"Whence this overweening self-importance?"
I’ve been through four UP graduations (from grade school to grad school). Nonetheless, I’ve held off commenting on the controversy surrounding previous agreements by the authorities to, among other things, give prior notice to officials of the University of the Philippines before entering its campuses.
In part, it’s because I still can’t believe that the half-joking, half-boastful references to an “independent Diliman republic” that enlivened my immature years are now being taken with dead seriousness by succeeding generations whose sense of humor has been extinguished by their conceit.
It’s also because, the last time I checked, none of the UP campuses had decamped away from their locations solidly within Philippine borders. Nor, for that matter, are UP students and faculty giving back the huge government subsidies that make their stay possible, courtesy of the same taxpayers who also pay our soldiers and policemen to maintain peace and order and defend the Republic.
So, whence this overweening self-importance?
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Some clues might be found in the position taken in UP’s defense by the Philippine Bar Association, an august lawyers’ group whose first president was no less than the late CJ Jose Abad Santos. To cite just two of their claims:
The PBA says no evidence has been offered that UP is “a hotbed of CPP-NPA recruitment” other than “isolated incidents” of UP students joining these groups. But as a matter of fact, the evidence is mountainous, going all the way back to 1968 when Jose Maria Sison founded his Communist Party with a central committee, virtually all of whom were recruited from UP.
Now I wouldn’t mind how many Party Branches and Groups operate inside UP, provided they’re a peaceable lot. Unfortunately, that same Party also runs the violent NPA. A provincial UP campus like Los Baños is not only a recruiting ground, but also provides R&R for the guerrillas and even sanctuary to shelter after military encounters. So if you think that the violent guerrillas and the “peaceful” activists don’t talk to each other, you must be smokin’ some mighty weed.
The PBA also asks how one can voice dissent under pain of surveillance and detention. But the same might be said of any other citizen outside UP, and nobody today is complaining of being suppressed. Why should the UP community feel entitled to some higher degree of solicitude? Why should our law enforcers put on an extra set of kid’s gloves for them?
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The answer to that question might be found in an online tirade I came across from one Atty. Eric Mallonga against the Anti-Terror Law (ATL), under which auspices the authorities sought to abrogate the UP agreements in the first place.
The good attorney accused the ATL of “encouraging UNEDUCATED…and IDIOTIC…police and military officers to derogate…JUS COGENS.” The latter pertains to laws that need not even be written down because they cover “horrendous crimes” such as “slavery, torture, genocide, death penalty on minors, and other crimes against humanity.” It’s obvious what kind of criminal this guy considers Duterte to be.
I looked up Mallonga and found his educational credentials impeccable: Ateneo, UP, even the University of London! He obviously thinks this entitles him to look down on our men and women in uniform as a lower class of people. For all I know, he might even dismiss my Harvard degree as a “second-rate, trying-hard copycat” from a mere former colony of the Brits.
This is the same kind of intellectual snobbery underlying the proposition that the business of teaching and learning is so God-almighty important that the academic freedom protecting it should also extend even to illegal activities on campus, and should take priority over less worthy pursuits like the unimpeded enforcement of the law.
Fortunately for us ordinary mortals, the Supreme Court seems inclined to take the reasonable view that they shouldn’t be dragged into a case where there isn’t even an actual crime to begin with. Even if they agree with Mallonga that an exception might be made for “self-evident crimes against humanity” like slavery and death penalty to minors, good luck to him with trying to prove that.
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In today’s Gospel (Mk 7: 1-13), the Pharisees and scribes—learned people all—take issue with Jesus’ disciples not washing their hands before eating—something that uneducated people might forget to do. Jesus rebukes them: “How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition!”
The rebuke reminds us that Jesus came into this world to remake it and everything in it—including religious law and tradition—after His own image and example. When in doubt about the choices we have to make, it’s simple enough for us to first ask: “What would Jesus have done?” Or more precisely, for Catholics in today’s disordered world:
“What would Jesus, speaking through the Magisterium of the Church that He founded, have me do?”
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