The breadth of academic freedom

THE Constitution guarantees academic freedom for all higher education institutions and it is not for the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) to declare what its metes and bounds are but for the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, as the branch of government tasked by the Constitution to interpret the laws with definitiveness in resolving disputes. This is exactly what the Supreme Court did in what to me is a landmark case: Pimentel v. Legal Education Board (2019) and companion cases.

The formula of US Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter is well known but still immensely useful. Academic freedom is the university's freedom to determine what to teach, who to teach, how to teach and who should teach. These are four short phrases that summarize much. "What to teach" includes matters of academic programs and their curricula - quite frequently and arrantly rendered illusory by a plethora of CHEd so-called policies, standards and guidelines. Any college dean in the Philippines will tell you that the curriculum is really not the choice of the institution. It must be hewn, according to the "model curricula" of CHEd, that has arrogated to itself the role of ultimate academic arbiter - a role it is neither constitutionally designed nor factually qualified to play! It cannot be argued that what the court passed upon in the case cited above were the powers of the Legal Education Board. Anyone who takes this tack should read the entire judgment again. It had the court passing no less on the entire breadth of academic freedom.