Editor’s Note: This report, originally run on Sept. 26, 2024, has been updated with interviews with the UP president and vice president for academic affairs.
More than a month since the University of the Philippines (UP) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) signed a “declaration of cooperation” (DOC) to conduct joint strategic research, and even before the first research topic was announced, the University Council (UC) of UP Diliman put its foot down on the accord.
In a statement issued on Sept. 25, the university’s highest academic policymaking body composed of professors of all ranks of the largest unit in the UP System called the DOC an “assault on the independence of our university and on academic freedom.”
“We challenge President Angelo A. Jimenez to show his wisdom and faithfulness to the university’s mandate by nullifying the declaration of cooperation with the AFP,” it said. (See https://tinyurl.com/24drvsj8)
In an interview on Oct. 7 with CoverStory.ph, Jimenez gave no sign that he would back down, but said he was still open to dialogue with various sectors in UP. He said the university should “never fear to engage.”
The UC said the university administration committed the entire UP System to working with the AFP without prior consultation with its constituents despite the military’s decades-long adversarial stance toward UP.
It said the DOC “whitewashes the escalating repression in UP and other educational institutions” which had been done through Red-tagging, enforced disappearances and harassment of student, faculty and staff leaders.
“A declaration of cooperation sends all the wrong messages: that UP can serve as a think tank for the military and that the goals of UP and the AFP can be in ‘strategic alignment,’” the UC said. “Militarization is fundamentally incompatible with a free public university.”
The UC statement was prepared in time for the Sept. 26 meeting of the 11-member Board of Regents (BOR), the university’s main policymaking body.
Caught by surprise
Faculty regent Carl Marc Ramota, an assistant professor of political science at UP Manila and former chair of All UP Academic Employees Union, said the university was caught by surprise because the DOC was made public by the AFP on Aug. 8, ahead of an official announcement by UP.
Ramota said that during a BOR meeting on Aug. 30, he raised the DOC as a “policy question,” and the regents recommended further discussions with UP constituents.
The UP authorities should listen to the University Council, he said, adding: “At the end of the day, the university is an academic institution.”
During a dialogue on Sept. 16 between representatives of various student, faculty and staff organizations, and Jimenez and other university officials, the administration made no commitment to rescind the declaration, insisting that “the document remained sound,” according to Ramota.
In a statement on Sept. 26, the UP administration indicated that it was unmoved by the UC’s position.
While it reiterated that the DOC was “non-binding and exploratory,” it said the arrangement would also be “beneficial precisely because it provides a framework for the University to share its knowledge and expertise towards contributing to the broader advocacy for security sector reform in our country.”
The DOC is intended to “provide a framework for cooperation between the AFP and UP in order to foster the development of possible collaborative projects and activities in the field of strategic studies through research, publication, training,” and conferences and visits.
The research projects would be jointly conducted by the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies (UP CIDS) and the AFP’s Office of Strategic Studies and Strategy Management (OSSSM).
Each side could solicit articles for publication in either the Philippine Journal of Public Policy of the CIDS or the Quarterly Digest of the OSSSM.
‘Based on fear’
Speaking with CoverStory.ph, Jimenez said the opposition to the DOC is “based on fear,” which he granted has some roots in “history.”
But he does not want UP “to move based on fear,” he said. “I want us to move based on our commitment, our courage.”
Jimenez also said the university cannot not “engage” with the military as both UP and the AFP are public institutions. “We will not engage out of fear, but we should never fear to engage,” he said. “And it is UP’s opportunity to influence the thinking of a national security establishment.”
Being openly engaged with other institutions but not with the military is “unjustified exceptionalism,” according to Jimenez. He cited the difference between the institution and individual acts committed by its people—or between the AFP and human rights violations by particular soldiers and officers.
Dr. Leo Cubillan, UP vice president for academic affairs who signed the DOC on behalf of Jimenez, told CoverStory that there was no need to consult “everyone” as those who would be involved in the research are the experts from CIDS and OSSSM.
“There’s always independence and autonomy in terms of research content. Hindi talaga po siya kasama sa consultation (That’s really not included in the consultation),” Cubillan said.
But for policymaking, all stakeholders would have to be consulted, he said.
He explained that since CIDS is directly under the UP System, and not a part of a particular UP unit like Diliman, such an agreement would have to be approved and signed by the UP president himself as the top official of the entire university.
Cubillan, an ophthalmologist who was deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, said the DOC is a broad memorandum of understanding, one of over 350 between UP and other entities, including those abroad.
Specific research would have to be governed by a memorandum of agreement. If one side disagrees with the terms, no research will be possible, he said.
‘Common practice’
Such joint university-military research projects are a “common practice” especially in the United States, between the Pentagon and top schools like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, according to Temario Rivera, the late retired chair of UP’s Department of Political Science who headed the Center for People Empowerment in Governance.
“In our case, it is not as prominent because in the past, perhaps, there was no necessity,” Rivera said in an interview with CoverStory about a month before his death on Sept. 18.
He acknowledged that “the elephant in the room is the perception that the military is an oppressive institution,” which complicates the possibility of engagement.
Rivera, an activist teacher who was incarcerated for five years during the Marcos martial law regime, said that “in theory and practice, there is no reason why UP should not engage the military in these kinds of activities, especially if we see that they could help the country.”
He proposed two immediate research topics—the South China Sea conflict and the resolution of the more-than-half-a-century-old communist insurgency.
“Isn’t that very important? In fact, we should influence the military that they should not be stuck with a military-driven response to the [maritime] crisis,” Rivera said.
He said UP could make a very important contribution to the peace process: Its “comparative research insights” on its success in other countries, but not in the Philippines, would be very helpful to the resolution of the armed conflict.
For the military, the peace process is not urgent, according to Rivera. “That is another reason why we should impress on them the urgency of research on the peace process because how can we effectively respond to an external threat if an internal threat remains on the ground?” he said. To achieve a “unified national response” to an external threat, he added, “we should find a way to finally resolve” the insurgency problem.
Insensitivity
Sylvia Estrada Claudio, a professor emerita of UP Diliman who has a PhD in psychology, said that as a national university, UP should provide expertise for the national good.
The former dean of the UP College of Social Work and Community Development, who is also a medical doctor and outspoken feminist, welcomes policymakers who listen to experts in making plans and programs. But what bothers her about the DOC is that “it doesn’t have sensitivity” to the history of UP and its “difficult relationship” with the military.
Claudio is particularly piqued by the lack of consultation with the UP community prior to the making of the declaration. Those involved in crafting the DOC did not realize that it would be difficult to implement after skipping that process, she said.
The document itself is “innocuous” except for the clause that keeps everything confidential. “But you don’t sign a piece of paper like that without paying attention to the context of the two institutions,” she said. “We have been angry with each other for decades, we have been adversarial for decades, and suddenly we agree to research together when battle lines are still drawn?”
Claudio supports a “productive dialogue” with the military, but within the proper historical context.
“We do want that,” she said. “But if you ignore the context, the issues at hand, the deep resentment of large sections of the university with the military that goes back to 50 years or more, how can you say that you made an agreement that would start a productive dialogue?”
In its statement on Sept. 26, the UP administration said it was taking “the sentiments of the University Council of Diliman into serious consideration as we work on potential areas of critical collaboration with the peace and development sector that will ensure the primacy of human rights and academic freedom.”
The University Councils of the other UP units have not yet responded to this issue.
Both substance and optics
Sol Iglesias, assistant professor of political science, expressed the concern of the UP faculty about “both the substance and the optics” of the DOC, saying it could be interpreted as “turning a blind eye” to human rights violations by the military that had “disproportionately targeted” UP over the years.
“There’s not even a word of general concern over human rights,” Iglesias said. “This agreement has probably fewer benefits to the university than it has to sort of burnish the image and reputation of the AFP. It looks like rapprochement.”
In their statement, the UC members said they have nothing against faculty and scholars engaging with private or public entities as individuals, and that the military is free to access the university’s publicly available research products.
These individual research initiatives are “well-defined in scope” and do not need a “broad declaration of institutional cooperation,” the UC members said.
Iglesias said that if UP does not withdraw from the DOC, ethical questions would arise concerning UP-AFP research projects, given all the issues raised against it.
Julius Lustro, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and fluid mechanics, said the DOC is unheard of.
“Where in the world have we seen a university, which takes pride in its tradition of academic freedom and social criticism, sign a ‘declaration of cooperation’ with the military?” Lustro said in a statement during a press conference following the disclosure of the DOC.
Literature and creative writing professor Rommel Rodriguez, who has been Red-tagged, denounced Jimenez for “betraying the long history and tradition” of UP as an academic institution that advances human rights and academic freedom, as well as the cloud of secrecy over the DOC.
“Is this scholarship or intelligence work?” Rodriguez said. “Is this for the interest of the UP community or the AFP?”
Journalism professor Danilo Arao expressed doubts over the quality of scholarship that the AFP could contribute to any joint research with the UP.
“If the institution is a purveyor of disinformation, how can you expect genuine scholarship to happen?” Arao said.
At the time the University Council of UP Diliman issued its statement against the DOC, more than 1,300 people had already signed a petition demanding that Jimenez withdraw from the declaration. The petition-signing has continued, with 1,371 signatories so far, according to Rodriguez.
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