To follow through on a discussion I began last week about the issues embedded in the conferment of a Doctor of Civil Law degree, summa cum laude, by the University of Santo Tomas on embattled Chief Justice Renato Corona, I’ll now proceed to the question at the heart of the controversy: Did Corona deserve the lofty academic honors he received, and was the university correct and justified in giving them?
UST’s basic position seems to be: “We’re authorized to set our own rules, we know what we’re doing, and we alone can say who gets a PhD or not, and how.” Granted, there’s no question about UST’s right to frame and to follow its own standards about what constitutes an acceptable dissertation. That still doesn’t stop people from raising valid questions about the quality of these dissertations or their substitutes, like Corona’s public lecture, and about the rigor of the process.
Indeed there are now many ways to get a PhD or its equivalent, and many ways to satisfy the dissertation requirement. Many universities abroad now offer straight-to-PhD programs, effectively bypassing the master’s; some even require no residency. Some offer the option of creative dissertations in the arts; this was the path I took, although I had to go through grueling qualifying and preliminary exams just like anyone else.
UST didn’t give Corona a totally free pass on the dissertation requirement, but it did allow him to present a “scholarly lecture” in its stead. Again, this was well within the university’s prerogatives. But just how brilliant was that lecture titled “Every One His Due: The Philippine Judiciary at the Forefront of Promoting Environmental Justice,” and what new and significant contributions did it make to jurisprudence?
Unfortunately, at this point, only UST seems to know, which makes it difficult for external observers to come to an informed and intelligent conclusion. In fairness to UST and to Dr. Corona, I haven’t read the full text of his lecture. In fairness to me and other journalists, I tried to locate it online, but couldn’t find a copy, not even on the website of UST’s own Miguel de Benavides Library, which lists the piece among the contents of the March 2011 issue of Ad Veritatem. (There’s supposedly a copy on scribd.com, but access has been set to “private.”) I suppose I could’ve written UST to ask for a copy of the lecture, but something told me that if they didn’t give the time of day to a prizewinning investigative journalist like Marites Vitug, why would they humor a Lifestyle columnist like me? What the heck did I have to do with environmental justice, anyway?
Nonetheless, the infirmities of my credentials aside, if I were the university’s PR point person, I would have immediately posted a copy of the lecture for all to see, if only to dissipate the mystery of what exactly the Chief Justice said, and to allow external readers — not just meddling non-lawyers like me, but the keenest of our legal minds—to judge for themselves if it was, indeed, a worthy contribution to legal thought, and one worthy of that loftiest of academic distinctions, summa cum laude.
Until we can read and appreciate the full article, and just going by the newspaper accounts of what it contained, people can hardly be blamed for leaning toward the impression of someone such as Dr. Eduardo Tadem, whom I heard quoted on radio as saying that Corona’s lecture seemed little more than an undergraduate term paper.
In considering Corona’s lecture not only a dissertation, but one worthy of a summa cum laude, UST would have also taken Corona’s lengthy résumé and his assumption of the CJ-ship into account. But that record, as is now emerging with even more clarity, was a spotty one. Let us be the judge of that, UST would say. Fair enough—but it’s no less fair to subject UST’s judgment to what amounts to external peer review.
What complicates the UST-Corona affair is the context of patronage in which the Chief Justice is now seen by many, leading to his impeachment in the House. He was strongly identified with the Arroyo administration, one of the dubious hallmarks of which was the impunity with which it handed out positions, awards, and distinctions to the patently unqualified or ineligible. (Remember the manicurist who got on the board of the Pag-Ibig Fund, the gardener who was appointed deputy of the Luneta Park Administration, and the dagdag-bawas National Artists? For the record, I have nothing against exceptionally talented manicurists and gardeners rising above their station to assume higher responsibilities. I do have something against these people gaining those positions because of their proximity to the Client-in-Chief.)
The irony of Corona benefiting from the same culture of misguided generosity should have been palpable to UST’s academic gatekeepers. Prudence alone should have counseled UST’s academic poobahs to have been stricter, instead of laxer, than usual in giving the highest honors to Corona, understandable as its desire may have been to publicly recognize one of its most visibly successful students on the glorious occasion of its quadricentennial.
The most egregious aspect of UST’s defense is its claim to have been “at a loss,” according to another paper, as to how to deal with online media. It’s hard to believe that a 400-year-old university that has produced some of the country’s finest and most capable writers and journalists can come up with an excuse so lame.
Did Vitug have to disclose that she had written critically about the Supreme Court? Should it have mattered if she had? Should universities or institutions choose which media or media personalities they will respond to? Are we still in 1611?
Leaving issues of character aside, I have no doubt that Renato Corona is a highly intelligent man; he can’t have gotten that far and that high if he weren’t. He may even have been a diligent student, attending his classes and turning in his assignments, as UST has taken pains to show. It’s unfortunate, indeed, that his genuine academic and legal achievements, whatever they may have been, have been clouded over by what appears to be a lapse of judgment on the university’s part. Any fault in the matter has to lie not with the honoree, but with the institution that bestowed the honor so eagerly.
But again, to be fair to that truly great university, it’s very likely that the final decision in Corona’s case wasn’t taken by an entire gallery of professors, but by a few officials who presented the Rector with their recommendation. These people should assume responsibility for questions arising from the matter, and release a public copy of the scholarly lecture ASAP, so our legal experts can inform us of its putative virtues. This, in a sense, is the real and even more substantive trial Renato Corona has to endure, a revalida before the nation.
Regardless of the outcome, I’m sure that, in principle, most of my colleagues in the professoriat will agree that to sacrifice or to compromise academic rigor for patronage or political expediency renders a university just as corrupt as the society it seeks to enlighten and reform. Myself, I prefer to cherish the UST that has produced a pantheon of heroes — not just Rizal, but Mabini (Corona’s fellow Tanaueño), M. H. del Pilar, Antonio Luna, and Recto, among many others — and at least 11 National Artists. Perhaps someone should have asked, “What would Mabini have said about what we’re about to do?” The third point of Mabini’s Decalogue, which I’ll leave you to look up, should have yielded an answer.
Whatever further inquiry this issue deserves has to come from within UST itself. Don’t take my word for it, because I come from UP, that heathen republic which has had to deal with its own share of scandal as far as doctorates and other academic honors are concerned. (We gave the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and Imelda Marcos honorary PhDs, remember? But at least those were honorary, if less than honorable, distinctions).
So what’s the value of a PhD? Nothing more, I think, than the social good it creates. Everything else is vanity.
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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and check out my blog at www.penmanila.ph.