Mariana Mortágua held a meeting on Monday with the director of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon. The discussion followed a questionnaire sent by the Donald Trump administration to several Portuguese universities last week.
After the meeting, the leader of the Left Bloc (BE) asserted that the action represents “an unprecedented persecution” and that the United States is treating Portugal like a “colony.”
“There is a foreign state—the US—that believes it has the right, as if dealing with its colonies, to decide what Portuguese universities can or cannot research. This is something the Portuguese state does not do because universities have autonomy over their academic choices,” she emphasized, adding that the response from Portuguese rectors to the US government, which was to not answer the questions, is “exemplary.”
“The response from Portuguese universities was exemplary,” she remarked.
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