THE UNIVERSITY Library Council of the University of the Philippines strongly opposed the banning and removal of subversive reading materials from libraries in the Cordillera Administrative Region and other parts of the country, saying that “book purges are practiced by dictatorships, not democracies.”

Earlier, the Commission on Higher Education-CAR issued Regional Memorandum No. 113 series of 2021, that encourages “all Higher Education Institutions in the region “to join the region-wide removal of subversive materials both in library and online platforms.”

While the memorandum does not compel librarians and heads of HEIs to remove books and materials perceived to contain subversive ideas, the Council explained that “the call of a regional regulatory body for HEIs within its jurisdiction to join a region-wide movement to ban such materials has a compelling effect on the institutions it regulates.”

“As such, it threatens to undermine the very foundation of the academic freedom guaranteed by the Constitution to all institutions of higher learning, whether public or private,” it said.

“That freedom rests on the untrammeled flow of information and knowledge contained in, among others, books, periodicals, documents, recordings, and such other media as libraries collect and distribute” it added.

The council pointed out that “as gatekeepers of knowledge,” it oversees that the UP System libraries are “ethically-bound” to resist any form of political interference “that would diminish the access of students and scholars to any materials they may need in pursuit of their studies.”

“We believe – as do our peers in other schools and departments of the University – that true learning results from the application of critical thinking to a range of ideas, and that even ideas deemed dangerous or inimical to society require critical analysis,” they stressed.

“If we are the democracy that we profess to be, then nothing can be more deleterious to that democracy than the suppression of books that contain such ideas,” they added.