Events

   The city of Merida, Yucatan celebrates the opening of the Universidad de Jeremy Bentham por Ley y Filosofía.  The law, philosophy and liberal-arts college was founded in direct partnership with London University, and will specialize in the classics of English and Scottish Enlightenment thought.  

   The late philosopher and parliamentarian Jeremy Bentham was an early and ardent supporter of the independence movements across South and Central America; and offered a great deal of (unsolicited) advice to Mexico on how to bring his Utilitarian principles into governing practice.  Much of this was ignored by the Mexican Empire of the time.  But since Bentham’s passing in 1835 and liberals’ nadir of influence in Mexico the same year, there’s been a revitalized interest in the English thinker’s often-radical ideas, and those of his successors in the “Utilitarian” school.  While France and the United States expound on “inalienable rights” Mexican liberals increasingly frame the question a different way: what society creates the best lives, the best outcomes, for the most people?

   The brain-child of law professor Andres Quintana Roo took almost a decade to reach this point, and close coordination with both London University and with the British government.  Efforts to break ground were first thwarted by the Conservative government that wanted to keep all education under Church control; and then by such instability that foreign academics were scared away from Mexico’s shores.  But now at last Bentham accepts its first cohort of students, whose degrees will be accepted both in Mexico and throughout the British Empire.  The University courts prospective scholars across Central America and the Caribbean, as well, aspiring to become a hub of learning for the region.

   “Here we inaugurate not just the site for great exchanges of ideas, but a foundry from which bold new ideas will be produced”, President Valentin Gomez Farias declared, attending the Merida ceremony personally.  The President has showcased the University as part of his new “friendly” approach to secularization, that will eventually build dozens of new state-run universities while leaving the existing Church-led institutions untouched.  The plan is still controversial in Congress, and expected to be very expensive.  Many conservative Catholics are still quite unhappy.

   “Jeremy Bentham was an unapologetic atheist who wanted to dismantle churches stone by stone”, remarks Lucas Alaman when asked about the new university.  The former mining magnate and political theorist has accepted leadership of the Real y Pontificia Universidad de México, and  has long been an advocate for centering the Church in public life.  “To name a whole school after him is like marching into a cathedral and spitting on the image of Christ.  And to cover Mexico with such schools, is like ripping out the foundations of our good society, and expecting the edifice to still stand.”