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As the globally eventful year of 1968 drew to a close, Brazilian university students living in what was then a four-year-old dictatorship faced two new challenges that would profoundly alter student politics and resistance on campuses in the coming decade. The more infamous was Ato Institucional 5 (Institutional Act No. 5, or AI-5), which Brazil's military regime decreed on December 13, 1968 (a Friday). History and historiography have rightfully acknowledged AI-5 as ushering in the most repressive and authoritarian phase of Brazil's military dictatorship, with the regime closing the national congress and dramatically escalating state-sponsored violence and political silencing in ways that exponentially intensified earlier forms of repression and censorship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes student mobilization and public discourse on higher education during the June 2013 protests in Brazil in an effort to situate the protests historically. I argue that higher education was a major, yet overlooked, component of the 2013 protests, and that concerns over the failings and shortcomings of Brazil’s university system had deeper roots in institutional problems and student discourses on education, society, and democracy. These historical inequalities combined with institutional memories that offered students models and examples of past mobilization and allowed them to tie their present-day concerns to past examples of student politics. I consider the ways in which the often-overlooked question of educational reform offers insights into ongoing social inequalities in Brazil, the failure of various regimes to address structural issues, and how students in 2013 looked to the past while simultaneously drawing on their own particular educational contingencies. This article situates 2013 historically while exploring the ways in which higher education in the twenty-first century has transformed, even as it remains an important part of political and social struggles between society and the state. Finally, this article explores how the 2013 protests in Brazil reflect ongoing struggles to define the role of the state in society, not just in Brazil but in the Americas more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the condition of university autonomy in Brazil, which is focused either on student movements or on national education in the face of international influences. Topics discussed include higher education and autonomy in Latin America, state and university autonomy as a means to modernize Brazil, and student and university autonomy as a means to challenge authority.