The History and Freedom seminar, organized by the professor and historian Alejandro Gómez, had a 2020 full of activities. Among the most outstanding sessions we can mention that of Ceferino Reato, who spoke about “La violencia política en los 70’s” (political violence in the 70´s). Reato addressed the causes and the consequences of the political violence lived in Argentina during the 1970 decade emphasizing the motivations of the armed groups that participated in that process and highlighting some of the most relevant events that took place during this dramatic period of recent history. Ceferino Reato is a journalist with a degree in Political Science. He worked in the newspapers Clarín and Perfil; he was correspondent in São Paulo for the news agency ANSA and press advisor in the Argentine Embassy for the Vatican. Currently he is executive editor of the journal Fortuna; he hosts the Retweet program in FM Cultura and participates in the program Intratables, which is broadcast through América TV. He published several books, among Operación Traviata, Operación Primicia, Disposición Final, ¡Viva la sangre!, Doce Noches and Salvo que me muera antes. In 2017, he received an award from the Konex Foundation being recognized as one of the five best journalists of the last decade in the field of research.

In May 2020, historian Emilio Ocampo presented his book on El Mito de la Industrialización Peronista (The Myth of Peronist Industrialization), published in the midst of the pandemic. During this encounter, the speaker analyzed the importance of the industrialization process in the two first presidencies of Peron and he tried to answer the following question: ¿is it true that the industrialization of the country took place during that period? He also explained which were the costs and the consequences of those policies for the future of the industrial sector. Emilio Ocampo has an MBA from the University of Chicago and has a degree in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA). He is also Historian and Professor of History at CEMA University. He has taught in New York University and is author of several books on history and papers on those topics.

In September 2020, Sybil Rhodes, director of the career of International Relations at UCEMA, addressed the topic “Los Atentados del 11 septiembre de 2001: Su impacto en EE.UU. y en el mundo” (The attacks of September 11, 2001. Their impact on the United States and the world). In the seminar, Dr. Rhodes asked herself if the attacks signified a break or a continuity in international politics and in what manner international cooperation presents itself after the attacks. In this sense, what role do States play in the regional wars, the monitoring of the people, control of borders and their impact on democratic values. Sybil Rhodes is Ph.D. and M.A. on Political Science, Stanford University; BA in Latin American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Director of the Department of Legal and Political Sciences, CEMA University. She was an instructor of Stanford University and Brasilia University. Author of the book: “Social Movements and Free-market Capitalism in Latin America”. Member of the American Political Science Association, the International Studies Association and the Argentine Society for Political Analysis.

Finally, in October, the History and Freedom Cycle was dedicated to the “La leyenda negra de Roca, y el viaje al liberalismo de Michael Polanyi” (The black legend of Roca, and the journey of Michael Polanyi to liberalism), with the presence of Karina Mariani and Eduardo Fernández Luiña.

On October 14 Mariani spoke on "Roca y la construcción de la leyenda negra" (Roca and the construction of the black legend), with regard to the controversies raised by the man from Tucuman. There are no school events remembering him, nor holidays, he is hardly found in the primary or secondary school textbooks. The iconoclastic tide that set out to reinvent our history is an expression of the power that sets out to destroy the characters and symbols of our culture. The persistent emergence of a black legend is an act that aims to attack civic bases to delegitimize them.

Meanwhile, on October 28 Eduardo Fernández Luiña, from the Juan de Mariana Institute, presented life and work of Michael Polanyi, a Hungarian-British scholar who taught and worked in physichochemistry, economics and philosophy and who was also a member of the Royal Society and the Merton College, Oxford.