Paulo Freire didn’t study at Harvard. It’s Harvard that studies Paulo Freire.
Poster at the street protest against education cuts in Brazil
Harvard needs no introduction. Located in the US, it is considered one of the best and most important universities in the world. In Brazil, it is a highly respected institution among people from all political spectrums.
Some members of the Brazilian right-wing elite boast of having studied at Harvard. Others even lie on their resumes about having studied there, and are later caught in the lie. This same elite often criticises and attacks Paulo Freire, honoured by law as the Patron of Brazilian Education since 2012.
At a march in defence of public resources for Education, I saw a student carrying a sign that read: “Paulo Freire did not study at Harvard. It’s Harvard that studies Paulo Freire.” Paulo Freire, in fact, did not study at Harvard. But the sign is telling the truth. And this is easy to verify.
See for yourself by doing an advanced Google search directed to the Harvard website. That is, a search that filters only the pages of that specific site you requested. In the search field, type:
“Paulo Freire” site:harvard.edu
The results display hundreds of links. Also read the entry on Paulo Freire at Harvard Divinity School, which was online for years and deleted in 2025, but is saved in the Wayback Machine. The entry attests that Paulo Freire taught for a year at Harvard, during his exile from Brazil, fleeing the violence and persecution perpetrated by the military dictatorship after the 1964 coup.
Repeat the search, filtering the pages that mention “Paulo Freire” on the website of the University of Oxford, in England, which is ranked numerous times as the best in the world:
“Paulo Freire” site:ox.ac.uk
Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed is the only Brazilian book among the hundred most requested by English-speaking universities.
The research collected more than one million syllabi from universities in the US, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. The researchers then filtered the most requested books from course syllabi. Considering only books on Education, Paulo Freire’s work ranks second most requested at universities in these countries, behind only John Biggs’s Teaching for Quality Learning in University: What the Student Does.
We know a lot about Harvard and Oxford, but who was Paulo Freire?
Paulo Freire: Patron of Brazilian Education
Paulo Freire (1921-1997) is one of the most respected Brazilian philosophers and educators in our country and abroad. He was born into a middle-class family, which became impoverished with the death of his father.
These hardships had a profound impact on his life and his philosophical, political, pedagogical, and theological thinking. Freire was a Catholic Christian who advocated an active spirituality against oppressive forces and structures.
A left-wing thinker, he suffered political persecution during the military dictatorship, which took place in Brazil between 1964 and 1985. Freire fled to Chile, and later lived and worked in the USA and Europe.
Paulo Freire considered education a force for liberation, empowerment, change in living conditions, and the development of critical thinking. In his theory, he advocated that educational content and processes should be developed in collaboration with the student. And not simply imposed upon them.
In other words, according to Freire, teaching content needs to adapt to the student’s context to be fully absorbed, achieving greater impact and excellence. This becomes even more important when we are talking about oppressed and marginalised populations.
To this end, the teaching methods proposed by Paulo Freire are dialectical and interactive. They are also pragmatic and applicable to real-life situations in the learner’s daily life.
Paulo Freire is a thinker who has had a powerful impact on the world, and also on the critical vision of this blog writer here.
Notes
Paulo Freire’s original entry on the Harvard website – Saved to the Wayback Machine in January 2025
Paulo Freire’s entry deleted from the Harvard website – Page Not Found, August 2025
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Alberto Nogueira Veiga and all who gave me their precious feedback.
Image: Libray (Pexels).
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Published on my blog in Portuguese on September 10, 2022: Paulo Freire é estudado em Oxford e Harvard
