MANILA, Philippines — Eminent retired professors of the University of the Philippines on Thursday joined growing opposition to government attempts to remove supposedly subversive materials from university libraries, warning this could lead to "even more repressive measures" in Philippine schools.
In a statement, 35 professors emeriti — a title that UP awards in recognition of exemplary achievements and service — said it joins the University Council of UP Diliman in protesting a memorandum issued by a Commission on Higher Education regional office urging libraries to remove "subversive" books and materials from their collections.
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"As repositories of knowledge, university libraries must remain open to all books, so their ideas can be critiqued and contested in the classroom and laboratory, in the crucible of truth and reason," they said.
"To ban books is to promote ignorance and intellectual servility, and to condone its practice is to betray one’s sacred calling as a producer and propagator of knowledge."
The UP System Library Council and the UP Institute of Library and Information Studies have also issued statements against the CHED memorandum and of removing "subversive" books.
"Far from being of tangential concern to us in UP, this memorandum is an assault on academic freedom in all Philippine universities, as it sets the stage for further and possibly even more repressive measures in schools across the country," the retired professors said.
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They said that although the CHED memo does not compel removal of "subversive" materials, "we all know how such directives, in the culture of our bureaucracy, can have coercive and chilling effects."
They also called out CHED Chair Prospero De Vera III — a UP professor and former university official — for calling the removal of the books by some state universities an "exercise of their academic freedom."
They said "academic freedom is neither exercised nor asserted by submitting to its suppression" and that school administrators do not have a personal right to restrict "intellectual endeavors" in their campuses.
The retired professors reminded CHED of the Martial Law era, "when our campuses and offices were raided by soldiers in search of “subversive” books. Professors and students were imprisoned for their beliefs, and books were burned for their content" and said these should never happen again.
The government has stepped up its campaign against communist rebels as well as activist groups that it has accused of being front organizations for rebels. Among the books removed from state university libraries are on the peace talks and produced by the National Democratic Front, the group that represents the communist party at these talks.
A government anti-terrorism body has designated the NDF as well as the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army as terrorist groups.