Argentine Catholic Democratic Scientists and Their Projects for a Research University (1932–59)

Abstract:This paper considers the ideas and activities of a group of highly-qualified Catholic scientists in Argentina who supported Christian democracy during the decades of authoritarian governments and the presidency of Juan D. Perón. The physiologists Juan T. Lewis and Eduardo Braun Menéndez, disciples of Nobel Prize winner Bernardo Houssay, and engineer Augusto J. Durelli, who would develop much of his career in the United States, sought to set up in the country facilities for advanced scientific research which they saw as the basis of a new Catholic university. This paper pays particular attention to the conflicts built around their proposals for the creation of private confessional universities in the face of strong opposition by those sectors of society that considered that the secular state should have the control of higher education.