What the ruling class giveth, it taketh away. Designed as a premier institution for the cultural aggression of the colonial power and for the perpetuation of the dominant semi-feudal and semi-colonial culture, the university has been made to believe that academic freedom, immunity, sanctuary, and other such cherished notions were its inherent privileges.
Then came February 2, 1971. The harsh reality that is fascism was brought home. The troops of the puppet fascist government came marching in and in their wake left not only broken heads and broken windows but also the shattered remains of myths too many of us had clung on too long: that freedom can only be academic, that freedom is a “gift” that cannot be taken back, that the campus can be a pocket of tranquility in a nation in convulsion.
After the military occupation, the university was much like a maiden despoiled. Shock, dismay and mourning for a ravaged academe were the initial reactions. But not for long. The Diliman community, united as never before behind the barricades, learned a lesson it has never learned in decades of ivory tower theorizing.
The scholar turned street fighter became a truly wiser man. The political science professor hurling molotovs gets to know more about revolution than a lifetime of pedagogy. The engineering and science majors, preparing fuseless molotovs or operating radio stations, the medical student braving gunfire to aid his fellow activist, the coed preparing battle-rations of food, pillboxes and gasoline bombs, by their social practice realize that their skills are in themselves not enough--that the political education they get by using those skills against fascism is the correct summing up of all previous learning.
The struggle against the militarization of the campus calls for unity of all the sectors of the university. In capsule form, this is the nature of the wider struggle of the masses against the exploiters and oppressors. If the social practice of the barricades is in turn translated into an unequivocal acceptance of the theory of mass struggle against the evils of imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism, and if this theory is further translated into the social practice of the national democratic revolution then we can say that the university has fully learned the lessons of February 2nd.
It should not be forgotten that the Rape of Diliman as ordered by the fascist puppet president, sanctified by his puppet cabinet and undertaken by the notorious Metrocom and AID-trained police was the reaction of a bankrupt government all out to protect the interests of the imperialist-owned oil companies. It was the intensification of imperialist exploitation of the masses of the Filipino people which provoked the jeepney strike. And true to its puppet nature, the fascist government seeks to quell by violence the righteous protest of the masses rather than bear pressure on the imperialists.
The unity of the campus against fascism is a most welcome development. The next task would be to strengthen our unity with the rest of the exploited masses against the roots of fascism: the triad of evils which strangle our society. If we do not do this then we will only be deluded by the dialogues, and compromising of the ruling classes. We will get bogged down in fruitless debates about academic freedom, sanctuary or immunity only to be shocked, dismayed and grieved again and again if and when the fascist government chooses to clamp down on the campus.
While raising high our barricades against the intrusions of the fascists, we should raise higher the cultural barricades of the revolution.
Only by burying the myth of academic freedom dictated by the conditions imposed by the fascists, can we be truly free to study and act and still study further towards a society where not only academic but economic, political and cultural freedoms of the masses are guaranteed. ●
This editorial first appeared in the February 4, 1971 print edition of the Collegian.
