truman State University, Missouri
132. Mónica González García, Profesora Asociada de Literatura Comparada e Intermedialidad, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile
133. Jessica Graham – Professor of History, University of California San Diego
134. Richard Grossman – PhD, Northeastern Illinois University
135. Antonio Sergio Alfredo Guimaraes – Visiting Fellow, Lemann Institute of Brazilian Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
136. David Gullette, Professor Emeritus of English, Simmons College, Boston
137. Gerard Gunning – University Lecturer at SOAS University of London
138. María del Mar Gutiérrez Domínguez – El Colegio de México
139. Martin Halpern – Professor of History Emeritus, Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, Arkansas
140. Laurence Harris – Professor, SOAS, University of London
141. Noel Healy – Associate Professor of Geography, Salem State University Virginia Parks, Professor of Urban Planning, University of California at Irvine
142. Inez Hedges, Ph.D. – Professor Emerita of Cultures, Societies, and Global Studies, Northeastern University
143. Rebecca Herman, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley
144. Marc A. Hertzman, Associate Professor and Conrad Humanities Scholar, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
145. Walter L. Hixson – Distinguished Professor of History, University of Akron, Ohio
146. Elizabeth Quay Hutchison – Professor, Latin American History – President, Faculty Concilium on Latin America and Iberia – Director, Feminist Research Institute – Chair, Committee on Governance – The University of New Mexico
147. Rafael R. Ioris, Ph.D.- Associate Professor of Latin American History, History Department, Affiliated Faculty, Latin American Center, Joseph Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver
148. Clara E. Irazábal-Zurita – Director of the Latinx and Latin American Studies Program, Professor of Urban Planning | Department of Architecture, Urban Planning + Design (AUPD), University of Missouri – Kansas City
149. Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond – Associate Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature And Luso-Brazilian Studies, U.C. San Diego
150. Thomas Jessen Adams – Academic Coordinator and Lecturer in American Studies and History, United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney
151. Cedric Johnson – Associate Professor, African American Studies and Political Science – University of Illinois at Chicago
152. Benjamin Junge, PhD – Associate Professor – State University of New York at New Paltz
153. Tercio Bretanha Junker, PhD, Dean of the Chapel and Regional Director of Course of Study Program, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Illinois
154. Louis Kampf – Professor Emeritus – MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
155. Temma Kaplan – Distinguished Professor of History, Emerita, Rutgers University
156. Mary Kay Vaughan – Professor Emerita, University of Maryland
157. Robin D.G. Kelley – Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA, former Harmsworth Chair of American History at Oxford University
158. Gray F. Kidd – Duke University, North Carolina
159. Roger Kittleson – Professor of History, Williams College, Massachusetts
160. Anna M. Klobucka – Professor of Portuguese and Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
161. Peter Kuznick – Professor of History, Director Nuclear Studies Institute, American University, Washington, D.C.
162. German Labrador Mendez – Associate Professor, Princeton University
163. Jennifer Lambe – Assistant Professor, Department of History, Brown University
164. Dany Lang – Université Paris 13, Sorbonne Paris Cité/l’Université de Saint Louis (Belgium).
165. Paul Lauter – Allan K. and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of Literature Emeritus at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, former President of the American Studies Association (USA), Francis Andrew March Award 2017.
166. John Lawrence, Professor Psychology Department, College of Staten Island, City University of New York
167. Nicole D. Legnani – Assistant Professor of Colonial Latin American Studies – Department of Spanish and Portuguese – Princeton University
168. Fernando Leiva – Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies, University of California Santa Cruz
169. María Graciela León Matamoros – Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Cuajimalpa, México
170. Deborah Levenson – Professor of Latin American History, Boston College
171. Marilia Librandi – Professor of Luso-Brazilian and Latin American Literature and Cultures, Stanford University
172. Clara E. Lida – Research-Professor, Chair on Mexico-Spain at the Centro de Estudios Históricos, El Colegio de México
173. Lisa Lindsay, Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
174. Maria-Aparecida Lopes – Professor of History, California State University, Fresno
175. Christopher Lowe, Independent Historian of Africa, Portland, Oregon USA; Ph.D. Yale University
176. Ryan Lynch – University of California, Santa Barbara
177. Arthur MacEwan – Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of Massachusetts Boston
178. Kathleen McAfee – Professor, International Relations, San Francisco State University
179. Elias Mandala, History professor at University of Rochester, New York, USA
180. Maxine L. Margolis – Professor Emerita of Anthropology, University of Florida and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar, Institute of Latin American Studies, Columbia University
181. Irving Leonard Markovitz – Professor of Political Science, The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)
182. Elio Masferrer Kan, Profesor Investigador Emérito, ENAH – Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México
183. Marjorie Mayo – Emeritus Professor, Goldsmiths, University of London
184. Sandra McGee Deutsch – Professor of History, University of Texas at El Paso
185. Gillian McGillivray, Associate Professor of Latin American History, Glendon College, York University, Canada
186. Malcolm McNee – Associate Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Smith College, Massachusetts
187. Lucía Melgar – Associate Researcher, ITAM, Mexico City, Mexico
188. Alessandra Mezzadri – Senior Lecturer in Development Studies, Department of Development Studies, SOAS, London
189. Michael Meeropol – Professor Emeritus of Economics, Western New England University, Springfield, Massachusetts
190. Cristina Mehrtens – Associate Professor in the History and Women’s & Gender Studies departments at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
191. William Mello – Associate Professor, Indiana University
192. Ian Merkel – History and French Studies, New York University (NYU)
193. Paul C. Mishler, PhD. – Associate Professor of Labor Studies -Department of Labor Studies – Indiana University
194. Owen Miller – Lecturer in Korean Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, SOAS, London
195. Pedro Meira Monteiro – Professor and Chair of the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, Princeton University
196. Andrea Melloni – Portuguese Lecturer, Princeton University
197. Lorraine C. Minnite – Associate Professor of Public Policy, Rutgers University, Camden
198. Sean Mitchell – Associate Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Rutgers University, Newark
199. Julia Monarrez, Professor of El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana, B.C., México
200. Beatriz de Moraes Vieira – Visiting Scholar, Cornell University
201. Michelle Morais de Sa e Silva, PhD – Lecturer in International and Area Studies, Department of International and Area Studies, The University of Oklahoma
202. Paulo Moreira – Associate Professor, Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, University of Oklahoma
203. Julieta Mortati – Universidad Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, Argentina
204. Joia S. Mukherjee, MD, MPH – Chief Medical Officer, Partners In Health, Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
205. Nick Nesbitt, Professor – Department of French and Italian, Princeton University
206. Sara Niedzwiecki – Assistant Professor, Politics Department, University of California, Santa Cruz
207. Marcelo Noah, Duke University
208. Renato Nunes Balbim – Visiting Scholar – University of California at Irvine
209. Paul O’Connell – Associate Dean for Research (Law and Social Sciences) – SOAS, University of London
210. Arnold J Oliver – Emeritus Professor of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Tiffin, Ohio
211. Andrea Pagni, Friedrich-Alexander-Univesität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
212. Marcelo Paixão – Associate Professor of The University of Texas at Austin
213. Charles Palermo, Professor, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
214. Cecilia Palmeiro, PhD – Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero – Argentina
215. Fabio Paolizzo – University of California Irvine, University of Rome Tor Vergata
216. Virginia Parks – Chair of Department of Planning, Policy and Design; Professor of Urban Planning, University of California at Irvine
217. Kenneth Paul Erickson – Professor of Political Science – Hunter College, and The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY)
218. Keisha-Khan Perry – Associate Professor, Director of Graduate Studies, The Department of Africana Studies – Brown University
219. Gretchen Pierce, Ph.D. – Associate Professor, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
220. Julio Pinto Vallejos – Departamento de Historia, Universidad de Santiago de Chile
221. José Antonio Piqueras, Professor of History, Universitat Jaume I (Spain)
222. Margaret Power – Professor of History and Chair of the Department of Humanities, Illinois Institute of Technology
223. Fabricio Prado, Associate Professor of History, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia
224. Mary Louise Pratt – Silver Professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis – New York University – former President of the Modern Language Association
225. Seth Racusen, Associate Professor of Political Science and Criminal Justice, Anna Maria College, Massachusetts
226. Donald Ramos, Emeritus Professor, Cleveland State University
227. George Reid Andrews – Distinguished Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh
228. Peter Ranis – Professor Emeritus of Political Science, City University of New York (CUNY)
229. Lucía Raphael de la Madrid – Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas – Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)
230. Marcus Rediker, Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History of the Department of History at University of Pittsburgh
231. Adolph Reed, Jr. – Professor of Political Science – University of Pennsylvania
232. Jan Rehmann – Director of the Ph.D Program, Visiting Professor for Critical Theory and Social Analysis, Union Theological Seminary, New York
233. Russell Rickford – Associate Professor, History Department, Cornell University
234. Abigail Rian Evans, Charlotte Newcombe Professor of Practical Theology, Emerita, Princeton Theological Seminary, New Jersey
235. Jonathan Ritter – Associate Professor of Music, University of California Riverside
236. Dylon Robbins – Department of Spanish & Portuguese/Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies (CLACS) – New York University
237. Thomas D. Rogers – Associate Professor, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
238. Monique Rodrigues Balbuena – Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Jewish Studies, Clark Honors College, University of Oregon
239. Manuel Rosaldo – University of California, Berkeley
240. Karin Rosemblatt – Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland
241. Robert C. Rosen – William Paterson University, New Jersey
242. Jennifer Roth-Gordon – Associate Professor, School of Anthropology, University of Arizona
243. Fábio de Sá e Silva – Professor of International Studies and Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies at the University of Oklahoma
244. Alfredo Saad Filho – Professor of Political Economy ¬- SOAS University of London
245. Marco Aurelio Santana – Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley
246. Patricia de Santana Pinho – Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz
247. Martha S Santos – Associate Professor, University of Akron, Ohio
248. David Sartorius – Associate Professor of History and a Faculty Affiliate of the Latin American Studies Center and the Department of Women’s Studies, University of Maryland
249. Patricia Schor ¬- Lecturer, Social Sciences & Humanities, Amsterdam University College, The Netherlands
250. Ellen Schrecker – Professor of History, retired, Yeshiva University, New York City
251. Mark Selden – Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program, Cornell University, and Professor Emeritus of Sociology and History, State University of New York at Binghamton
252. Alan Shane Dillingham – Assistant Professor of Latin American History, director of Latin American Studies Minor at Spring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama
253. Lewis H. Siegelbaum – Jack and Margaret Sweet Professor of History at Michigan State University
254. Antonio José Bacelar da Silva – Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies – University of Arizona
255. Subir Sinha – Senior Lecturer in Institutions and Development, SOAS, University of London
256. Irene Small – Professor, Princeton University
257. Colin M. Snider – Department of History – University of Texas at Tyler
258. Greg Snyder – Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, New York
259. Andor Skotnes, Professor of History, The Sage Colleges, Troy and Albany, New York
260. William C. Smith – Professor of Political Science, University of Miami
261. Ted Steinberg – Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of Law at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland
262. Steve Striffler, Director of the Labor Resource Center, College of Liberal Arts, University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass)
263. Susan Sugarman – Professor of Psychology, Princeton University
264. David Swanson – Author, Director World BEYOND War, M.A. University of Virginia
265. Robert C.H. Sweeny – Honorary Research Professor, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
266. Howie Swerdloff – Instructor, The Writing Program, Rutgers University
267. Laura Tabili – Professor of History, Arizona University
268. Horacio Tarcus – CeDInCI, Conicet, Argentina
269. Rebecca Tarlau – Professor, The Pennsylvania State University
270. Sinclair Thomson, Associate Professor of History, New York University (NYU)
271. Enzo Traverso – Simon and Barton Winokur Professor in the Humanities, Cornell University
272. Mario Trujillo Bolio – Profesor Investigador Titular Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social – CIESAS Ciudad de México
273. Cihan Tugal – Associate Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
274. Ivonne del Valle – Associate Professor of Colonial Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, UC Berkeley
275. Diana Tussie, FLACSO , Argentina
276. Joel Vargas-Domínguez – Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades (CEIICH), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) – Mexico
277. Eleni Varikas – Emerita Professor of Political Science and Gender Studies, University of Paris 8, CRESPPA (CNRS)
278. Roberto Vecchi – Full Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, former Director of the Department of the Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, University of Bologna, Italy
279. Miguel Vedda – Full Professor – University of Buenos Aires (UBA)
280. Alejandro Velasco, Ph.D. – Associate Professor of Modern Latin America, Gallatin School and Department of History, New York University
281. Matías Vernengo – Full Professor – Bucknell University, Pennsylvania
282. Matthew Vitz – Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of California, San Diego
283. Juan Pablo Vivaldo Martínez, Professor, UNAM
284. Steven S. Volk – Professor of History, Emeritus, Director, Center for Teaching, Innovation, and Excellence, Oberlin College, Ohio
285. Victor Wallis – professor, Liberal Arts Dept., Berklee College of Music
286. Ellie Walsh, Ph.D. – Associate Professor of History & Social Sciences, Affiliated Faculty, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, College of Arts and Letters, Governors State University, Illinois
287. Valeria Wasserman Chomsky – Translator, ArtVentures Cultural Projects and Translations
288. Helen Webb, Lecturer of Foreign Languages Emerita, University of Pennsylvania
289. John Weeks – Professor Emeritus of Economics – SOAS – University of London
290. Max Weiss, Associate Professor, Departments of History and Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
291. Kirsten Weld – John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, Department of History, Harvard University
292. Robert Wilcox – Professor of History, Northern Kentucky University
293. Richard Williams – Lecturer, SOAS, University of London
294. Howard Winant – Distinguished Professor of Sociology – University of California, Santa Barbara
295. Joel Wolfe – Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst
296. John Womack – Professor Of The History of Latin America, Emeritus, Harvard University
297. James Woodard – Associate Professor of History, Montclair State University, New Jersey
298. Owen Worth – Senior Lecturer in International Relations – University of Limerick, Ireland
299. Galip Yalman – Assoc.Prof. Dr., Middle East Technical University, Ankara – Turkey
300. Pedro Paulo Zahluth Bastos – Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley
301. Francisco Zapata, Professor of Sociology, El Colegio de México
302. Pat Zavella – Professor Emerita, Latin American and Latino Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz
303. Tukufu Zuberi – Professor of Sociology and African Studies – University of Pennsylvania
The manifesto was organized by Erika Robb Larkins, James N. Green, Peter Evans, Rebecca Tarlau and Stanley Gacek.