AT LEAST 34 professors emeriti of the University of the Philippines Diliman lambasted the unilateral abrogation of the accord between the university and the Department of National Defense that barred the entry of soldiers and policemen in UP campuses.

In a joint letter addressed to the Board of Regents chairman and Commission on Higher Education chief Prospero De Vera III and UP President Danilo Concepcion, the professors said there was no sufficient reason for the termination of the agreement.

The accord was signed on June 30, 1989 by then-UP president Jose Abueva and then-defense chief Fidel Ramos.

“We the undersigned, Professors Emeriti of the University of the Philippines Diliman, wish to register our protest in the strongest terms against the recent unilateral abrogation by the Secretary of National Defense of the 1989 agreement between UP and the DND providing for certain protocols to govern the entry of security forces into UP’s campuses,” they said.

“We find no tenable or compelling reason why this agreement, which largely served its intended purposes for over 30 years, should now be abrogated without at least the consultation owed to the parties that signed and implemented it in good faith,” they added.

“And instead of giving the University community a clear idea of what the military intends to do on campus in lieu of the agreement — the new rules of engagement, as it were — we are left to anticipate, with grave apprehension, the return of the kind of authoritarian policing that we suffered under martial law,” the professors said.

They pointed out that the DND’s characterization of UP as a “haven for terrorists” “ignores a much larger aspect of UP that has consistently strived for peace, justice, and development in our society”.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said the agreement was terminated because of the recruitment activities of the Communist Party of the Philippines and New People’s Army in UP campuses.

The professors emeriti said that military institutions and school officials should keep in mind that UP is an “intellectual meritocracy,” which is a characteristic of a university to better serve the nation.

“We continue to work for our people’s peace and prosperity, and leave behind generations of students imbued with the same ideals of honor and excellence. We wield no power but that of our minds and our experience — which our government, business and industry, and society at large have freely drawn upon,” they said.

“But at this crucial point in our beloved UP’s history, we feel compelled to speak as a body, organizing ourselves into an Oblation Forum, in defense of the need to keep UP — all our constituent universities — as a safe space for intellectual inquiry, without fear of external and internal threats from whatever source,” they added.

The professors urged De Vera and Concepcion to strengthen academic freedom and fight those who seek to weaken it.