The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Rose de la Cruz
The University of the Philippines clarified that its recent “declaration of cooperation” with the Armed Forces of the Philippines is not violative of academic freedom but is consistent with the UP’s mandate as a premium institute of higher learning.
In a press statement, UP president Angelo Jimenez asserted this to quell the uneasiness and concerns aired by certain sectors in the UP community.
The August 8 UP-AFP declaration serves as the initial framework to guide future areas of cooperation but “won’t curtail academic freedom because UP researchers can choose and define their specific terms of engagement. Any activity undertaken shall be mutually agreed upon by both participants,” Jimenez explained.
He recalled that UP has been working with the defense sector “as part of a whole-of-society engagement to help inform public policy, influence thinking, and improve lives through UP’s renowned scholarship.”
Think tank, UP Center for Integrative Development Studies (UP CIDS), will be leading the latest collaborative effort in pursuing research interests with AFP in areas that are relevant to UP’s role, mission and mandate. This in itself is an exercise in academic freedom. The only thing required is conformity to the highest standards of academic rigor in the pursuit of truth,” he clarified.
Under the agreement, UP CIDS will: (1) share its technical expertise through resource persons for the successful conduct of forums and workshops; (2) solicit articles from AFP personnel for submission to the UP CIDS-published Philippine Journal of Public Policy, subject to peer-review procedures; (3) be invited as guest-editors to review article submissions to the Quarterly Digest of the AFP Office of Strategic Studies and Strategy Management (OSSM); (4) organize dissemination of UP CIDS research and conduct capacity building for AFP OSSSM personnel and affiliates in relation to strategic studies and security; and (5) host AFP personnel visits, exchanges, and research fellowships. Both parties also affirmed a common commitment to dialogue and intellectual freedom.
UP academic officials and CIDS researchers are willing to clarify questions and doubts through an open dialogue particularly with critics of the declaration, Jimenez said.
“We welcomed this cooperation with the AFP because UP’s strength in academics and research can serve as an instrument of national unity,’’ he added.
“Our policy is engagement. The national defense establishment as an institution is not an enemy,” citing that AFP Chief of Staff LtGen. Romeo Brawner and Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro both came from UP.
The recently- signed declaration is just like past UP research collaborations university, including the MOU of the UP College of Engineering and the Philippine National Police Research and Development Center of June 2023 involving studies to enhance ballistic defense materials and other mutual cooperation activities and the AFP-UP Manila five-year MOA for the training of civilian and military dentists at the UP College of Dentistry in May 2023.
The UP Diliman History Department also co-published books on Philippine military history with the Philippine Veterans Affairs Office, an attached agency of the Department of National Defense.