Abstract

This article reflects on two contrasting intellectual profiles: the Argentinian university lecturer Ernesto Quesada and the Mexican intellectual José Vasconcelos, who visited Argentina in 1922. As we shall see, both define the University Reform in a contrasting way a few years after 1918. On the one hand, Quesada advocates conceiving the Reform as a key experience in order to make advances in the professionalisation of university teaching and research, autonomising these practices from politics. On the other hand, Vasconcelos resists disciplinary specialisation and defends the construction of continental political leaderships, within the reformist movement, in line with the Mexican Revolution experience. Likewise, this article addresses certain points of contact between Vasconcelos and the Argentinian Ricardo Rojas who ideologically converge and also distance themselves from each other on their assessment of the Reform in the years that spanned the 1920s to 1930s.