UP president aims to promote human rights in new agreement with AFP

MANILA, Philippines — The University of the Philippines has signed an agreement with the Armed Forces of the Philippines that sets the stage for both parties to collaborate on "strategic studies" — an initiative that University President Angelo Jimenez said falls squarely within the state university's public service mission.

The "Declaration of Cooperation," signed on August 8 and published on the university's website on Monday, establishes a "framework for cooperation" between the military's strategic studies office and the state university's think tank, the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies.

The declaration, which has drawn flak from community representatives and student leaders, is "essentially a non-binding framework agreement to pursue future collaborations," Jimenez told Philstar.com in a phone interview.

The agreement states that both parties have jointly "expressed their desire" to engage in research and publications, sharing of technical expertise through joint conferences and dialogues, personnel visits and research fellowships, among other areas of cooperation. 

"This is a public service that is well within the academic mandate of the university to promote high levels of scholarship everywhere, including the [Armed Forces of the Philippines]," Jimenez said.

UP as the 'moral force' to promote human rights

The military announced the signing of the agreement last week in now-deleted social media posts. It called the declaration a sign of the military’s “commitment to advancing national security while fostering intellectual growth and innovation.”
 
Student leaders and community representatives, including the UP Office of the Student Regent, rebuked the university for forging an agreement with the military. In a joint statement on August 9, the alliance of student councils accused the UP system of "gravely [compromising]" the university's academic freedom.

"The signing of this declaration essentially requires the University to be complicit to human rights violations and political oppression," the statement read.

Jimenez said he is aware of the criticism of the declaration but stressed that it is part of UP's public responsibility to spread high levels of scholarship within the government. "Saying we will be complicit in the human rights violations is an unfortunate non sequitur," he said.

While the exact points of collaboration have yet to be specified by both parties, Jimenez said he intends to introduce "UP's brand," or a "new concept of national security and human security promoted by human rights." 

"We are a moral force, in the sense that we are a school, university and a scholarly institution. Of course, UP will always stand for human rights," Jimenez said.

The university president said that he is leaving it up to the university's think tank to determine the topics it will collaborate on with the military. 

He added, however, that the agreement will allow the university to "introduce new notions of human security and new greater understanding of human rights based on the concept of national security."

Jimenez said UP also aims to "improve and influence that part of the behavior of our armed forces that is [an] anathema to human rights, rather than just mouth statements." 

The university president also said that UP has long engaged with the defense sector by lending its academic expertise to them.

"Even our UP professors are helping the Philippine Military Academy develop their social science and political science programs. Many of our professors teach at the National Defense College," Jimenez said.

"They didn't become complicit. They were able to bring in new levels of academic excellence and scholarly rigor all across the land, including the AFP," he added.

It's a "policy of engagement" and not a "bunker mentality" that Jimenez hopes to promote, not just with this agreement with the AFP but with all other partnerships forged by the university.

"We want to use this to build common grounds based on scholarship, not emotions, political agenda," he added. 

Thwarting red-tagging?

The joint statement, which was signed by the UP student, faculty and staff regents, also expressed alarm over the announcement of the declaration right after the "relentless villification and red-tagging of members of the UP community" in a Senate probe led by Sen. Ronald dela Rosa.

Last week, Dela Rosa called on guidance counselors in schools to profile students they suspect to be "prone to NPA recruitment."

Law enforcement agencies, particularly the military, have been known to release baseless statements that accuse whole UP campuses of being a recruiting ground for rebels.

In 2021, the AFP published a list of current and former students it accused of being members of the New People's Army on the "AFP Information Exchange" Facebook account. After drawing flak, it apologized for releasing the list.

For Jimenez, the agreement is an opportunity to engage the AFP in "really high scholarship" that will make them understand that red-tagging is illegal. 

"If we introduce high levels of scholarship, red tagging will be exposed for what it is: unscientific, political," Jimenez said.

"Red-tagging will eventually have to be defeated by scholarship," he added.

The university president also vowed to defend the university's academic freedom and said the agreement with the AFP will not threaten that. 

"The headquarters of the [Quezon City Police District] is located in UP Diliman grounds. So it's not the presence, it's the posture that counts, when it comes to protecting academic freedom. But we don't want them into the academic core," the UP president said.

In 2021, then-Defense Secretary Lorenzana unilaterally junked the 1989 UP-DND accord that only allows security forces to enter university premises under limited conditions — a post-Martial Law-era agreement drawn up after a UP student was taken from campus and later accused of involvement in murder.

The move to junk the agreement with UP was part of the government's campaign against the Communist Party of the Philippines and New People's Army, which Lorenzana said UP had become a "safe haven" and recruitment ground for.

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