For agreeing with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to collaborate on an interminable number of projects, align resources and expertise and engage in “joint research projects,” UP President Angelo Jimenez has reduced the University of the Philippines (UP) into an adjunct of the military, which has increased its surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations not only in UP Diliman but also in the seven constituent universities within the entire system.
Jimenez’s action is a betrayal of academic freedom, which had been defended by previous UP presidents since the time of the late President Manuel L. Quezon, through the years of the witch hunts of the Committee on Un-Filipino Activities (CUFA) in the Congress and the campaign of Catholic zealots led by Fr. John Patrick Delaney, S.J. against professors of the Department of Philosophy and the cantankerous non-believers inhabiting UP Diliman who have no truck with organized religion. The Student Cultural Association of UP (SCAUP) was organized to counter the UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA) and promote social criticism at a profound level, never to be tethered to Roman Catholic dogma.
Apparently, Jimenez does not understand UP’s history and why Quezon himself was miffed by the student leaders who criticized him no end, including when he purportedly tried to bring in cases of beer on campus but was politely told it wasn’t allowed under university rules. The university was a stickler for rules, and not even Philippine presidents are exempt from those rules, So, why did Jimenez cut a deal with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and called it “UP-AFP Declaration of Cooperation”? Who told him that he can, by his lonesome or in the company of his backers, sign a declaration for the benefit of the AFP without asking the University Council, the Board of Regents, the students, the faculty and non-teaching staff? Were the eight constituent universities informed that Quezon Hall would dispense with any consultation and sign a deal with the AFP?
The UP alumni are dumbfounded why Jimenez had the audacity to close a deal with the much-maligned military behind the backs of UP stakeholders who have long demanded transparency, openness and rationality in the management of the university. Or is it the case that Jimenez believes he is only responsible to the few people who made it possible for him to sneak into the President’s office at Quezon Hall? The entire UP Diliman knows that Jimenez lobbied long and hard with now Senate President Francis “Chiz” Escudero, his Alpha Phi Beta fraternity brother, Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, a member of the Upsilon Sigma Phi fraternity, with whom he had affinal ties, and Malacanang. Are these the only parties he has to please and not the eight constituent universities, not the alumni, not the students, not the professors and certainly not the non-academic workers? If this were the case, then this guy is an egg short of an omelet.
As the complaining Faculty Regent revealed, Jimenez gravely compromised UP’s academic freedom by signing an agreement that “facilitates various initiatives, including joint research projects, academic programs, and community engagement activities, with the aim of strategically aligning resources and expertise between the AFP and UP.” This is a wholesale copout. It makes UP look like a junior partner of the AFP, which has butchered many UP graduates, snatched hundreds of activists and killed wounded guerrillas in Mindanao and Bohol, with one video showing a suspected NPA commander under custody only to be slaughtered along with a bar passer who had a bachelor’s degree from UP Cebu, an IP leader and some residents who were ordered to crawl in the mud. The captured “hors de combat” were all dead minutes later.
The defunct President’s Center for Special Studies (PCSS) which used to have offices at the Philippine Center for Advanced Studies (PCSS) at Romulo Hall in UP Diliman showed more decency by moving out as it was engaged not in academic pursuits but in defending the Marcos martial law and collecting local and foreign intelligence. The Jimenez deal thus requires UP’s collaboration by “facilitating various initiatives” covering “research,” “academic programs” and “community engagement activities,” the very same activities pursued by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) and supported by the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC.)
By agreeing to this declaration, Jimenez immediately trampled whatever shred of academic freedom remains in UP Diliman and revealed himself as too weak to summon the collective strength of the community to protect the university from being a launching pad for counter-insurgency campaigns. Jimenez has not succeeded in overturning the unilateral scrapping of the UP-DND Accord that kept the military and police out of UP Diliman and other campuses. He did not bother to protest with Defense Secretary Gibo Teodoro, who has now empowered himself as the thought police of UP and the superior to Jimenez.
The Faculty Regent warned that the declaration essentially requires UP to be complicit with human rights violations and political oppression. It legitimizes the ongoing suppression of critical voices and progressive initiatives within the university that the military deems inimical to its idea of “national security.” This declaration comes in the wake of relentless vilification and red-tagging of members of the UP community by executive and military officials, and militarist politicians like Sen. Ronald dela Rosa, as well as of the various threats to academic freedom and civil liberties of UP students, scholars, faculty members and staff. Unless stopped dead in his tracks, Jimenez may part with some UP real estate in Diliman to accommodate police precincts and military camps.
