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The story
After its defeat in the Constitutionalist Revolution, São Paulo needed institutional improvements. Therefore, in 1933, a group of businessmen founded the Free School of Sociology and Politics (ELSP) (the current Foundation of the School of Sociology and Politics in São Paulo). In 1934, the intervenor of São Paulo (which corresponded to the governor), Armando de Sales Oliveira, founded the University of São Paulo (USP).
That was one of the efforts to provide Brazil with modern administrative, educational, and military institutions in a period known as "the search for alternatives." One of the main initiatives included the founding, that same year, of the University of São Paulo. Its nucleus was the School of Philosophy, Sciences, and Languages, with professors from France, Italy, Spain, Germany, and other European countries. The ELSP (Escola Livre de Sociologia e Política) assumed the goal of administrative elites to form a new model in which they noted an increasing role of the state. At the same time, USP (Universidade de São Paulo) focused on training teachers for secondary schools, experts in sciences, engineers, lawyers, physicians, and professors. The ELSP followed a sociological American model, while USP used the French academic world as its primary source of inspiration.
Foreign professors such as Claude Lévi-Strauss (France), Fernand Braudel (France), Roger Bastide (France), Robert H. Aubreton (France), Heinrich Rheinboldt (Germany), Paul Arbousse Bastide (France), Jean Magüé (France), Martial Gueroult (France), Emilio Willems (Germany), Donald Pierson (US), Gleb Vassielievich Wataghin (Russia), Pierre Monbeig (France), Giacomo Albanese (Italy), Luigi Fantappiè (Italy), Vilém Flusser (Czech Republic), Giuseppe Ungaretti (Italy) and Herbert Baldus (Germany), broadcast in various institutions new standards for teaching and research, creating new generations of scientists in Brazil.
Since its foundation USP received professors and researchers from all over the world, such as David Bohm (US), Giuseppe Occhialini (Italy), François Châtelet (France), Anatol Rosenfeld (Germany), Helmi Nasr (Egypt), Gérard Lebrun (France), Fritz Köberle (Austria), Alexander Grothendieck (France), and Heinz Dieter Heidemann (Germany).
Origins
The University of São Paulo is the result of a combination of the newly founded School of Philosophy, Sciences and Languages (Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras, FFCL, currently the Faculty of Philosophy, Languages and Human Sciences – Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, FFLCH) with the existing Polytechnic School of Engineering (founded in 1893), the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz) (founded in 1901), the Medical School (founded in 1912), the traditional Law School (founded in 1827), the old School of Pharmacy and Dentistry (founded in 1898), the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Sciences (founded in 1886), and the School of Veterinary Medicine (founded in 1919).
The FFCL emerged as the integrating element of the university, bringing together courses in various areas of knowledge. Also, in 1934, the School of Physical Education (sports science) of the State of São Paulo was created, the first civil school of physical education in Brazil, which would later be part of the university. In 1944, the Medical School opened its public hospital (Hospital das Clínicas da Universidade de São Paulo). The School of Engineering of Sao Carlos (EESC) emerged in the same year. In subsequent years, several other research units were also created, such as a second Medical School located in the city of Ribeirão Preto (São Paulo's inland) in 1952.
In the 1960s, the university gradually transferred the headquarters of some of its units to the City University Armando de Salles Oliveira, in São Paulo. In 1963, the Heart Institute of the University of São Paulo was founded. After that, new institutes and schools were created, for instance, the School of Journalism, Communications and Arts (ECA) in 1966. Over the years, some of the university's old departments were transformed into autonomous faculties or institutes, such as the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICB), the Institute of Geosciences (IGc), and the Institute of Biosciences (IB) in 1969.
Military dictatorship
During the 1970s and part of the 1980s, some critics believed that USP underwent an intellectual dissection in terms of knowledge production and the quality of human resources. During the past decades, the university played an essential role in the discussion and dissemination of important political ideas that contributed to the democratization of the country, bringing together many leftist intellectuals (such as Florestan Fernandes, Boris Fausto, Paul Singer, Antonio Candido, Gioconda Mussolini among others).
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During the Brazilian dictatorship, a large number of professors from USP were persecuted and even tortured – many were forced to leave the country. This slowed down scientific production in Brazil. It also promoted a systematic increase in the total number of graduate vacancies, encouraged by the state government.
The gap caused by the removal of teachers and students chased by the military regime was interrupted by the campaign of political amnesty in the early 1980s. Several units of USP celebrated the return of their deposed professors, although many of them were rehired under different conditions (former full professors took new positions as assistant professors).
Expansion
Parallel to the resulting intellectual emptiness of political repression in the 1960s-80s, academic units were fragmented; new faculties and institutes were created, resulting in new courses, new lines of research, and graduate programs. Originally conceived as the university's academic core – gathering itself the various fields of knowledge – the FFCL (School of Philosophy, Sciences and Letters) saw its departments gain autonomy and become separate units. The Institute of Physics was the first department to extricate itself from the old FFCL, followed by other natural science departments.
In 2004, the university founded the Institute of International Relations to study global matters in a multidisciplinary environment (law, political science, economy, and history) with Brazilian and international students and professors (International Exchange Program). In 2005, it was built in the East Zone of the city of São Paulo a new School of Arts, Sciences, and Humanities (EACH), taking a few courses that go beyond the traditional Brazilian university model and aim to diversify the areas of the consolidated institution. [22] On 21 March 2006, USP approved the merger of a second School of Chemical Engineering (FAENQUIL) in the city of Lorena (rural area), at the Paraíba Valley (State of São Paulo's rural area), with about 1,600 students in total and of these 1,200 at graduation. In 2007, a second Law School was established in the city of Ribeirão Preto, also in the State of São Paulo's countryside.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of São Paulo, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4