President Claudia Pardo (left): academic background

A climate scientist has become the first female leader of Mexico after winning a record-breaking majority on the back of promises to transform the country into a “scientific and innovation power”. But questions remain over how far she will break from the populist policies of her predecessor.

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, a former professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Unam), will assume office on October 1, replacing her mentor, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whose six years in power saw numerous attacks on academics.

The strong mandate for the member of Lopez Obrador’s left-wing Morena party could give her the legitimacy to establish her own policies away from the influence of the outgoing president, says Cath Andrews, a history professor at the Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (Cide) in Mexico City.

Lopez Obrador oversaw a series of cuts to institutions’ budgets — particularly those he perceived as opposing his regime — and passed a science law that sought to shape research spending around his government’s priorities. “Until now, she (Dr. Sheinbaum) has been extremely careful not to antagonise Lopez Obrador, nor suggest she will be anything but the continuation of his project,” says Dr. Andrews, adding that this “makes it very difficult to accurately predict what she is going to do on all fronts, higher education included”.

Pardo’s background as an academic (she is also the daughter of academics) has, however, raised hopes that she might be more sympathetic.

Not everyone is convinced. Alma Maldonado, a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute, says she has seen little sign that Dr. Sheinbaum might treat universities differently, pointing out that she is known as “the copy” and has embraced all of President Lopez Obrador’s reforms, including recent proposed changes to the judiciary.

But Dr. Sheinbaum’s education adviser, Rosaura Ruiz, an Unam professor, recently signalled a potential departure from the past when she said in an interview that “nothing has been decided” on Mexico’s controversial science law passed in tumultuous fashion in 2023, and since the subject of a legal challenge.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist)

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