Government attacks on higher education in Nicaragua put research—and researchers—at risk

Repression of academia in Nicaragua has escalated over the past 3 months. President Daniel Ortega’s government has closed eight private universities and confiscated their assets, effectively ended university autonomy, and erected barriers to foreign research collaborations. “They are killing the universities,” says chemist Ernesto Medina, former dean of American University, a private institution in Managua that remains open. “All these measures serve to silence the critical voices in academia and suffocate critical thinking.”

Ortega has been president for 15 years, having won reelections condemned internationally as farcical. In April 2018, students took to the streets in antigovernment protests. The government responded with unprecedented repression. Police and paramilitary groups killed more than 300 people and arrested more than 1000, according to Amnesty International. After writing two open letters asking Ortega to stop the “irrational violence,” Medina was forced out of his university position. He fled to Germany in July 2020, becoming one of more than 200,000 Nicaraguans in exile. “It is not safe to be there,” he says.

Since then, conditions for Nicaragua’s small scientific community have worsened. After the 2018 protests, international research conferences were canceled and funding for scientific institutions, such as the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences, was cut.

Researchers say they must be particularly cautious about any work that could be interpreted as political. Research on democracy, gender, and human rights has been especially hard hit. A social scientist says his group can no longer conduct surveys and now publishes under pseudonyms if mentioning government abuses. (Several researchers who commented for this article requested anonymity, fearing retaliation.) Research about COVID-19 in Nicaragua also faces obstacles, as the government has understated case numbers and fired doctors and public health experts who express concern about the crisis.

International collaborations, which had helped sustain science in Nicaragua, are withering. In February, the government canceled the permits of foreign institutions running educational and research programs, such as Florida International University and Michigan State University. A law passed in September 2020 requires any Nicaraguan working with international organizations to self-identify as a “foreign agent.” But foreign agents are considered traitors, researchers say. “It practically destroyed any possibility of international collaboration,” a biologist says. U.S. researchers who collaborate with Nicaraguans declined to comment for this article, fearing reprisal against their colleagues.

The government claims the eight private universities shut down since February had failed to disclose financial details. Sources at one closed institution, the Polytechnic University of Nicaragua, believe the real reason was punishment for students’ involvement in the 2018 protests.

The National Council of Universities (CNU), a government body that coordinates national policy on higher education, announced in February that three new public universities would replace the closed ones, offering enrollment to 20,000 former students. But sources say many students have given up on academics, fearing persecution. The new institutions “reflect the reality of Nicaraguan education, submitted to a totalitarian regime that has no interest besides keeping the students under control,” Medina says.

Recent law changes also increased the power of CNU, which is now responsible for reviewing academic programs, approving academic hires, and selecting deans in all public universities. “It is the end of universities’ autonomy,” a former CNU member says.

Some of the 40 or so private universities that remain open face economic strangulation. One particular target is the Central American University (UCA), which officially opposed the government’s violence toward protesters. This month, Ortega’s government canceled a state fund for UCA that provided scholarships for 4000 low-income students. A scientist who is a professor there says the university “is a place of resistance,” and faculty will keep teaching until it is forced to close.

“We are in a stage of consolidation of totalitarianism in education,” says former UCA law professor María Asunción Moreno, who is now in exile. “It is no exaggeration to say there is no university in Nicaragua anymore.” In 2019, Moreno led law students and lawyers who collaborated with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to document government abuses. In July 2020, she escaped Nicaragua after 12 days hiding from arrest.

Medina estimates more than 2000 Nicaraguan students and young professionals, including many scientists, have fled, mainly to Costa Rica and Mexico. He hopes universities in other countries will create scholarships for exiled students. “We have to train people so they can think about the changes we’ll want when we have democracy again,” he says.

Molecular biologist Helena Nader, co-chair of the Inter-American Network of Academies of Sciences, says Nicaragua is an example of the growing threats to science and democracy in Latin America, including in Venezuela and El Salvador. “What is happening in Nicaragua is very serious, and the world is silent,” she says.