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There was a time when the academe was seen as a
community of scholars engaged in advancing the frontiers of
knowledge through research and teaching in the sciences and
humanities.By nature the academic is not an activist and is seen
(as U.P. professor Crisitino Jamias did in the 50s) as one who is
“unleading and unled.”
The scholar’s entry in public
life or discourse would be incidental and he may be drawn to social
commitment depending on the times. Before the war, U.P. scientist
Vicente Lava (Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia), zoology professor
Agustin Rodolfo (Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin) and U.P.
Librarian Gabriel Bernardo were involved in the radical movement
until the post-war years. Conditions in the 30s called for struggle
against fascism growing in Europe and Japan as well as in the Philippines.
Agrarian unrest and lack of social justice were burning issues then
as they still are today.
The late 50s and following
decades compelled many otherwise quiet scholars to become
activists (in the U.S. it was the civil rights struggles and protests
against the Vietnam War; in the Philippines, the continuing
semi-feudal and semi-colonial impasse, with U.S. surrogates running
and despoiling the country).
Political scientist and ex-U.P.
President Framcisco Nemenzo Jr., (Ph.D. Manchester); physicist and
ex-U.P. chancellor Roger Posadas (Ph.D. Pittsburgh) and his
colleagues in the pre-martial law Samahan ng mga Makabayang
Siyentipiko and SAGUPA (Samahan ng Mga Guro ng Pilipinas);
literary scholar Bienvenido Lumbera (Ph.D. Indiana) and writers in
PAkSA (Panitikan para sa Kaunlaran ng Sambayanan) are among the many
members of the academe who decided to lend their expertise to the
national democratic movement. Today the committed scholars are
legion—involved in militant groups of varying ideological
orientations.
Three U.S. based scholars whom I
admire turned from what seemed to be “sedate” studies to active
participation in people’s struggles – Dr. Edward Said (who wrote
his Harvard Ph.D. thesis on Joseph Conrad), a bit ahead of Dr.
Epifanio San Juan Jr. in the same school (his Ph.D.thesis is on
Oscar Wilde) and Dr. Noam Chomsky of M.I.T. in Cambridge, Mass.,
noted for generative (or transformative) grammar studies (e.g.
Syntactic Structures).
Not only did Dr. Said (who taught
English and Comparative Literature at Columbia) pioneer in
postcolonial theory with his groundbreaking Orientalism (perhaps
inspired by Conrad’s anti-colonial views e.g. Heart of Darkness)
he (Palestine-born) also became a member of the PLO leadership. An
articulate spokesman for the Palestinian cause, he has also a photo
showing him throwing a rock across the Lebanon-Israel border.
U.S. based Dr. San Juan whom I
have known from his U.P. student days in the 50s was radicalized
during the late 60s, translating Amado Hernandez’ s prison poetry
(Isang Dipang Langit) and writing a book Carlos Bulosan and the
Politics of Imagination (U.P. Press, 1972). He has since written
many critical books of engagement and is acknowledged as a leading
Marxist critic here and abroad. In the U.S. he has been active in
the support movement starting with anti-martial law groups in the
70s and 80s to people’s and anti-imperialist struggles of the
present.
(San Juan’s classmate in U.P.,
Jose Maria Sison, also an English A.B. cum laude graduate, would
have become a Ph.D. specialist had he not been removed from the
faculty by older conservative professors. Sison then taught in
Lyceum and would found the Kabataang Makabayan that became the lead
youth group (together with workers and peasant organizations) for
re-establishing the Communist Party in 1968. With his many
publications on the Philippine revolution, Sison is acknowledged
as among the leading 200 or so Marxist thinkers of the world.)
Linguistics scholar Noam Chomsky
is well known as a left intellectual who has many articles on
political and social matters. What he has to say is always welcome
for his alternative views.. He is an example of the specialist in
academe, contributing to progressive intellectual discourse on a
wide range of issues. He has also joined mass struggles and works in
solidarity with national liberation groups.
His recent piece is on the
“anti-democratic nature of U.S. capitalism” exposed in the light
of the current financial collapse of Wall Street. He connects this
crisis with the failure of neoliberalism. The bailout (financed by
taxpayers) of rogue investment giants is an example of government
intervention passed as law by the prevailing one party system (the
business party) made up of two factions, the Democrats and the
Republicans. He concedes that under the Democrats “real”
incomes of middle classes and workiug-poor families rise much more
appreciably than under Republican rule, Still, he notes that over
the centuries progressive legislation and social welfare are won
by popular struggles, not gifts from above.
Now, will Obama as U.S. president
make a difference?
eaordonez2000@yahoo.com
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