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The Manila Times editorial last Monday adverted to the “Cold-War
era debates” in the UP campus that would make any alumnus of the
60s through the 90s “feel at home” in Diliman at this time of
its centenary.
“Cold-War era” as used here may refer to the
50s of McCarthyite witch-hunting for “communists” among UP
professors, or “Cold-War era debates” means just that, “hoary
with age” with the piece citing “endless issues of tuition
hikes, education’s commercialization and other mouthfuls of
meaningless drivel.”
Barring repression, the university is nothing if
not the site of endless and yes, tedious debates over philosophy,
history, theory, ideology and issues such as tuition hikes which
directly affect the students. We need not labor the universal issue
of escalating tuition in the midst of hardship for everyone
(including oil and power firms protecting their profits). There are
just too many students dropping out for lack of tuition money.
Issues have a way of cropping up periodically in
UP Diliman where I spent many years. In the 50s it was academic
freedom and religious sectarianism, the 60s nationalism and social
change, the 70s fascist repression and resistance, the 80s the
consolidation of ruling elites, the 90s globalization and
neoliberalism, and in this decade more of the same now expressed in
tuition hikes and education’s commercialization.
There are no dead ideologies. They just go
through periods of decline, dormancy, and revival.
The ideology of neoliberalism that replaced
Keynesianism (state intervention) and now governs UP is a
recrudescence of classical economics from Adam Smith. And while
school officials have faith in market-based administrative practices
(including money-making research and teaching strategies) the ill
effects on serious scholarship and academic freedom will be long
term.
There has been no real forum on neoliberalism on
campus. Let us have panelists who will speak on the effects of this
ideology cited by various writers—unfair trade, destruction of
agriculture in developing countries, growing social inequalities
among nations, deterioration of social infrastructure and equitable
access to public services, deregulation, privatization and
marketization of the public sector around the world. And get
speakers who will defend neoliberalism and its practical
benefits—including the effects on UP policy and practice.
When I asked a former UP professor of economics
(now teaching in another school) why his former colleagues were
preponderantly neoliberal in outlook, he said it was because they
had no trust in government interventions. And why not, indeed, at
the rate allies of the regime going after commercial firms—whether
in corporate meetings or in Senate hearings? The instances of
ill-advised and graft-ridden state interventions are just too many.
On the other hand, the professor noted numerous
cases of market failures around the world—which make neoliberal
practices untenable. He has criticized the pair neoliberalism and
globalization which he believes is not the way to go. The man on the
street—the consumer—has also seen too many unscrupulous business
practices and has been a victim many times over.
The rice shortage, the fuel and power crisis,
and the degradation of the environment are some issues that may be
traced to policies and practices of both government and private
enterprise alike.
Generally, on campus, the tuition hike, the low
salaries of teachers, and substandard learning facilities and
equipment are attributable to government neglect and ineptness as
well as the greed of private school owners.
It is inevitable that Left ideologies (no
monolith here) thrive in societies where there is widespread
poverty, injustice, and corruption as in this country. In the
academe often described as a “marketplace of contending ideas”
the constituents exercise their critical faculties to sort out
(sifting and winnowing) what is viable or not and make their
choice—a step away from advocacy.
This may well be the essence of university life
even in a neoliberal setting.
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In my last column, the word “gesture” in the
last paragraph was originally “vesture.” This is the correct
sentence: “In foreign policy the new Democratic president may have
to do better than repeat the rhetoric of the Cold War in the vesture
of fighting terror.”
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