Tenure for Prof. Sarah Raymundo

Agency, Pedagogy, and Academic Freedom: Thoughts on the Sarah Raymundo Case

2010-07-27T09:08:00.000-07:00

by Arnold Alamon

Two years hence, and after a grant of tenure from the BOR, the Sarah Raymundo saga has made an interesting turn. The recent University Council meeting last July 19, 2010 finally expurgated what was it that has been eating the Department of Sociology. After two years of staying tight-lipped about their reasons for reversing an earlier grant of tenure, a Professor from the Department finally revealed the position of some of the members of the tenured faculty of the Department in a moment that could count as one of the lowest points in the history of the Council and even the University. Amid much polemic about love for certain personalities from the Department, the Sociology professor reportedly stood before all the tenured faculty of the University to accuse Sarah, who remains a colleague, of being a recruiter of students for the underground movement. What is even more alarming, at present, is that there is reportedly a popular personality who has merrily joined this witch-hunt by asking around parents of student activists about Prof. Raymundo as a teacher.

For this position to be finally articulated is a welcome development since now we know the real issue behind the systematic attempts to block Prof. Raymundo’s tenure. This vital admission had been withheld from Sarah as she appealed her case starting November 2008. Hiding behind the guise of departmental autonomy, various levels of the University including the Sociology Department, the Chancellor, and the University President, never gave Prof. Raymundo the chance to formally refute any of these accusations despite repeated appeals for transparency. By virtue of the principle of departmental autonomy, anyone can now be stripped of employment without being informed of the bases. Even more alarming, is that a faculty members’ perceived political affiliation is enough basis to deny tenure if we were to go by the logic of these offices’s actions.

These glaring instances of injustice perpetrated by the University leadership and the Sociology Department have surely eroded the credibility of our institutions not to mention the acts of betrayal of some Sociology professors to the spirit and promise of the discipline. The long and arduous process had also put to light the problematic appeals process in the University. The BOR decision granting tenure last May 2010 was the only indication of a University system and culture capable of correcting what was essentially wrong and unjust. The decision was a stand for untenured faculty rights and more importantly, regardless of whether it was deliberate or not, a strong defense of academic freedom.

However, the current coordinated efforts of like-minded personalities to relaunch a witch-hunt against Prof. Raymundo in the light of the favorable BOR decision indicates that the fight is not yet over and has actually entered a new arena. We have now left the realm of the appeals process, which we have won through our vigilance and struggle, but we are now in a new stage where the stakes are higher. We are witnessing another historic moment in our University’s history as we debate anew on a primary principle upon which this institution stands – academic freedom.

After hopefully much internal wrangling and soul-searching, the recent admission of some members of the Sociology Department that the Sarah Raymundo case is about the recruitment of students to join the underground movement necessarily brings to the fore important issues regarding agency, pedagogy, and the practice of academic freedom. We shall leave it to lawyers to determine if there is already jurisprudence regarding the concept of “recruitment” in this context. It is a stretch to argue that espousing radical ideas is already equivalent to “recruitment.” But for sure, the term “recruitment” is ripe with many philosophical and sociological dilemmas.

Sociology would, for instance, argue that individuals are imbued with a degree of agency or freedom, shaped by one’s social milieu and personal biography. The importance of this perspective in the development of Sociological theory is that it allows us to depart from the view that human beings are totally predictable in their behavior and that ultimately, individual human choices account for dynamism in society. As an example, intellectual life in the University would stagnate if academics were just to totally believe and parrot the ideas of their senior professors.

By the manner in which they crafted their position, some members of the Sociology Department and their supporters argue otherwise. To their minds, students are not free agents but automatons who mindlessly follow their professors. Thus, full accountablility for students’ actions rests on the professor. By the same logic, the University should therefore strip many of its respected professors of their tenure for producing students that became dictators and fascists. Another position that this group can assume is to push for a kind of pedagogical practice that is sensitive to the power relations that may exist between a teacher and a student. A professor’s ideas does indeed carry great influence given the prominence allowed by the culture in Universities nowadays. And prudence should be exercised in the display and practice of such power. To caution faculty members, however, is different from restricting their passions and convictions which ultimately impact on our practice of academic freedom. This sensitivity to power relations should never be made as an excuse to silence discourse.

Ideas are found everywhere nowadays. To imagine the University as a market place of ideas is already an archaic formulation given that we are well into the fourth decade of the so-called information society. To assert that universities should remain a "neutral" marketplace for ideas, once again, misappreciates the development of our understanding of how knowledge is shaped in society. Ideas become prominent and acceptable because of certain economic and political configurations. To paraphrase Orwell, some pigs' ideas are smarter than others. The capacity of professors to practice their agency in choosing which of these ideas in the market they are committed to, without fear of reprisal (or in this case, non-tenure) should remain one of the few sacrosanct practices of any University.

Sociological theory did not develop this far only to be betrayed by some of its local practitioners in the Department because of this serious impasse in praxis. What could possibly explain this embarrassing moment?

An attempt to understand this unfortunate situation is in order. Behind all these machinations is a powerful clique who has access to national media and the University leadership and whose social capital, which they easily translate into monetary capital, ultimately rests on their standing in the University. They are acutely aware of this, reflexive individuals they are, since they have acted very sensitively to an unexpected challenge to their power as manifested in Prof. Raymundo’s case. These people may have at some point professed progressive ideas but not to the degree that it would jeopardize their relations with funders and political and economic players in national life. They are the unheralded but ultimately powerful kings and queens in the University who are now emboldened by the recent reconfigurations in the national political structure to what is coming to be a push for a political agenda in the University - to rid the University of what they perceive to be dangerous elements as if the University is their little kingdom. What they fail to realize, apart from the fact that the University and the Department are not theirs, is that in their attempts to salvage their egos and their social standing, they have become themselves dangerous to the practice of academic freedom in our beloved University.

Thus, the tenure saga continues under a climate of uncertainty in the wake of recent killings of three teachers progressive or otherwise. It will take more of our vigilance and struggle to defend not just Prof. Raymundo’s tenure, well-being and safety but equally important, the most cherished of our community’s principles - academic freedom. What is at stake now is the very soul of the University.

END THE WITCH-HUNT!
DEFEND ACADEMIC FREEDOM!

Originally published here: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=415556853428&comments#!/note.php?note_id=420238589783&id=1106075444&ref=mf

Ituloy ang Laban para sa Justice & Tenure ni Sarah!

2010-07-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

Fascist Minds Think Alike

2010-07-25T23:54:00.000-07:00

by Ima Ariate

Original post appears here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1022200286#!/notes/ima-ariate/fascist-minds-think-alike/415556853428

Whenever I pass by Eng’g steps, I remember one of the most significant conversations that Karen Empeno and I had. It was one cool and relaxing summer evening yet she was wrought with anxiety. She was talking about her worries, her family, and the papers that she had to submit to fulfill the academic requirements of the semester. She never mentioned Professor Sarah Raymundo. In fact, I can’t remember an instance wherein she talked at length about the embattled UP Diliman Sociology professor. Karen wasn't into theory. She was into progressive culture and histories of social movements.

I've been told that Professor Laura Samson, in an act of distasteful intervention in a University Faculty Meeting, disclosed the Department of Sociology's then secret reason for reversing their tenure recommendation. She implicitly linked Professor Sarah Raymundo to the disappearance of Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan, two UP students who have allegedly joined the underground movement. I believe that Professor Laura Samson has no basis or any evidence to prove that uber-malicious allegation.

This leaves a bitter taste to my mouth (and this is an understatement). I was the one who recruited Karen Empeno to the League of Filipino Students (LFS). I never saw anything wrong with that. I am an activist. Well, I try to be one. It’s not easy.

For those who discourage me from what I’m doing, I just have one thing to ask, “What is wrong with advocating genuine social change?” I always get off-tangent answers. It’s an undertaking that takes a lot of compassion. For this reason, I totally understand Karen’s decision to go to the countryside and integrate with the basic masses. Professor Sarah Raymundo never figured in her purely personal decision.

As with the allegation that Karen Empeno was a member of the NPA, I find it mind-boggling for a social scientist like Professor Laura Samson to quickly conclude without any investigation and believe in the accusations of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP). It’s just natural for Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan to be tagged as such. They wanted to contribute to the empowerment of the peasants in the countryside. This is something that runs against the interests of the ruling class - the same ruling class that makes up the large part of the country’s bureaucracy.

The AFP has been mandated to “strengthen the nation” but in actuality it does the opposite. It continues to undermine democracy as manifested by its long record of human rights violations – Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan, two UP students who have been disappeared, are among the victims. Moreover, this institution has been producing the likes of Retired General Jovito Palparan whose twisted logic serves as a directive and a continuing inspiration for the rank-and-file soldiers to kill indiscriminately and without any due process.

Now, I understand why Professor Sarah Raymundo was denied her tenure. The technicalities have been explained to me. The thing is, these technicalities just sugarcoat the red-baiting that has been going on. It’s sad. I remember clearly that “differing in the spirit of academic freedom” is encouraged in a University that is known for critical thinking. The message is clear. This rule is just on paper. In practice, you cannot differ. You cannot offer alternative or oppositional perspectives. If you do, then that makes you an NPA recruiter. You cannot struggle for the welfare of the members of the academe. That would entail the denial of your tenure at the very least. Why would Professor Clemen Aquino counter the recommendation of the majority for Professor Sarah Raymundo's tenure in March 2008? Why would other tenured faculty members of the Department block the grant of tenure when it has gone through the proper appeals process?

This skewed line of thinking sounds familiar. What is the difference now between Professor Laura Samson and Professor Clemen Aquino of the UP Diliman CSSP Sociology Department and Retired General Jovito Palparan? Not much, I guess.

Ang panggagahasa kay Sarah Raymundo

2010-07-24T12:40:00.000-07:00

Danilo A. Arao

July 24, 2010

Orihinal na matatagpuan sa http://pinoyweekly.org/new/2010/07/ang-panggagahasa-kay-sarah-raymundo/

Kahit kontra sa etika, hayaan mong pangalanan ko ang biktima. Mayroon pong paulit-ulit na ginahasa (at patuloy na ginagahasa) sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (UP) Diliman. Siya po ay walang iba kundi si Sarah Jane S. Raymundo.

Pamilyar ba ang kanyang pangalan? Si Sarah ang propesor sa Departamento ng Sosyolohiya na napabalita noong pinagkaitan ng tenure kahit na malinaw ang kanyang kuwalipikasyon bilang mahusay na guro sa kanyang mahigit siyam na taong pagtuturo sa UP.

Nagsimula bilang part-time na Lecturer noong Hunyo 1999, nahirang si Sarah bilang full-time na Instructor sa Nobyembre ng taong iyon sa nasabing departamento. Sa pagtatapos ng kanyang Master of Arts (MA) in Sociology, tumaas ang kanyang ranggo sa Assistant Professor makalipas ang pitong taon (Hunyo 2006).

Dahil sa kahusayan na kanyang ipinakita bilang guro at iskolar sa kanyang piniling disiplina, pito sa 10 tenured faculty ng Departamento ng Sosyolohiya ay bumotong pabor sa kanyang tenure noong Marso 2008. Pero ang magandang balita noong una ay napalitan ng masama kinalaunan. May mga nagbago ng posisyon, may mga patagong naglatag ng kanilang anti-komunistang disposisyon. May bumaligtad, may napaigtad. Ang dapat na para kay Sarah ay ipinagkait sa kanya. Kung hihiramin ang headline sa tabloid: Kawawang Sarah, ilang beses na ginahasa!

Nangyari ang unang panggagahasa noong Mayo 2008. Sinabihan kasi ng Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (VCAA) ang College Executive Board (CEB) ng College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP) na magkomento sa isinulat na dissenting opinion ng tatlong tenured faculty na hindi pabor sa pagbibigay ngtenure kay Sarah. Dagdag pa rito, hiniling din ng VCAA noong Hunyo 2008 sa Departamento ng Sosyolohiya na magbigay pa ng karagdagang paliwanag kung bakit ang mga pang-akademikong kwalipikasyon at karangalang nakamit ni Sarah ay nakapangingibabaw sa isang insidente ng paglabag sa propesyonal na etika (further explain how the academic qualifications and achievements far outweigh this instance of breach of professional ethics).

Tulad ng ibang biktima, naramdaman ni Sarah noon ang pagsasamantala. Ang dapat ay simpleng kaso ng pag-apruba sa kanyang aplikasyon para sa tenure ay naging masalimuot na usapin. Kahit na may karapatang magtanong ang administrasyon, bakit tila mas binigyang-pansin ang pagtingin ng minorya sa puntong iyon?

Mas matinding panggagahasa ang nangyari noong Oktubre 2008 nang magbigay ng mas mahabang pahayag ang tatlong tenured faculty na hindi bumoto para satenure ni Sarah. Nakapagtatakang inabot ng halos apat na buwan bago nakapaglabas ng 13 pahina ang tatlong ito na inaakusahan si Sarah ng breach of professional ethics. Nag-ugat ang diumanong kasalanan ni Sarah sa hindi niya pagbibigay-linaw sa kanyang naging papel sa isang press conference hinggil sa pagkawala ni Karen Empeño, isa sa dalawang estudyante sa UP na pinaghihinalaang dinukot ng militar.

Sa kanilang mahabang paliwanag, lumalabas na ayaw nila kay Sarah dahil sa diumanong pagsisinungaling niya tungkol sa isyung ito. Nakapagtataka lang na sa halip na suportahan ang anumang hakbangin para sa panawagang ilitaw ang nawawalang estudyante, pinili ng tatlong itong pag-initan ang isang propesor na nais makatulong sa kampanya para sa karapatang pantao. Hindi ko rin maubos-maisip kung paanong ang insidenteng ito ng diumanong pagsisinungaling ay nakapangingibabaw sa mahusay na paggampan ni Sarah sa larangan ng pagtuturo at pananaliksik.

Sa editoryal na pamantayan, lubos na nakakawala rin ng dignidad kay Sarah ang pagkakaroon ng tatlong “kaaway” na hindi marunong magsulat sa wikang Ingles. Wala silang masyadong alam sa balarila ng wikang ito (Halimbawa nito’y ang paulit-ulit at nakakahilong paggamit ng mga katagang “We are of the view“). Kalat din ang kanilang mga punto’t mahirap sundan ang daloy ng diskusyon. (Mayroon ngang isang argumentong hindi ko maintindihan: Sinisisi si Sarah sa hindi paglalagay ng isa sa kanyang maraming publikasyon sa Justification (for tenure)niya!) Binigyan naman sana nila ng kaukulang paghahanda ang mga argumento at hindi lang sila nagbigay ng sabog na diskurso! Kung sabagay, ano pa ba naman ang maaasahan mo sa tatlong propesor na hindi masyadong kilala sa larangan ng sosyolohiya, kumpara kay Sarah na unti-unting nagkakapangalan pati sa internasyunal na larangan.

Pero ang mas malala pang panggagahasa ay nangyari noong Nobyembre 6, 2008. Sinabihan si Sarah ng tagapangulo ng Departamento ng Sosyolohiya na ang mga tenured faculty ay HINDI INAPRUBAHAN ang kanyang aplikasyon para magkaroon ng tenure. Hindi sinabi ang dahilan ng desisyong ito. Pero heto ang pinakamasaklap na balita: Sinabihan siyang huwag nang pumasok sa klase kahit ang kontrata niya’y matatapos pa sa Disyembre 2009.

Nagpatuloy ang panggagahasa noong Nobyembre 14, 2008 nang sumulat ang departamento ni Sarah sa VCAA na hindi na ito magrerekomenda ng tenure.

At dahil napagsamantalahan nang maraming beses at pilit na tinanggalan ng dignidad, dumulog si Sarah sa Chancellor noong Nobyembre 20, 2008. Makalipas ang isang taon (Nobyembre 3, 2009), nakuha ni Sarah ang sagot ng Chancellor na hindi pabor sa kanyang tenure. Hindi akalain ni Sarah na ang dapat na magbibigay ng hustisya sa kanya ay isa pa sa maraming manggagahasa, at inabot pa ng napakahabang panahon bago niya nalaman ang katotohanang ito!

Makalipas ang 10 araw (Nobyembre 13), umapila naman si Sarah sa Presidente ng UP hinggil sa kaso niya. Ano ang ginawa ng Presidenteng abala sa maraming gawain? Makalipas ang isang buwan (Disyembre 14), sumulat ang Presidente ng UP sa departamento ni Sarah para hingin ang sagot ng tenured faculty sa isang simpleng tanong: “Do you recommend the grant of tenure to Prof. Sarah Raymundo?” At noong Disyembre 16, 2009, nalaman ang resulta ng referendum: Lima ang hindi pabor, apat ang pabor. Malas lang ni Sarah dahil ang dalawang propesor na dating bumoto pabor sa kanya ay retirado na.

Tulad ng inaasahan, ang biktima’y umakyat sa pinakamataas na policy-making body ng UP, ang Board of Regents (BOR). Gumawa siya ng isang liham sa mga miyembro ng BOR noong Enero 15, 2010 para ulit-ulitin ang kawalan ang hustisya, ang mga nangyaring panggagahasa sa kanya.

At dahil mahusay na nailahad ni Sarah ang kanyang argumento (bukod pa sa suportang ibinigay ni Faculty Regent Judy Taguiwalo), nagdesisyon ang BOR noong Mayo 27, 2010 na sang-ayunan ang kanyang apila. Sa madaling salita, nabigyan ng tenure si Sarah!

Pero kung inaakala mong dito nagtatapos ang kuwento, pati na ang panggagahasa kay Sarah, nagkakamali ka. Wala pa pong hustisya. Habang sinusulat ito’y hindi pa nakakabalik si Sarah sa pagtuturo. Ayaw pang aksyunan ng Departamento ng Sosyolohiya ang utos ng BOR na bigyan ng tenure si Sarah.

Nakakagulat pa nga ang nangyayari sa kasalukuyan. Kahit malinaw na si Sarah ang biktima, maririnig mo ngayon sa ilang sulok ng pamantasan (lalo na sa Departamento ng Sosyolohiya) ang mga ingay ng ilang walang pakundangan. Sinasabi ng mga nagkait ng tenure kay Sarah na sila ang tunay na biktima! Wala raw karapatan ang mga taga-labas (tulad ko) na makialam sa mga bagay na internal lang sa kanilang departamento. Dapat daw igalang ang institutional/departmental autonomy dahil ang tanging layunin lang nila ay protektahan si Sarah.

Sa totoo lang, nawala ako sa argumentong nasa interes diumano ni Sarah ang pagkakatanggal sa kanya. Hindi ko maintindihan ang lohika ng paggamit sa konsepto ng autonomy para huwag sabihin kay Sarah noong una ang dahilan ng hindi pagbibigay ng tenure sa kanya. Kailangan pang hintayin ang memorandumng Chancellor (na kalakip bilang annexes ang napakaraming dokumento hinggil sa kaso niya) para malaman ni Sarah ang konteksto ng paulit-ulit na panggagahasang pinagdaanan niya.

At sa kaso ng panggagahasang ito, kailangan kong pangalanan ang biktima, pero hayaan mong itago ko ang mga salarin. Simple lang po ang dahilan: Ang mga nanggahasa at patuloy na nanggagahasa ay wala sa antas ng pang-akademikong kakayahan ng isang Sarah Jane S. Raymundo. Malaking insulto para kay Sarah na mabanggit kasama ang pangalan nila.

Totoo pong may ginahasa at patuloy na ginagahasa sa UP Diliman. Pero sadyang kabaligtaran ang katotohanan. Sa sitwasyon ni Sarah, ang mga nanggagahasa’y siyang nahuhubaran, samantalang ang biktima’y siyang nabibigyang dangal.

Para makipag-ugnayan sa awtor, pumunta sa www.dannyarao.com.

SHORT REPORT ON THIS MORNING’S SPECIAL BOR MEETING, JULY 14

2010-07-14T12:30:00.000-07:00

Dr. Judy Taguiwalo, Faculty Regent

July 14, 2010

This morning, the special BOR meeting was held in spite of the brownout (the Board Room in Quezon Hall has a generator for lighting and for four electric fans). The meeting approved the criteria for the search for the next UP President. The call for nomination starts on July 15 until August 25. Actual selection will be done in late November 2010. Please check the UP website where the details of the search will be posted.

The Board also affirmed its authority to decide on appeal for tenure of UP faculty after the faculty has gone through the various appeals’ level in the university. It also asked the UP President to ensure the implementation of the May 27 BOR decision granting tenure to Prof. Sarah Raymundo who up to now has no appointment, no loading and no salary.

This was also the last meeting of Chairman Angeles as Dr. Patricia Licuanan takes over as CHED Chair on July 19. The All UP Workers Union extended its thanks to Chairman Angeles for his support for the tenure of Prof. Raymundo, his stand against the privatization of PGH through the FMAB.

The regular July BOR meeting is on July 29, 9 am at Quezon Hall. d a� ` t o �Ov �u the earlier decisions of the President and the various layers of authority and officials under her. We take issue with the arguments of the aforementioned statement for the following reasons:

1. The BOR represents an essential element of the system of checks and balances within the University, it is not a mere rubber stamp of the President. It has the authority and responsibility to decide on appeals based on their respective merits. The BOR can make decisions upon matters where other administrative levels of the University are perceived to have failed. The UP President is definitely not an infallible being like the Pope.

2. The fact that the President or the several levels of authority under her have made various and sometimes conflicting decisions on the matter is not at issue. The actual substance of the President’s final decision and, ultimately, that of the Department of Sociology are precisely what are being questioned. The President just tossed back the nagging problem of Prof. Raymundo’s tenure to the Department of Sociology without acting on the substance of her appeal regarding the mysterious lack of transparency on the criteria used in its decision against granting her tenure.

3. According to the “Statement of Concern,” “the best judge of whether a faculty member is fit to join the ranks of tenured faculty members in a particular Department rests with the faculty members of that Department.” This is indeed true as long as exclusively academic criteria are used to decide tenure. The procedure for tenure has to balance the right of the tenured faculty to make a qualitative judgement on the candidate for tenure and the equally sacred right of the the temporary faculty to “expect fairness, both in the process by which the tenure decision is reached and in the substance of that decision. The appeal procedure should take into account both these rights.” (“Shaping Our Institutional Future: A Statement on Faculty Tenure, Rank and Promotion” (OVPAA, 2004)). Faculty Regent Judy Taguiwalo has correctly emphasized that the Department of Sociology has never revealed the academic criteria, if any, it used to decide against granting tenure to Prof. Raymundo.

4. Lacking any proper investigation undertaken by a formal body, the statement was also mistaken in asserting without proof that there was “an absence of manifest discrimination and abuse of discretion” in the present case.

No one has denied that Prof. Raymundo has fulfilled all the academic requirements for tenure as defined in the faculty manual. To just accept the President’s decision on faith equates departmental autonomy with the tyranny of numbers while never explaining the actual or real basis for the denial of tenure. We hereby reiterate that using non-academic criteria to decide upon tenure will not only endanger academic freedom but will also lead to a precipitous decline in academic excellence. Indeed, as the statement of concern points out, the procedure for the conferment of tenure needs to be stringent to protect academic excellence. However, the process of deciding tenure itself needs to be clear and transparent in the same measure in order to ensure that arbitrariness does not take the place of stringency.

The BOR granted tenure to Prof. Raymundo because of the simple fact that she had fulfilled, if not exceeded, all the academic criteria the University requires from its tenured faculty. We congratulate the majority of the BOR for taking a stand to uphold the appeals process and for making sure that the young untenured faculty can once again expect fairness as a matter of course in the crucial matter regarding their applications for tenure. Maraming salamat po!

Tenured na si Prop. Sarah Raymundo! Ngunit wala pa rin siyang teaching load!

2010-06-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

All UP Workers Alliance

Mula sa Pandayan, June 2010 Issue

Orihinal na nakapaskil sa http://upissues.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/pandayan-2010-3b.pdf

Makasaysayan at makatarungan ang pagkakagawad kay Prop. Sarah Raymundo ng tenure na humigit-kumulang isang dekada niyang pinaghirapan sa Unibersidad ng Pilipinas (UP). Matapos ang halos dalawang taon ng matiyagang pagsunod sa ligal at wastong proseso ng aplikasyon at apila para sa tenure, pinaboran ng UP Board of Regents (BOR) noong Mayo 27, 2010 ang paggawad ng tenure kay Raymundo.

Sa nasabing pulong ng BOR, ipiniresenta ni Pangulong Emerlinda Roman ang “Statement of Concern” na pirmado ni Tsanselor Sergio Cao, limang bise-tsanselor at 22 dekano at direktor ng mga kolehiyo’t programa sa UP Diliman. Sa nasabing pahayag, inudyok ng mga nakapirma na isaalang-alang ng mga miyembro ng BOR ang rekomendasyon ng akademikong departamento at ng pangulo ng Unibersidad (na hindi bigyan ng tenure si Raymundo) patungkol sa apila ni Raymundo.

Ngunit sa desisyon ng BOR, isinaalang-alang nila ang batayang akademikong kahingian sa pagbibigay-tenure sa isang guro ng unibersidad. Sa pamamagitan ng botong 5-2-1 (pabor, di-pabor at abstain), nagdesisyon ang BOR pabor sa apila ni Raymundo sapagkat walang malinaw na akademikong batayan ang Departamento ng Sosyolohiya, Opisina ng Tsanselor ng Diliman at Opisina ng Pangulo ng UP upang ipagkait kay Raymundo ang tenure. Malinaw sa nasabing desisyon na walang anumang akademikong pagkukulang si Raymundo. Sa katunayan, sa kahit na anong administratibong opisina o lebel ay hindi kailanman kinuwestiyon na naabot, at nalagpasan pa nga, ni Raymundo ang minimum na akademikong kahingian upang mabigyan ng tenure sa unibersidad.

Sa bukas na liham naman ng alyansang Rights of Untenured UP Faculty (RU UP Faculty) sa BOR, pinasalamatan nila ang mga miyembro ng BOR na kinatigan ang katarungan para sa tenure ni Raymundo. Nilinaw rin nila ang “posibleng maling pananaw” na inihahayag ng “Statement of Concern” na pinamunuan ni Tsanselor Cao patungkol sa akademikong proseso ng paggawad ng tenure. Ipinaalala ng RU UP Faculty na nirespeto ni Raymundo ang burukrasya ng proseso ng aplikasyon at apila ang kaniyang tenure. Dagdag pa nila, kaya humantong sa BOR ang apila ni Raymundo ay sapagkat nakakita siya ng kawalang-katarungan sa mga desisyon ng Departamento ng Sosyolohiya, ni Tsanselor Cao at ni Pangulong Roman. Pinakamatingkad sa kawalang-katarungang ito ang katotohanan na walang anumang akademikong batayan ang departamento, tsanselor at pangulo upang hindi bigyan ng tenure si Raymundo.

Ipinabatid rin ng RU UP Faculty na tulad ng tsanselor, mga bise-tsanselor, mga dekano at direktor, at pangulo, itinuturing ng alyansa at ni Raymundo na sagrado ang akademikong autonomiya. Tulad ng nakasaad sa dokumentong “Shaping Our Institutional Future: A Statement on Faculty Tenure, Rank and Promotion” (OVPAA, 2004), iginiit rin ng alyansa na ang akademikong autonomiya ay inaasahang maging patas at makatarungan. Inaasahan rin na binabalanse ng akademikong autonomiya ang (1) karapatan ng tenured faculty na magdesisyon at (2) karapatan ng untenured faculty sa isang makatao at makatarungang desisyon. Sa kaso ni Raymundo, ang desisyon ng departamento, tsanselor at pangulo ay nakita na hindi makatarungan at walang akademikong batayan.

Nakamit na ni Raymundo ang kaniyang tenure. Ngunit hanggang ngayon ay ipinaglalaban pa rin ni Raymundo ang pagkakaroon ng teaching load ngayong semester at ang pagproseso ng kaniyang departamento para sa basic papers ng kaniyang tenured na posisyon.

Open Letter to the UP Board of Regents: On Sarah Raymundo's Tenure

2010-06-02T12:28:00.000-07:00

From the Rights of Untenured UP Faculty Alliance (RU UP Faculty Alliance)

June 2, 2010

We wish to thank the majority of the UP Board of Regents (BOR) which voted in its last meeting (May 27, 2010) in favor of granting tenure to Prof. Sarah Raymundo (5 for, 2 against, 1 abstain). This vote was a great victory for the advancement of the rights of untenured and junior faculty in the University of the Philippines and will be remembered as a historic moment.

In light of this event, we wish to correct the probably false or misleading information which led five Vice Chancellors and 22 Deans and Directors from various academic units in UP Diliman to sign a “Statement of Concern” (dated March 22, 2010) essentially taking a stand against the BOR making a decision in favor of Professor Raymundo. In the first place, such a statement was not necessary and gives the rather unpleasant impression of a bunch of the most powerful University officials “ganging up” on a powerless untenured faculty member who did her best to achieve all the academic requirements of tenure during nine years of committed teaching and service to the University. On top of this, she had to endure the anguish of two long years while appealing her case.

The “Statement of Concern” urged the BOR to adopt and accept on faith the earlier decisions of the President and the various layers of authority and officials under her. We take issue with the arguments of the aforementioned statement for the following reasons:

BOR GRANTED THE APPEAL FOR TENURE OF PROF. SARAH RAYMUNDO

2010-05-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

From Faculty Regent Judy M. Taguiwalo

May 27, 2010

Dear All:

The Board of Regents today, May 27, granted the appeal for tenure of Prof Sarah Raymundo by a vote of 5 in favor, 2 against and 1 abstain. The Chair did not vote.

Below is the motion I made, as Faculty Regent, which was the basis for the decision.

ON THE APPEAL FOR TENURE OF PROF. SARAH RAYMUNDO
Judy M. Taguiwalo
Faculty Regent
January 29, 2010

As the Faculty Regent my mandate is to represent the faculty, both tenured and untenured, of the University at the Board of Regents.

Prof. Raymundo’s appeal has ramifications vis a vis the parameters of the right of tenured faculty to make judgment on tenure application and the right of untenured faculty members to expect fairness and justice in the tenure process and decisions. In studying the appeal for tenure of Prof. Sarah Raymundo, I am guided by the existing policies approved by the University at various levels and previous decisions made by the Board.

According to the document “Shaping Our Institutional Future: A Statement on Faculty Tenure, Rank and Promotion” (OVPAA, 2004), there are two rights at stake in considering appeals regarding the non-award of tenure, to wit, “the right of tenured colleagues to make a qualitative judgment on the candidate’s performance and record and the right of temporary faculty to expect fairness, both in the process by which the tenure decision is reached and in the substance of that decision. The appeal procedure should take into account both these rights.” The same document states that the consideration of tenure should be made “solely on academic grounds” and that the use of any other criteria may lead to a “violation of academic freedom” (I.F.4.a).

The UP Diliman University Council in December 15, 2008 upheld the right of all untenured faculty to be informed upon employment of the criteria for their evaluation and to be evaluated on the basis of these criteria. The UPD UC also spelled out the elements of transparency in the tenure process.

The primacy of academic standards as basis for the grant of tenure is affirmed by the Board of Regents’ decision on the case of Lorraine Carlos Salazar. In the BOR meeting of January 27, 2005 the Board reviewed the case of Prof. Salazar and decided that:

Taking note of the department’s definition of collegiality as explained by Prof Noel Morada, Department Chair, in his letter to President Nemenzo, the Board asked about the weight given to collegiality vis-à-vis Prof. Salazar’s academic credentials (e.g. PhD, international publications). The Board was not satisfied with the department’s argument that the best, though, implicit, measure of collegiality is the confidence vote of two-thirds of the tenured faculty. Since the basis of the vote is not explained in the letter, the Board could only conclude that collegiality outweighed academic credentials. The Board maintained that academic credentials should not be ignored.

Why should the BOR intervene on this matter?

As a young UP faculty member, Prof. Raymundo has spent the past nine years serving the university well and has worked hard to fulfill all the requirements for tenure . The justification provided by the Department of Sociology in April 2008 recognizes Prof. Raymundo’s academic qualifications and in fact, the Department approved her promotion from Assistant Professor 1 to Assistant Professor 2 in June 2008.

After initially providing strong justification for the recommendation to grant tenure to Prof. Raymundo, the majority of the tenured faculty of the Department of Sociology then decided to deny the grant of tenure without providing any reason. In a past case, the BOR had overruled a similar refusal by the Political Science department to grant tenure because the Board deemed the reason given (in that case “lack of collegiality”) unacceptable as basis for withholding tenure to one who is otherwise duly qualified. If the BOR can pass upon the acceptability of a reason given to withhold tenure, it must pass upon the unacceptability of no reason being given for a similar act. Otherwise, the BOR is telling departments that the way to avoid BOR oversight and intervention is to simply decide without any declared reason. This gives permission for departments to become whimsical and arbitrary in their decisions on the grant of tenure to faculty.

In pursuit of the appeals process, Prof. Raymundo appeals to the University President who denies her appeal by simply asking the department to vote again and to treat the negative vote result as basis for denying the appeal, again without seeking to determine the substantive reasons for the vote. If the appeal process does nothing to determine and weigh the substantive basis for the action being appealed and instead simply repeats the action, for what purpose do we have an appeals process? Is it merely to torture the affected party with the repetition of the act being appealed?

I am thus requesting my colleagues in the Board of Regents to support the following:

• Declare as a matter of policy that the absence of any reason to deny tenure from a temporary faculty who has otherwise met the declared requirements for tenure is not an acceptable exercise of departmental autonomy that should be uncritically respected.

• Given the lack of any substantive reason declared to deny tenure in this case from the original process as well as from the appeals process and given that Prof. Raymundo met the requirements for tenure, grant the appeal for tenure of Prof. Raymundo.

The case of Sarah Raymundo, in this time of insanity

2010-01-16T13:19:00.000-08:00

by Krissy Conti

June 16, 2010

Originally posted here:

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=258593745068

Dear UP Law students,

May I refer you to recent developments in the tenureship case of Sociology Professor Sarah Raymundo, which could soon make its way into regular courts if the BOR decision on January 29 is unfavorable. This is a peculiar instance where departmental autonomy is pitted against parochial politics, in the context of UP's tenureship rules.

Ma'am Sarah has a brilliant academic record, which well complied with the requirements of tenureship. But she allegedly has a record of "dishonesty" in dealings outside of the classroom, in relation to the issue of Karen Empeno's enforced disappearance.

She was denied tenure by the Sociology department despite winning in two votes: in the first round 7-3 and in the second 5-4-1(abstain). The first vote is a clear majority, but was reconsidered upon appeal by the minority. The second vote was held binding, and was basis for the denial because it did not comply with the "2/3 majority" rule (something belatedly laid out by the department chair).

As it appears, the decision to deny her tenure (and hence, employment) was anchored on the discretion of the Sociology faculty. Chancellor Cao and President Roman both denied her appeals to reconsider.

Academic tenure and freedom are two sides of the same coin. In Constitutional Law II we laid out that academic tenure protects academic freedom by ensuring that teachers can be fired only for causes such as gross professional incompetence, substantial and manifest neglect of duty, behavior that evokes condemnation from the academic community itself, and personal conduct which substantially impairs the individual's fulfillment of institutional responsibilities.

Ma'am Sarah's alleged dishonesty arose during one or two of the press conferences after Karen Empeno's disappearance. I myself am uncertain about the exact nature of her transgression, but in a manner of saying, she was supposedly guilty of putting Karen, a UP student, in danger (or at least, encouraging Karen's life-changing decisions).

Karen and I were friends and batchmates. We worked on our theses at roughly the same time, and sometimes shared notes, resources, insights. We both believed in putting our theoretical lessons to actual practice (as Karen put it in sociology terms, praxis).

We sought the best advisers, even outside of our departments and the university. I am not thoroughly familiar with how Karen’s thesis worked out because we lost contact, but I see no strangeness if she turned to Ma’am Sarah for advice. Ma’am Sarah is friend to anybody who can argue with her for at least five minutes.

Ma’am Sarah is one of the most sought-after and most-admired professors in UP. In this RGEP-era, her subjects are bestsellers (ironically, she was anti-RGEP). She appealed to activists and conservatives, non-conformists and traditionalist, free thinkers and rote learners alike. I hope those of us who may have been her students would personally attest to that.

I hope you can squeeze in the time to read the materials on Ma’am Sarah’s case and perhaps sign the petition at http://tenureforsarahraymundo.blogspot.com/.

Thank you, especially for sharing in the burden. Wouldn’t you also find it hard to remain sane in a world where we UP law students are pushed to perfection, while UP lets go of brilliant professors, journalists are murdered, Gloria is running for congressman, and Karen is still missing --

Krissy Conti
B2012

Sarah's Letter of Appeal to the UP Board of Regents

2010-01-15T08:10:00.000-08:00

Prof. Sarah Raymundo sent her tenure appeal letter, as well as a history and chronology of her tenure application process, to the UP Board of the Regents last Friday, January 15, 2010.

To read/download her appeal letter, click here: Sarah's Appeal to the BOR

To read/download the history & chronology of her tenure application, click here: History & Chronology - Sarah's Tenure Application

THE SACRED AUTONOMY OF THE YAHOOS

2010-01-11T17:09:00.000-08:00

CONTEND-UP

January 2010

Rep. Walden Bello hit the nail on the head when he called those in the Dept. of Sociology opposed to Sarah Raymundo's tenure as "Yahoos."
Yahoos are defined as being rednecks possessed of a somewhat backward
culture. One can imagine what Yahoos can do given self-rule or
"autonomy." They can immediately ban those immoral "homos" from
running or even voting in elections, they can forbid the teaching of
the theory of evolution, they can call for the return of slavery and
they can even permanently bar those troublesome "leftards" from
teaching in Universities.

Benighted fiefdoms run by Yahoos waving the banner of "autonomy" can be pretty stifling and even scary places to live in. In "autonomous"
Aceh, Indonesia, women wearing tight jeans can be arrested on the
street. For worse offenses, stoning to death is once again a legal
form of punishment. Blatantly violating the European Convention on
Human Rights, the autonomous cantons of Switzerland which boasts of
being the only system of direct democracy in the world, recently voted
against the future construction of minarets in their territories. Here
in the Philippines, "autonomy" has allowed every sort of petty tyrant
to enrich himself, rule with impunity and terrorize the people with
heavily armed private armies numbering in the hundreds.

It is true that in some institutional contexts, "autonomy" can play a positive role in developing local governance skills and encouraging
popular initiatives. Under some urgent circumstances, it may even be
put to good use as a kind of buffer against an abusive central power.
However, it is absolutely not a good thing when there no sufficient
safeguards exist to ensure that those who are supposed to benefit from
"autonomy" do not themselves fall victim to it.

This is precisely the case with the issue of Prof. Raymundo's tenure. In fact, it still is an important test case. Respect for departmental
autonomy can open the floodgates to rampant abuses if it is not
balanced with a deep concern for the rights and welfare of young
faculty members and the institutionalization of effective mechanisms
capable of ensuring that only academic criteria are used in deciding
the granting of tenure to qualified applicants. Apparently unmindful
of this, UP Pres. Emerlinda Roman wrote in the letter to Prof.
Raymundo denying her appeal that, "upholding the autonomy of the
Department of Sociology" is necessary in order to maintain the
"institutional autonomy guaranteed under the UP Charter." That is to
say, any act which may rectify an injustice and protect the rights of
powerless junior faculty simply cannot be undertaken since these mere

"rights" are not as sacred as departmental "autonomy." This absolutization of autonomy even when it is exercised in a wrongful
manner is a damaging admission of a blatant lack of concern for the

rights and welfare of young faculty members.

Pres. Roman also unwittingly confuses the notion of departmental autonomy which is here at issue and the kind of "autonomy" promised by
the UP Charter which is mainly of a "fiscal" nature. (In fact, it
calls her a CEO.) It is well-known that CEO Roman, is hellbent on
kicking out public accountability and national service from the
vocabulary of the University in order to transform it into a
full-scale, profit-generating entity. The new breed of UP
administrators she represents has absolutely no interest in the
problem of how many poor students are now unable to enter the
University as long as the quarterly report looks good and those
profits keep rolling in. Remember that scene in the film Avatar where
the quarterly business report outweighs concern for any public outcry
over the massacre of innocent "aliens"? Educational corporations,
being privately-owned entities, do not have any inherent
accountability to the public right to education nor any need for
transparency in the way that they do business or make decisions.

If CEO Roman and Co. had their way, the actual limits of democratization and academic freedom in the University should now be
determined solely by their impact on the margins of profit. And it is

here where corporate fiscal "autonomy" run by technocrats and the "autonomy" of semifeudal fiefdoms run by Yahoos meet. They join
together in their fear of transparency, accountability and basic human
rights, not to mention those "radicals" who stubbornly refuse their
agenda.

People like Prof. Raymundo, a staunch defender of the University against privatization and fierce opponent of the commercialization of
knowledge production must be silenced. The Yahoos can do it if they
quickly kick her out and just shut their clams. However, and
unfortunately for them, this still leaves the technocrats with some
really tough explaining to do.

UP Pres. Roman Denies Sarah's Tenure Appeal

2010-01-04T20:46:00.000-08:00

This is U.P. President Emerlinda Roman's seven-page memo denying Prof. Sarah Raymundo's tenure appeal. Needless to say, this decision, like Chancellor Sergio Cao's, is flawed and unjust. The files are in JPEG format. Just click on each image to view or save each page. Thanks!

Academic Snafu in a Marginalized US Neo-colony

2009-12-28T16:53:00.000-08:00

by E. San Juan, Jr.

Originally posted here: http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/9209/

In the global North, the plight of academics being fired or denied tenure scarcely merit attention in the media. This is so starkly banal today when teachers’ salaries are either drastically frozen or cut back (as at Harvard University, University of California, etc.) while tuition fees are jacked up. Becoming redundant or retrenched has not spared professor-scholars in this unprecedented crisis of global capitalism. Economics has become politicized when Washington rescues failing banks with taxpayers’ money; politicians’ decisions can no longer be quarantined from the carnage in Wall Street.

During the decades of the Cold War, of course, it was routine for professors to be weeded out for being “commies,” Soviet spies, traitors, etc. When I was first hired in 1965 at the University of California, Davis, I had to sign an oath of loyalty to the U.S. government even though I was not a citizen. My former professor at Harvard, Howard Mumford Jones, was famous for refusing to sign that oath as a condition for being hired by the University of Texas then. During the sixties and seventies, radicals such as Bruce Franklin and Barbara Foley--to name only two of many--were purged for their activist stance in protesting the Vietnam War, torture and war crimes in Latin America perpetrated by the “shock doctrine” technocrats of disaster capitalism (to borrow Naomi Klein’s terms). Franklin and Foley are brilliant and prolific scholars, respected in their disciplines. But obviously it was not their intellectual worth but their anti-imperialist political commitment that brought down the wrath of the Establishment on their heads. Like all state apparatuses, the university is not a sacred “think-tank for alternative models,” but a cog in the machine for reinforcing the oppressive status quo and stifling dissent.

In the Philippines, as in embattled “third world” countries generally, it is difficult if not impossible to disentangle the academic realm from that of everyday political struggles. Everyday life is a mixed affair of politics, economics, and witchcraft. Traditional customs of peasant life based on kinship, religious beliefs, memory, habits, etc. disturb the presumably “neutral” market competition of equal citizens. Ethics is compromised in political skulduggery and business deals carried out by political dynasties, warlords, and corporate hustlers. The reification or commodification of life in industrialized bourgeois society has not materialized enough to fully compartmentalize the public sphere from the private. This is a product of uneven development and the unsynchronized process of imperial subjugation and exploitation.

In a peripheral dependent formation such as the Philippines, the sociohistorical field of power is constituted by the dynamic interplay of economics, politics and ideology. Class struggle, while anchored in production and property, proceeds on various interacting levels. If Filipinos suffer from a “damaged culture,” this can be viewed as a logical outcome of the legacy of over three hundred years of Spanish colonial domination and more than a century of being “tutored” by U.S. entrepreneurial democracy and market pluralism. Class and racial differences are supposed to wither away in the course of “free market” modernization. Except for the perennial “maoist” insurgents and recalcitrant Moros, Americanization succeeded in molding the thinking of the intelligentsia, especially the academic gatekeepers at the University of the Philippines, and the self-reproducing hierarchy of civil servants in the judiciary, military-police agencies, and so on.

Missionary Positions

After killing 1.4 million natives, the United States ruled the Philippines from 1898 to 1946 as a direct colony. The fruit of this “civilizing” experiment is nearly a century of severe underdevelopment of the economy and disintegration of the collective psyche whose symptoms are evident today. The colonial power preserved the feudal-oligarchic property system, overlayering it with the trappings of comprador electoral democracy. One result is the authoritarian Marcos regime (1972-1986) whose human-rights violations have now been surpassed by the corrupt Arroyo regime flourishing in the midst of extreme class inequality, nurturing barbaric warlords such as the Ampatuan dynasty responsible for the recent Maguindanao massacre of 57 unarmed civilians. Not that the U.S. ruling class is to blame for everything—indeed, the founding of the local educational system is supposed to be one of the durable contributions of U.S. colonialism to the heroic task of civilizing those “benighted” natives. Nonetheless, a large share of what Filipinos enjoy today can be ascribed to the “benevolent assimilation” policy of the wise suzerain William McKinley and his no doubt well-intentioned successors.

One of the institutions established by the U.S. colonizers is the University of the Philippines (UP). It was designed to produce functionaries to serve the ideological state apparatuses of the colonial state. The U.S. needed trained “little brown brothers” (William Howard Taft’s affectionate terms of endearment) to legitimize the particularist motive of capital as one identical with the general interest. Its prestige eventually rested on the nurturance of generations of scholars and a significant number of activist intellectuals since its founding in 1908. Despite what historian Renato Constantino called “the mis-education of Filipinos,” that is, the slavish worship of EuroAmerican values and its elite gurus such as Richard Rorty and Benedict Anderson, UP students led mass demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the sixties and ruthless US interventions in Latin America and the Middle East from the seventies up to the present.

Class struggles worldwide could not be kept away from the classroom. Not only has the UP served to train subalterns for the colonial bureaucracy; it has also exposed students (given the internal contradictions of capitalist rule in a semifeudal dependency) to counterhegemonic, revolutionary ideas. During my student days in UP in the fifties, the writings of Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Bertrand Russell, Jean Paul Sartre, and later on of George Jackson, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara, Mao, and other progressive activists were disseminated among student-faculty discussion circles. From this arose organizations that spearheaded the national-democratic movement which challenged U.S. imperial hegemony and its support for the bloody dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and his successors, up to Arroyo. To a limited extent, the UP still serves as an arena of ideological -theoretical debates reflecting the intense conflicts and antagonisms of a nation of over ninety million most of whom live on less than $2 a day, under a brutal regime praised by Barack Obama and credited with over a thousand victims of extra-judicial killings, forced disappearances, and torture.

Subalterns Speak

Now comes the news that within the hallowed halls of “academic freedom,” which the oligarchy takes pride in as “the marketplace of ideas,” the persecution of a prodigiously talented militant scholar, Sarah Raymundo, is going on without much fanfare. Except for the local demonstrations of sympathizers from student organizations in the campus and, incredibly, the massive support of academics, public intellectuals, and professionals from around the world, her case is scarcely noticed by Manila pundits and commercializing media celebrities. Globalization thus works in contradictory and paradoxical ways.

Raymundo’s case may be a minor affair compared to the issues of global warming publicized at Copenhagen or the genocidal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Still, with the Philippines labeled a danger zone because of the unrelenting attacks by the Abu Sayyaf, one of the home-grown “terrorist” groups beloved by the U.S. State Department (the other being the Communist-led New People’s Army, stigmatized by then State Secretary Colin Powell), we might take the case of Raymundo as an allegory of what’s going on in that otherwise obscure tropical archipelago once noted for hosting the largest US military bases during the Korean and IndoChina wars—a nearly anonymous remote group of islands that is still remembered for Bataan and Corregidor and the thousands of Filipino and American dead sacrificed by General Douglas McArthur for the Empire’s honor.

Raymundo’s plight has been succinctly summarized by Dr. Walden Bello, a tenured sociology professor at the same University and now a representative of the party-list Akbayan in the Philippine Congress (accessible here). Although trained by the Jesuit-run Ateneo de Manila University, Bello knows the inner workings of the UP academic bureaucracy. The facts are simple: On April 2008, the tenured faculty of the Sociology Dept. in a vote of seven to three recommended granting of tenure to Raymundo on the basis of her substantial academic record. Seven months later, Raymundo was informed that the faculty decided to reverse their decision. What happened?

Wonders can happen, even in bureaucratic chambers, without covert CIA (or local military-police) cues. In the hiatus of seven months, the minority schemed to overthrow the majority by “manipulating the Chancellor for Academic Affairs” (to quote Bello) to demand that the majority who voted for Raymundo justify (again!) their decision. Surprise? This was evidently a ploy since the majority report affirmed that Raymundo exceeded the necessary requirements for tenure. Meanwhile, the college’s highest governing body, the College Executive Board (CEB), upheld the majority decision. Finally, the Diliman campus Chancellor Sergio Cao dismissed the CEB’s decision and refused tenure. In effect, the Chancellor sided with the minority. Why? Not because of Raymundo’s lack of academic excellence; everyone concedes that. It is because of Raymundo’s ethical stand, political beliefs, and civic conduct as the general-secretary of CONTEND (Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy) and active member of ACT (Association of Concerned Teachers) and the All-UP-Academic Employers Union. She is being penalized for those rare virtues.

Raymundo is alleged by her detractors to have been involved with groups in support of victims kidnapped, tortured and killed by the military, in particular Karen Empeno. To such vague and muddled allegations that she hid such involvements, Raymundo has fully responded in a substantial memorandum submitted on Nov. 16 to university president Erlinda Roman. She has never made her activism a secret to anyone. The department allegations are all shoddy innuendoes and insinuations, unworthy of even a C- sociology major. Roman, for her part, played the coy and hedging fox (or is it mealy-mouthed Pontius Pilate?) in her Dec. 14 memorandum to Cao and the current department chair Randolf David as she tendentiously recounted the whole rigmarole.

Admitting that there was no argument about Raymundo’s academic qualifications, president Roman seemed obsessed with a conundrum: whether the April vote really showed “consensus.” Given the contentious, politically charged milieu of everyday life in the Philippines from which the university is not immune, Roman believed that Raymundo’s politics fouled up, or more exactly problematized, consensus. The original vote of 7-3 did not truly express “consensus” if by the term we mean unanimous. It was hard to really determine what the department’s consensus was despite or notwithstanding the April vote, Roman thought aloud. In effect, that little word “consensus” became Roman’s alibi out of this sorry mess. Alternatively, it was her fortuitous disguise to appear neutral and above board, not least that she was exercising conscientious leadership of a great institution.

No, Roman was not a hypocrite, only a realist. Cognizant that the composition of the department’s tenured faculty had meanwhile changed with the dropping-out of Raymundo’s supporters, Roman ordered another vote, which this time yielded the right “consensus”: 4 for-6 against Raymundo. The latest is the really more authentic “consensus” for Roman. Beholden to her neoliberal patrons in the “old boys’ network,” Roman knows that she has to safeguard her clientele within the university by upholding departmental cliques, “yahoo” mediocrity, at the expense of a more inclusive, libertarian, democratic, forward-looking vision of higher learning. This is perhaps too much to expect, given the politicized genealogy of UP presidencies. Compounding authoritarian methods and chicanery with fatuous casuistry, this whole exercise has now become a sad comment on the abysmal sinkhole to which this group of UP faculty and administrators have succumbed.

In summing up his brief supporting Raymundo, Dr. Bello pleaded to president Roman to “reverse a terrible miscarriage of justice and reassert UP’s commitment to academic excellence.” He was appealing to one of the executioners. Of course, operating legalistically within the institutional framework, Bello could not do otherwise—even though the case had already been thoroughly politicized by Raymundo’s enemies, those against Raymundo’s radical left-wing politics. He had already alienated the “yahoos” of the sociology department, which contaminated alleged progressives such as Randolf David and Cynthia Bautista. Can the Board of Regents, the last resort for the aggrieved, succeed in resisting the proven inertia of institutions and overturn Cao, Roman, and David? Maybe, if the popular-democratic voices prevail. Probably not, given the scandalous shenanigans of the traditional politicians challenging the Arroyo clique.

I want to sketch a parenthetical aside here. A subtext or submerged narrative, threaded with complex nuances that I cannot elaborate here, lurks behind this instructive controversy. Despite Bello’s tie-up with the Akbayan party and his record of defending his World-Social-Forum personality against the suspicions of former comrades in the anti-imperialist National Democratic Front-Philippines and in Bayan-Muna party (with which ACT and CONTEND are allied), he seems to have transcended sectarian narrow-mindedness, not to speak of barkada scholasticism. Meanwhile, the media-savvy Randy David, a leading member of BISIG (Bukluran sa Ika-uunlad ng Sosyalistang Isip at Gawa; Association for the Advance of Socialist Words and Deeds), an admirer of Rorty and other Western elite missionaries, finds himself somehow aligned with conservative if not reactionary Neanderthals, or “yahoos” (to quote Bello). In a single stroke, he forfeited his claim to be a nationalist (in the tradition of his distinguished kin, Renato Constantino). Incidentally, BISIG is one of the groups allied with Akbayan; BISIG’s former chair, UP President Francisco Nemenzo and other colleagues figured prominently in the 1993 Forum for Philippine Alternatives which rejected the political strategy and tactics of the Sison-led Communist Party of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front-Philippines. Former comrades split, symptomatic of what was then happening in the Philippines during the retrograde administration of the late Corazon Aquino. For many academic leftists in a tributary shark-infested milieu, opportunism and obligatory tithes seem more functional if risky preoccupations in advancing careers than supporting human-rights organizations, or the cause of nationalist democracy. At any rate, this dialectical twist of events, one more proof of Lenin’s thesis that reality/practice is richer than theory, may augur a renewal of progressive and radical energies in the UP, despite Raymundo’s predicament. This may be a hope, but in a permanently crisis-wracked country like the Philippines, the improbable sometimes becomes realizable.

Lessons for Lilliputians

Our critique of abusive authority and conservative power needs to extend beyond the university precincts. As noted earlier, the neocolonial university is permeated with manifold contradictions symptomatic of the whole moribund system. To be sure, the balance of political forces may suddenly change and affect pedagogical agencies. One more Maguindanao massacre may stir up slumbering “people power.” If Raymundo’s case is not only flawed with procedural mistakes and ethical misjudgments, but also corrupted by scarcely veiled charges of political activism and humanitarian/social conscience on Raymundo’s part, it is shortchanging the victim if we do not put at the center of this whole affair the active complicity of Roman, Cao, Paredes, David, Bautista, Aquino, and others with a bankrupt regime that thrives on flagrant corruption, lies, mendacity, threats, and fascist violence—not least, the symbolic violence that the great sociologist Pierre Bourdieu associates with bureaucratic discourse, authoritarian procedures, and administrative rituals, such as tenure-granting (in which academic capital trumps intellectual capital), that insure the petty privileges of a self-perpetuating, obsequious elite.

What is to be done and undone? The now notorious “culture of impunity” fomented by the shameless Arroyo regime seems to have descended on the Diliman campus and is saturating the hallowed classrooms and libraries of this once esteemed sanctuary of learning. As it did before, once in the McCarthyist-like persecution of a community of pro-people nationalist scholars as communist sympathizers during the Magsaysay-Garcia regimes; this U.S.-styled witchhunt was repeated periodically in the terrible nights of collective suffering and resistance from the time of Marcos to Arroyo.

But lose no hope, friends and partisans in the global commons. While the UP is slowly being commercialized and privatized, students and faculty who are relatively privileged are feeling the pressures of unemployment, anomie, environmental degradation, and ubiquitous military-police violence. While serving the neocolonial state and the predatory merchants of global capital, the UP remains funded by taxpayers and is ultimately answerable to the Filipino people. Resistance to capitalist globalization is gradually rising, as shown by this robust and enthusiastic international support for Raymundo and what she stands for.

In California and elsewhere, students and faculty are rebelling against state terrorism: cutbacks in salaries, privatization, lay-offs, deterioration all around. Many are beginning to grasp that higher public education is a social and human right, no less than health care, food, and adequate shelter. Peoples around the world are mobilizing against the global war of terror launched by the U.S. corporate elite. The Filipino people are crying “No more massacres” by Arroyo and her Ampatuan accomplices. Whatever the final arbitration of her case, Sarah Raymundo’s voice cannot be repressed or denied “tenure”—an index of the inexhaustible resources, energy and intelligence of the Filipino people fighting for justice and liberation in solidarity with others beyond the surveillance of the gatekeepers of the University of the Philippines and other public institutions.

* * * *
--Dr. E. SAN JUAN, Jr. emeritus professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Ethnic Studies, was a recent fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University. He recently taught at Leuven University, Belgium, as a Fulbright lecturer in American Studies, and at the University of the Philippines as visiting professor of English and Comparative Literature. He received his A.B., magna cum laude, in English and Philosophy from the University of the Philippines in 1958; and his doctorate from Harvard University. His recent books are US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines (Palgrave), Critique and Social Transformation (The Edwin Mellen Press), and Toward Filipino Self-Determination (SUNY Press).

Jonathan Beller's Letter to President Emerlinda Roman

2009-12-17T02:47:00.000-08:00

The Cinematic Mode of Production: Attention Economy and the Society of the Spectacle

December 3, 2009

Prof. Emerlinda Roman, Ph.D.
President
University of the Philippines

Dear UP President Roman:

It is with great urgency that I write to support tenure for Sarah Raymundo. Quite simply Sarah’s brilliance, erudition, scholarly achievements and intellectual contribution to the University and to the Philippines at large should qualify her. Sarah has been teaching at the University of the Philippines for more than eight years and is widely recognized as one of the most influential minds of her generation. Her insightful, committed and inspiring writings on literature, media and mass culture, are published and widely circulated – it is no exaggeration to say that as a scholar, a teacher, and a public presence she has been crucial in shaping a generation of thought at the University of the Philippines. Without a doubt, she is among the most highly qualified persons and most significant minds applying for tenure at UP. The fact that her quest for tenure has been so difficult is nothing short of shameful – a blight upon a University that prides itself on intellectual excellence and integrity.

Having taught for several years at the University of the Philippines myself, and having lived and worked in the Philippines for approximately four out of the last fifteen years, I can assure you that Sarah is on the way to national prominence as a writer and that as an intellectual, she is already widely recognized as a leader. Perhaps there are those among you who do not believe that Sarah stands for good causes or who think that her politics are unacceptable because of her pro-masa positions. This is not a position that can be maintained by a liberal institution although it is certainly possible to adopt it in a proto-fascist one. From an outsider’s perspective I do not think it serves the university, the Filipino people, or the international reputation of the Philippine State to censure its most talented and progressive thinkers. I have known Sarah for five years and during that time have had the opportunity to understand first hand that Sarah has an incredible ability for comprehension and synthesis of heterogeneous materials, as well as a genuine gift for communication. She is a committed organizer and a well known public speaker who is unafraid to stand up for causes of social justice even in the face of a corrupt government that punishes dissenters in a variety of ways, ways that include the extrajudicial killings of more than 1,000 persons (activists, union organizers, journalists, students) since Glorial Macapagal Arroyo came to power. Sarah has been a leader in the faculty organizations that battle state corruption and exploitation, and that allies itself with exploited and marginalized groups. It seems to me that an institution of so-called higher learning that forecloses the possibilities of thought that under duress refuses to buckle, thought that holds out for truth even at great personal risk, is an institution that knows how to honor neither the life of the mind nor that which is higher than the daily compromises and complicities in human potential. Indeed it seems that an institution that will not stand up for the integrity of its most politically and ethically astute thinkers has no right to call itself a university.
I should also say that Sarah’s scholarly work has been important to my own. (While I do not expect you to know me, I am relatively well known in several minor and marginal fields and my attesting to Sarah’s influence on my own work is, for me anyway, a genuine compliment and one that I rarely pay.) In a recent article for Postcolonial Studies, “Iterations of the impossible: questions of a digital revolution in the Philippines (Postcolonial Studies, Vo l. 11, No. 4, pp. 435 - 450, 2008) I devoted several pages to her brilliant essay “In the Womb of the Global Economy: Anak and the Construction of Transnational Imaginaries” an essay which is forthcoming in the international journal positions. Her essay details the ways in which an ostensibly progressive, that is populist film, Anak, works to reconcile Filipino overseas contract workers to state policies bent upon producing Filipinos as the principle export of the Philippines in an economy driven by remittances. It is only appropriate that serious minds raise significant questions about the relationship between culture and state policy – policy which affects the lives of millions of Filipinos. This is particularly true in an era when culture is being directly accessed as a vehicle of economic and political agendas. Sarah has an understanding of culture and politics that is both wide and deep, having at her disposal a vast arsenal of literary and cinematic analytic techniques as well as a profound understanding of Filipino history and politics and the way that these are implanted in some complex relation to the histories of colonialism, imperialism and globalization/neo-imperialism. She can hold her own at any seminar table or in any conference and is already a full-fledged contributor to the highest level discussions of politics and culture now taking place in the Philippines.

Sarah’s other essays, which include, “In the Concrete Now: Investigating Feminist Challenges to Popular Romance Production” and “Articulations of Capital in a Globalized Culture” are equally astute pieces, well conceived and well executed. Sarah has real expertise in psychoanalytic theory, various branches of sociological analysis and media theory, and is already an accomplished critic and theorist. Indeed her publication list is long and impressive and there is no doubt in my mind that all who have the opportunity to work with her will learn something from her.

In sum, and without exaggeration, there is probably no one more qualified for tenure at UP than Sarah Raymundo. I urge you to reverse the damaging decisions already made and to grant her tenure at once. Then I urge you to personally seek to repair the damages that have been done to Sarah’s career and to the reputation of the university. Rarely does a University President have the opportunity to be completely confident in her decisions, but I have absolutely no doubt that Sarah will not only continue to be a brilliant scholar, but that your decision to support her will have a positive impact on the world at large.

If I can be of any assistance please do not hesitate to email or call.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Beller
Professor
English and Humanities and
Critical and Visual Studies
Pratt Institute
200 Willoughby Ave.
Brooklyn NY 11205 USA

Propaganda Materials

2009-12-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

And we are proud when we say these are indeed propaganda materials. Not just any prop material, but agit-prop (agitation-propaganda) materials.

Click on the following to view three flyers on Sarah Raymundo’s tenure case, in PDF: flyersdec13 .

Maraming salamat!

Rep. Walden Bello: "The Real Issue in the Sarah Raymundo Case: Academics versus Yahoos"

2009-12-14T06:56:00.000-08:00

Read / download this letter in PDF: Walden Bello on Sarah Raymundo

The Real Issue in the Sarah Raymundo Case: Academics versus Yahoos

By Walden Bello*

Should President Emerlinda Roman fail to reverse the decision of Chancellor Sergio Cao to refuse tenure to Ms. Sarah Raymundo of the Sociology Department, this will be the final act of an academic tragedy.

Never has a tenure decision-making process been as flawed as this one. Allow me to cite the crucial points in this sorry affair:

- The majority of the department, by a margin of 7-3, votes to give tenure to Ms. Raymundo.

- The minority subverts this decision by manipulating Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Lorna Paredes into sending the decision back to the majority to justify—a move that was unprecedented. Confusion ensues.

- The College Executive Board (CEB) of the College of Sciences and Philosophy upholds the majority decision to grant tenure by 7-1, with three abstentions.

- The Chancellor disregards this decision of the college’s highest governing body and decides against tenure.

But the blatant irregularity of the process should not obscure the key issue in the Raymundo case. Beyond all the procedural controversies that surrounded the affair was the fundamental substantive question: did Ms. Sarah Raymundo deserve tenure on the basis of her academic record? It was the position of the minority on this issue that was, in effect, legitimized by Chancellor Cao’s decision to refuse tenure.

The minority in the tenured faculty never formally based its opposition to Ms. Raymundo on academic grounds. How could they since Ms. Raymundo had an excellent publications record and superb scores on teaching evaluations, indeed probably the best in the department? Instead, the minority focused on an issue that was marginal if not irrelevant to the tenure process: that Ms. Raymundo allegedly lied about her association with a press conference on two students that had been abducted by the military. In any context, this would be a minor disciplinary matter that would be handled as such. Ms. Raymundo’s guilt or innocence on this matter should have been ascertained in disciplinary proceedings separate from the tenure process. Instead, the minority elevated this alleged infraction, for which Ms. Raymundo’s culpability had not been settled, into their key and only consideration in their recommendation for denial of tenure, arguing that Ms. Raymundo did not deserve it for “ethical” reasons. This might be difficult for people outside the department to believe, but this alleged infraction was the only basis of the minority’s recommendation to deny tenure! Could Chancellor Cao really be serious in dignifying this position?

Why did the minority act the way it did? Let us no longer tiptoe around what was really involved in the Raymundo case, which made the stakes so high. In disregarding Ms. Raymundo’s academic achievements and blocking her tenure for an unproven allegation, the minority was exhibiting a behavior that had long frustrated their other tenured colleagues and the junior faculty. They did not care about academic excellence. Most of them had poor teaching evaluations from students and their publications records were practically non-existent. The last major sociology texts they read, according to some students, probably dated two decades back. Two were in fields that were only marginally related to the discipline of sociology. Only two of them were trusted enough to handle a graduate class by their colleagues. They were not concerned with intellectual exchange, which is the lifeblood of any academic department, and they had reduced departmental life into bureaucratic humdrum. For them, being a member in good standing in the sociology department meant conforming to rules, not intellectual achievement.

Most members of the minority were, in effect, non-performing assets or, to use a kinder term lifted from Jonathan Swift, yahoos. Conscious of the power conferred by tenure, most of them terrorized junior faculty with their demand for conforming to rules, being the cause of a series of departures of bright and motivated young faculty. Not surprisingly, Ms. Raymundo, with her intellectual achievements, was seen as a threat by this anti-academic faction that championed mediocrity--one whose addition to the tenured faculty would have tipped the balance in favor of the pro-academic grouping.

The pro-academic grouping within the senior faculty, in contrast, saw Ms. Raymundo as an indispensable asset to the department, as one who could contribute to the revival of intellectual exchange and innovation in the department. This grouping, which was composed of Profs. Laura Samson, Filomin Gutierrez, Gerry Lanuza, Josephine Dionisio, and myself, saw the battle over Ms. Raymundo’s tenure as having implications beyond her. We saw ourselves as fighting not only for the future of a brilliant young colleague but for the future of the department itself.

The majority’s will was thwarted by an irregular decisionmaking process that was capped by Chancellor Cao’s copout. But this painful story would not be complete without calling attention to the role of some members of the tenured faculty who had endorsed the original majority decision but abstained in succeeding decisions. Academics well known for their contributions to Philippine sociology, they proved to be ethically supine, unable to display the courage to stand up for their convictions. Unwilling to antagonize the minority, they retreated from endorsing Ms. Raymundo and tried to project themselves as being ”above the fray.” They threw Ms. Raymundo to the dogs, and they will forever have that on their conscience.

The Sarah Raymundo case is reaching its final stages. Will President Roman reverse a terrible miscarriage of justice and reassert UP’s commitment to academic excellence? Or will she, like Chancellor Cao, render the final act in yielding the sociology department to the reign of the yahoos?

*Walden Bello, PhD, now serves as a congressman for the party-list Akbayan! The author of 15 books and numerous papers and articles on international political economy and other topics, he was a member of the tenured faculty of the Sociology Department from 1997 until May of this year. An editor of the Review of International Political Economy, he won the Gawad Chancellor Award for Best Book in 2000 and was named the Outstanding Public Scholar of the International Studies Association’s Political Economy Section in its 2008 Convention in San Francisco.

US-based Academic Scholars' Dec. 2 Letter to Pres. Roman

2009-12-14T06:43:00.001-08:00

Read the letter in PDF: US-based Academic Scholars' Dec. 2 Letter to Pres. Roman

2 December 2009

Dr. Emerlinda R. Roman

President

University of the Philippines

Diliman, Quezon City

Philippines

Dear Dr. Roman:

As academic scholars in the U.S. with long-lasting commitments to the Philippines and important connections to the University of the Philippines in particular, we write to urge a redress and reversal of the denial of tenure to one of your most exemplary faculty members, Sarah Raymundo. We feel there has been an egregious breach in the integrity of the tenure process and in the principles of academic freedom that our international scholarly community upholds and vigorously defends. Moreover, as a result of this breach, we feel the University of the Philippines has done a grave injustice to an outstanding scholar, teacher and public intellectual, standing to lose one of its most valuable young faculty and setting an alarming precedent that is sure to erode the ideals, quality and principled practices of higher education.

Along with our colleagues in the Philippines, we were appalled and dismayed to hear of U.P. Diliman Chancellor Cao’s decision to overturn the original recommendations for Sarah Raymundo’s tenure made by, respectively, the Sociology Department, the College Executive Board and the Academic Personnel and Fellowship Committee. We have reviewed the documents in Professor Raymundo’s case and find the irregularities in the tenure review process to be insupportable. It is clear from the paper trail that while Professor Raymundo’s excellent academic accomplishments have been recognized at all the above institutional levels as meritorious and deserving of tenure, she has been punitively judged, in the most unilateral and arbitrary fashion at the behest of a red-baiting minority bloc, for her radical political commitments and involvements. We find this egregious violation of the codes of academic integrity and freedom and dismissal of scholarly achievement in favor of political ideology to be a huge mar on the University of the Philippines’ well-known and longstanding record of commitment to the principles of intellectual freedom and justice.

Many of us are familiar with Professor Raymundo’s brilliant scholarly writings on Filipino popular culture in the context of the global economy, Philippine national politics and social movements. We have been impressed by and learned enormously from her astute and illuminating sociological analyses of the conditions of lived life in the Philippines, the insights of which have been honed precisely through her long-time activist involvement and experiences substantiated through more formal research and study. Indeed, in our estimation, Professor Raymundo’s activist work in the areas of human rights and global social struggles is undoubtedly both a key source and form of expression of her research and theoretical approach, and as such should also be understood as a significant intellectual and professional contribution in its own right.

Professor Raymundo’s combination of theoretical erudition (her fluency in sociological theory, critical social theory, as well as cultural studies) and empirical knowledge is an inspiring example to all of us, as it has been an invaluable instruction to the many students who have had the privilege of taking her classes. In addition to her achievements as a scholar and a teacher, Professor Raymundo has also been an exemplary colleague in the international academic community. She has not only been an active participant in international conferences but has also been central to the vital intellectual exchanges between students and scholars in the U.S. and in the Philippines, arranging talks and seminars at the University of the Philippines that have brought U.S. academics in important dialogue with our colleagues and with students at U.P. as well as at other universities in the Philippines. We cannot overemphasize the importance of Professor Raymundo in fostering these intellectual exchanges, in which many of us first came to know and appreciate her brilliance as a scholar of Philippine society and culture.

We can say with confidence that Professor Raymundo’s scholarly contributions to the interdisciplinary fields of Global Studies, Philippine studies, and Cultural Studies as well as Sociology, her strong teaching record, and her exceptional record of service to the intellectual community at large are well beyond the requirements for tenure. It is our hope that you will redress the grave injustice of the arbitrary denial of her tenure. Along with our colleagues in the Philippines and at the University of the Philippines, we understand the importance of her intellectual work to the critical work we undertake in multiple fields and urge you, as the President of this prestigious university, to recognize the broad respect she has gained as a scholar, teacher and public intellectual and to grant her the tenured position that she greatly deserves.

Sincerely Yours,

Delia D. Aguilar

Women's Studies Program

University of Connecticut

Christine Bacareza Balance

Assistant Professor, Asian American Studies

University of California, Irvine

Nerissa S. Balce

Assistant Professor of Asian American Literature

Department of Asian and Asian American Studies

State University of New York at Stony Brook

Joi Barrios-Leblanc
Visiting Lecturer
University of California Berkeley

Jonathan Beller
Professor
Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies
Pratt Institute

Rick Bonus

Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies

University of Washington

Tracy Lachica Buenavista
Assistant Professor
Department of Asian American Studies
California State University, Northridge

Lucy Burns
Assistant professor
Asian American Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Jeff Arellano Cabusao

Assistant Professor

Department of English and Cultural Studies

Bryant University

Peter Chua
Associate Professor of Sociology
San Jose State University

Valerie Francisco
Doctoral Candidate
City University of New York, The Graduate Center

Maria Hwang
Graduate Student
American Civilization
Brown University

David H. Kim, Chair

Philosophy Department

University of San Francisco,CA

Anne E. Lacsamana

Assistant Professor

Women's Studies Department

Hamilton College

Allan Lumba
Doctoral Student
Department of History
University of Washington, Seattle

Ruth Elynia S. Mabanglo

Professor and Coordinator

Filipino and Philippine Literature Program, IPLL,

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Martin F. Manalansan IV

Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Nerve Macaspac
MA in Asian Studies
University of California, Berkeley

Paul Nadal

Graduate Student, Rhetoric

University of California, Berkeley

Claire Oliveros
Coordinator, Multicultural Center
Portland Community College

Lorenzo Perillo
Doctoral Student
World Arts and Cultures
University of California Los Angeles

Roland Remenyi

Doctoral Candidate, Pharmacology
University of California, Los Angeles

E. San Juan
Fellow W.E.B. Du Bois Institute
Harvard University

Suzanne Schmidt
Doctoral Student
Department of English
University of Washington

Sarita Echavez See

Associate Professor

Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies

Program in American Culture & Department of English
Pacharee Sudhinaraset
Doctoral Student
Department of English
University of Washington

Neferti Tadiar

Professor and Chair of Women’s Studies, Barnard College
Director, Center for Critical Analysis of Social Difference,
Columbia University

Thea Quiray Tagle
Doctoral Student
Dept of Ethnic Studies, University of California San Diego

Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Asian American Studies

San Francisco State University

Rowena M. Tomaneng

Interim Dean

Language Arts Division

De Anza College, CA
Michael Viola
Doctoral Student
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Bryan Zadie
Doctoral Student
Comparative Literature
University of California, Riverside

"Injustice in UP-Diliman" by Elmer Ordonez

2009-12-14T06:42:00.000-08:00

Originally published here: Injustice in UP-Diliman

Lately we are witness to truly benighted decisions made by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) in rejecting the applications of Ang Ladlad and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers for party-list accreditation.

The other aberration is the decision of the University of the Philippines administration to deny tenure to a fully qualified assistant professor of sociology—amounting to what concerned faculty and students see as gross injustice.

The Comelec and the UP decisions are related as they manifest convergent ideological views, one straight from feudal times and the other from the Cold War. The denial of Comelec accreditation to Ang Ladlad, known for espousing the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders (LGBT), reveals homophobia and extreme prejudice on grounds of medieval morality and an obsolete penal code provision dating to colonial times. (This provision must have been the same one that ensnared young poet Jose Garcia Villa, author of a poem “Man-Songs,” deemed “obscene.” A similar provision on obscenity in the US also banned James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness novel Ulysses in the late twenties. Times have changed, but the Comelec panels as well as the Revised Penal Code have not kept up.)

The rejection of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) on grounds that it has no national presence is misplaced because it has chapters and affiliates all over the country. The more likely reason is that ACT is part of the progressive or Left bloc now represented in the House of Representatives by Bayan Muna, Gabriela, Anakpawis, and Kabataan members pursuing the principled politics of change as opposed to trapo politics.

Progressive party-list representation has faced an uphill battle because of efforts by the establishment to limit the number of representatives through biased interpretation of constitutional and enacting law. Furthermore, bogus groups (purporting to represent the dispossessed and the marginalized but are extensions of ruling blocs) are allowed by Comelec to come in as party-lists. Hence, the presence in Congress of a retired general accused of human rights violations by local and international agencies, and other fake champions of the disadvantaged.

The case of Sarah Jane Raymundo, assistant professor of sociology, MA, who has been teaching for nine years in UP- Diliman is a bizarre one. Raymundo’s tenure has been endorsed by majority of the permanent faculty in her department and the executive board of her college (social sciences and philosophy) but the case dragged on for some two years because of the opposition of a minority of three (including a former department chair) for other “academic” reasons. The latest is that the UP- Diliman chancellor used the minority report and the case of an associate professor in another college (science) as the basis for denying Raymundo’s tenure.

One who reads through the basic papers of the case can sense a strong Byzantine element in the latter part of the tenure proceeding involving the administration. Here it is apparent that the academe is not immune to pressure, convoluted reasoning, and arbitrariness.

While Raymundo’s peers acknowledge her “excellent quality of mind,” “expansive intellectual interest,” “competence in current and emerging academic discourses [as] reflected in her teaching” and “capability to engage in sustained scholarship,” Chancellor Sergio Cao, in denying tenure, overturned peer judgment and belittled the professor’s academic qualifications (e.g. publications in many journals, active participation in seminars, and community work) and cited other “academic” grounds obviously drawn from the minority report of peers who charged Raymundo of “breach of professional ethics” which have not been proven. This apparently stems from Prof. Raymundo’s having been thesis adviser of one of two UP coeds who were reported abducted two years ago by military agents, tortured and presumably “salvaged.”

Some of Raymundo’s colleagues believe that her membership in CONTEND (Congress of Teachers for Nationalism and Democracy) and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers may have figured in the denial of her tenure. If this were true, then the professor is a victim of political persecution, ironically, in an institution that had long nurtured diverse political and ideological persuasions. Here a professed socialist, Dr. Francisco Nemenzo Jr., became UP president; professors and students who were detained during martial law were reinstated in the university upon their release. Dissenters/non-conformists found haven on campus.

There was division among constituents in celebrated cases like that of Rizal professorial chair holder Austin Craig (with poor interpersonal relations) who was about to be sacked for non-academic reasons but was supported by senior professors who believed in his scholarship. This occurred during the UP presidency of Guy Benton in the 20s.

The case of Sarah Jane Raymundo prompted Prof. Walden Bello to say: “The conflation of the tenure process with a disciplinary process—especially one that has not reached any conclusion on the guilt or innocence of the defendant—is wrong and constitutes a dangerous precedent that would destroy the academic objectivity that is central to the tenure process.”

As Prof. Ramon Guillermo noted, she “has never been given the opportunity to answer allegations against her.”

Nov. 24, 2009 Letter to Pres. Yudof & Pres. Roman (from US-based Academics)

2009-12-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

Read/download this letter in PDF: International Academic Community Support Letter for Sarah Raymundo

November 24, 2009

Pres. Emerlinda Roman, University of the Philippines

http://www.freewebs.com/upaaa/39_roman.jpg

Pres. Mark Yudof, University of California

http://www.ucsf.edu/campusplanning/_graphics/photos/yudof_chansearch.jpg

Dear President Yudof (University of California) and President Roman (University of the Philippines):

It is widely recognized that global markets are in a state of crisis where the distance between the well being of some and the misery of most is expanding. The contradictions of our global economic system are more severe in the Philippines than in the richer countries of the world. It is in the Philippines that one is able to witness the everyday costs paid by an entire population as a consequence of the cure all remedies of privatization, structural adjustment programs, and trade liberalization. The systematic violence of hunger imposed upon youth throughout the Philippines is supported by an educational system that pacifies and imposes the belief that “there is no alternative” to the current state of affairs. As public educators, scholars, researchers, and graduate students located in the United States we realize that the structures of profit and corporate gain imposed upon a Philippine polity is not divorced from the social conditions for educators and youth in this country. This is most evident by the current state of higher education in California. As a result of the 32 percent increase in student fees and the decision to lower enrollment at the University of California, higher education will be less accessible for working class and poor students. Filipino Americans and other students of color across UC campuses will be adversely affected. Many first generation students may become last generation students at risk of being priced out of an education. At other universities the “high-tuition/high-aid” model that the UC is moving towards has a marked record not only of reduced access but also increased student debt and inferior educational quality. In fact, according to the University Committee on Planning and Budget, this is the very reason that the UC made the decision in 2006 not to adopt a similar model.

Furthermore, in response to the crisis, support services and academic programs addressing issues important to working-class people and people of color are often the first to be cut. Already targeted is the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. The UC Commission on the Future reportedly entertains plans that would render campuses like UC Merced and UC Riverside “teaching campuses,” with research in only certain fields being funded, posing great risk for departments like Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies. At UC Riverside, required courses such as English composition courses are cut leading to the creation of “six-year undergraduates”—that is, students unable to take basic courses due to lack of sufficient offerings. These students must now stay additional years in the hope of later completing the courses for their degrees. Students should not pay more while receiving less from institutions that were intended, as stated in the California Master Plan for Higher Education, to guarantee an affordable education to every California student. Such a goal is not possible considering since 2001 undergraduate student fees have increased 300 percent.

We support the democratic mobilization of students who have organized forces with labor unions, community organizations, and progressive educators. We stand in solidarity with the students and faculty in the United States, the Philippines, and throughout the world who are organizing in support of public universities so that they may be accessible to all instead of only a small few. We believe that the transformation of an educational system so that it may reflect the potential of a diverse and vibrant new generation of global leaders is in fact possible. However, we recognize the path for those who struggle for democratic, just, and equitable sites of education is not without consequence. Take for example the context of Professor Sarah Raymundo’s protracted efforts for academic tenure at the University of the Philippines.

Professor Raymundo has been an educator at the University of the Philippines (U.P.) since 1999 in the Department of Sociology. In February of 2008, she submitted an application for tenure to her department. In June 2008, Professor Raymundo was informed that the voting tenured faculty within the department voted seven to three in favor of her tenure as she has exceeded the necessary requirements for consideration. In fact, Professor Raymundo has garnered international praise for her scholarship linking cultural production in the Philippines to gender and globalization. She has published numerous book reviews, articles, as well as co-edited an important volume titled Kontra-Gahum: Academics Against Political Killings (2006).

In April 2008, the tenured sociology faculty of the University of the Philippines - Diliman in a vote of seven to three recommended the granting of tenure to Professor Raymundo tenure. Seven months later, she was informed that the faculty unanimously decided to reverse their decision and not grant tenure to her application. Furthermore, Professor Raymundo was also informed that she was no longer welcome on campus as she was instructed by Dr. Clemen Aquino, then department chairperson not to meet her classes scheduled for the term until further notice. She persisted in teaching her classes until her contract expired in May 2009. After more than a year of academic limbo, Professor Raymundo had not received clear notification of the reasoning behind her denial of tenure leaving many to believe that her tenure process fraught with bureaucratic complications is a product of her politics. Professor Raymundo was questioned several times by the Sociology Department to informally explain her involvement in the campaign to surface two U.P. student activists, Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan, who were forcibly taken by men wearing ski masks on June 26, 2006. Professor Raymundo has been one of U.P.’s most vociferous critics of the human right abuses that have impacted her campus community and the country at large. She has openly questioned the Arroyo government’s role in the more than 1,000 reports cases of enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings against educators, women, artists, journalists, urban poor, religious leaders, labor organizers, and students.

On October 28, 2009, in a statement filled with bias, contradiction, and unjust decision-making U.P. - Diliman Chancellor, Sergio Cao ruled against Professor Raymundo’s appeal for tenure. In this statement, Chancellor Cao does not explain how or why the first vote in favor of Professor Raymundo’s tenure was overturned by the minority (7 in favor, 3 against). Furthermore, Professor Raymundo was not granted fair and due process in addressing supposed evidence, rumors, and allegations made against her. Considering that Professor Raymundo has exceeded the minimum requirements for tenure and the protracted, unfair, and undemocratic process in Professor Raymundo’s application for tenure, we are led to believe that her denial was motivated by her politics as opposed to her academic qualifications.

The public universities in the Philippines and the United States are widely known as vibrant sites of democracy, with rich legacies of challenging the status quo, as well as contributing intellectuals and leaders to important social causes. These institutions have also performed an important role of being informal “think-tanks” for alternative models and social initiatives. The privatization, academic repression, as well as the de-funding of liberal arts, ethnic, labor, and gender studies and foreign languages have all greatly impacted youth throughout the world. We recognize that as educators, researchers, and students we are implicated in the struggle for education and as such we demand:

- An End to the Privatization of our Schools!   

- An End to the Increase of Student Fees so that the UC System is Accessible to ALL!

- An End to Academic Repression!

- Justice and Tenure for Professor Sarah Raymundo!

Sincerely,

Dr. Kimberly Alidio

Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Jessica Antonio

Masters Student

College of Ethnic Studies

San Francisco State University

Dr. Pia Arboleda

Assistant Professor of Filipino

University of Hawaii

Will Arighi

Doctoral Student

Department of Comparative Literature

University of Washington, Seattle

Anna Alves

Asian American Studies, MA Student

UCLA Academic Advancement Program

AnakBayan Los Angeles

Dr. Christine Bacareza Balance

Assistant Professor, Asian American Studies

University of California, Irvine

Dr. Nerissa Balce
Assistant Professor
Department of Asian and Asian American Studies
State University of New York, Stony Brook

Dr. Joi Barrios-Leblanc

Visiting Lecturer

University of California Berkeley

Dr. Jonathan Beller

Professor

Humanities and Media Studies

and Critical and Visual Studies

Pratt Institute

Joseph Bernardo

Ph.D. Student

Department of History

University of Washington

Dr. Francisco Benitez

Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature

University of Washington

Stephen Bischoff

Doctoral Student 

American Studies 

Washington State University

Dr. Rick Bonus

Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies

University of Washington

Dr. Tracy Lachica Buenavista

Assistant Professor

Department of Asian American Studies

California State University, Northridge

Dr. Lucy Burns

Assistant professor

Asian American Studies

University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Jeff Arellano Cabusao

Assistant Professor

Department of English and Cultural Studies

Bryant University

Rosemary Candelario

UCLA PhD Candidate

Benji Chang, Ph.D.

Director

Youth & Parent Education

Asian Pacific American Legal Center

Dr. Richard T. Chu

Assistant Professor

History Department
University of Massachusetts

Dr. Peter Chua
Associate Professor of Sociology
San Jose State University

Dr. Deirdre de la Cruz

Assistant Professor

Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and History

University of Michigan

Dr. Sharon Delmendo

Professor of English

St. John Fisher College

Valerie Francisco

Doctoral Candidate

City University of New York, The Graduate Center

Dr. Joseph A. Galura

Lecturer II

College of Literature, Science, and the Arts

School of Social Work

University of Michigan – Ann Arbor

Jason Gavilan

Doctoral Candidate

Department of History

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Dr. Vernadette Gonzalez

Assistant Professor

Undergraduate Chair

American Studies Department

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Dr. Theodore S. Gonzalves

Associate Professor

Department of American Studies

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Maria Hwang

Graduate Student

American Civilization

Brown University

Faith R. Kares

Doctoral Student

Anthropology

Northwestern University

Dr. Anne E. Lacsamana

Assistant Professor

Women's Studies Department

Hamilton College

Ryan Leano

Doctoral Student

International & Multicultural Education

University of San Francisco

Dr. Katherine H. Lee

Lecturer

College Writing Programs

University of California, Berkeley

Niki Libarios

Academic Advisor, College of Education

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Allan Lumba
Doctoral Student
Department of History
University of Washington, Seattle

Dr. Ruth Elynia Mabanglo

Professor

College of Languages, Linguistics and Literatures

University of Hawaii

Nerve Macaspac

MA in Asian Studies

University of California, Berkeley

Marites Mendoza

Graduate Student, Department of English

University of Washington, Seattle

Dr. Victor Román Mendoza

Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and English

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Sherwin Mendoza

PhD Candidate, Literature

University of California, Santa Cruz

Dr. Peter McLaren

Professor

Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

University of California, Los Angeles

Alex F. Montances

MA Candidate in Anthropology

California State University Long Beach

Jesse Moya

Doctoral Student

Graduate School of Education

University of California, Los Angeles

Benita Murrel

Educational Program Coordinator

University of Michigan

Paul Nadal

Graduate Student

Department of Rhetoric

University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Claire Oliveros

Coordinator, Multicultural Center

Portland Community College

Portland, OR

Lorenzo Perillo

Doctoral Student

World Arts and Cultures

University of California Los Angeles

Stacy Perillo

M.Ed student

University of California, Los Angeles

Tochi Quijano
Public Educator

Evangeline Reyes
CPAF Community Advocate
University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Dylan Rodríguez

Professor and Chair

Dept. of Ethnic Studies

University of California, Riverside

Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez

Assistant Professor of Sociology

Rutgers University

Dr. Dean Saranillio

Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Ethnic Studies

University of California, Riverside

Dr. Sarita Echavez See

Associate Professor

Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies

Program in American Culture & Department of English

University of Michigan

Suzanne Schmidt

Doctoral Student

Department of English

University of Washington

Pacharee Sudhinaraset

Doctoral Student

English

University of Washington

Dr. Neferti Tadiar
Professor of Women’s Studies, Barnard College
Director, Center for Critical Analysis of Social Difference,
Columbia University

Thea Quiray Tagle

Doctoral Student

Dept of Ethnic Studies, University of California San Diego

Dr. Rowena Tomaneng
De Anza College

Dr. Karen Tongson

Assistant Professor of English and Gender Studies

University of Southern California

Simón Trujillo

Graduate Student

University of Washington

Dr. Sunny Vergara

Independent Scholar

Michael Viola
Doctoral Student
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies
University of California, Los Angeles

Kathleen Williams

PhD Candidate

University of California, Los Angeles

Bryan Zadie
Doctoral Student
Comparative Literature
University of California, Riverside

Politikal na Persekusyon sa UP

2009-11-28T12:46:00.000-08:00

Dr. Rolando B. Tolentino

November 28, 2009

Orihinal na mababasa sa http://pinoyweekly.org/new/2009/11/politikal-na-persekusyon-sa-up/

Sa isang makapal na sulat noong Oktubre 28, 2009, ibinaba ni Chancellor Sergio Cao ang desisyon sa apila ng tenure ni Prof. Sarah Raymundo. Denied. Sa usaping akademiko, hindi kasing galing ng taga-College of Science na umapila rin at mayroong 23 artikulo sa ISI-indexed journals si Prof. Raymundo.

Sa iba pang panuntunan para sa tenure—“professional ethics, intellectual honesty, and other values central to academic life”—malinaw din sa Chancellor na hindi nakamit ni Prof. Raymundo ang mga rekisito. Malaki ang kumpiyansa ng kanyang desisyon sa “minority reports” na ipinadala ng dating tagapangulo (Clemen Aquino, 18 Abril 2008) at minoridad (Marcia Ruth Gabriela Peczon Fernandez, Clarissa A. Rubio, at Marie Joy Arguillas, 1 Abril 2008 at 17 Oktubre 2008) ng Departamento ng Sosyolohiya, ang pinanggagalingan unit ni Prof. Raymundo.

Sentral na usapin sa pagtanggi sa tenure ng minority reports ay ang kaso ni Karen Empeno, isang mag-aaral na taga-Departamento ng Sosyolohiya na dinukot ng mga militar at nananatiling desaparacidos, at ang antas ng pakikisangkot ni Prof. Raymundo sa press conference nito. Kinapanayam si Prof. Raymundo, at pinapagunita sa kanya ang kanyang partisipasyon, kahit pa may ilang panahon na rin ito (gayong may pinasulat na ulat si Aquino kay Raymundo ukol sa insidente), at kahit hindi rin naman formal na nilinaw sa kanya ang mga agam-agam at akusasyon.

Bakit daw hindi nilinaw sa maraming pagkakataon ni Prof. Raymundo na hindi na mag-aaral si Empeno ng Sosyolohiya, AWOL na ito? Gayong malinaw naman sa isang University Council meeting nang banggitin itong detalye ni Aquino ay mismong si Chancellor Cao ang nagdeklara na itinuturing pa ring estudyante ng Unibersidad si Empeno? Ang tanong dapat ay bakit gustong dumistansya ng Departamento ng Sosyolihiya sa mga estudyante niyang lumabas ng klasrum at Unibersidad para maglingkod sa bayan?

Bitbit pati ang argumento laban kay Prof. Raymundo, na dapat ay nilinaw sa Departamento, ang antas ng pakikisangkot niya sa press conference para kina Empeno at Sherilyn Cadapan, ang kasabayang dinampot, (ni hindi nga idinawit ni Prof. Raymundo ang Departamento bilang sponsor ng aktibidad), at sa isang tula ni Prof. Raymundo para kay Empeno (madz, footnote ang pinuntirya at sa pareho pa ring taliwas na argumento na hindi na nga estudyante si Empeno).

Pati nga ang miyembro ng kasapian ng Tigil-Paslang, ang alyansa sa UP para sa kampanya ng nawawalang estudyante at pagtataguyod ng karapatang pantao ay binuyanyang din ng tatlong faculty bilang pinagkaitan ng katotohan ni Prof. Raymundo. Dawit din dito ang kasapian ng University Council. Idiniin pa ang librong Kontra-Gahum: Academics Against Political Killings, ang koedited na libro namin ni Prof. Raymundo, bilang kabahagi ng conspiracy, at sa paghuhusga raw ng tenured faculty ng Departamento na hindi naman akademiko ang kalidad. At kung gayon, pati ang publikasyon ng Ibon, isang progresibong imprenta, ay hindi rin papasa sa akademikong panuntunan.

Ang pag-aangkat ng mga informasyong magdidiin kay Prof. Raymundo sa iba pang rason—maliban sa akademiko—sa kondisyon ng pagkawala nina Empeno at Cadapan ay direktang nakaugnay sa paghahanap ng hibla ng katotohanan sa kanilang formulasyon: politikal na animal si Prof. Raymundo, at hindi angkop sa akademikong kahilingan ng Departamento at Unibersidad. At ang politikal na animal, ipagkakanulo ang katotohanan para sa politikal na layunin.

Ang hindi na naman binabanggit ng minority reports ay ang politikal na motibasyon sa sarili nitong pagtataguyod ng “makatotohanang” ugnayan. Na ang kanilang pagdidiin kay Prof. Raymundo na handang itaguyod ang karapatang pantao nina Empeno at Cadapan ay kabahagi rin ng pagdidiin ng estado sa sinumang aktibistang itinuturing nito bilang suwail at subersibo, mga nilalang na hindi handang tumahak ng ofisyal na landas ng pagkamamamayan, at kung gayon, maaring damputin at paslangin. O sa insidente ni Prof. Raymundo, hindi handang tumahak sa ranggo ng tenured faculty at intelektwal na akademiko ng Unibersidad.

Ilang ulit binabanggit ang “katotohanan” sa minority reports, at ang hindi pag-uphold ni Prof. Raymundo nito. Ano at kaninong katotohanan ba ang dinadawit ng mga ito? At bakit din sinaligan ang baluktot na katotohanan ito sa hindi pagbibigay ng tenure kay Prof. Raymundo? Bakit ito ang pinaniwalaang katotohanang magsasakdal at maghuhusga kay Prof. Raymundo bilang unethical, dishonest at bagsak sa pag-uphold ng values central to academic life?

Sa panahon ng witchhunting ay sinusunog ang mga pinaghihinalaang di-Kristiano. Sa panahon ng Nazi, pinasusuot ng insignia na magtatatwa sa mga identidad na hindi Aryan. Sa panahon ni McCarthy, televised ang witchhunting sa mga pinaghihinalaang komunista. Nawawalan ng trabaho sa industriya, kundi man, nagpapatiwakal ang maraming nabiktima. Sa panahon ng neoliberal na UP, exclusibong pulong at palitan lang ito ng memo.

Sa katunayan, formal na nalaman lang ni Prof. Raymundo ang minority reports nang ibaba ni Chancellor Cao ang desisyon, at in-append ang mga dokumento, isang taon at walong buwan matapos siyang mag-apply ng tenure. Natural na walang ofisyal na conspiracy na naganap o maaakusa man lamang, bagamat ito naman ang inaasahan sa isang elitistang burukrasyang nakakapagdesisyon hinggil sa kabuhayan at kamatayan ng mga progresibo nitong faculty.

Ito ang blackeye sa mukha ng administrasyon ng UP sa edad ng neoliberal na edukasyon na nagpapadaloy sa higit pang politika na konserbatismo, at ng Oplan Bantay Laya, ang anti-insurgency campaign ng gobyerno. Ito ang insidente at sandali na hindi marangal na tumatambad ang Oblation sa sinumang dumadaan sa poder niya.

RUUP Faculty Alliance on Chancellor Cao's Flawed Decision

2009-11-23T18:02:00.000-08:00

Read/download the RUUP Faculty statement in PDF: FINAL RUUP OMNIBUS STATEMENT

Chancellor Cao’s Decision, Flawed and Unjust!

Tenure for Prof. Sarah Raymundo NOW!

November 24, 2009

While the University of the Philippines has clear rules on faculty tenure process as contained in the Faculty Manual, there are cases when qualified untenured faculty are not recommended for tenure. Various reasons, ranging from collegiality, alleged dishonesty and lack of integrity are cited as justifications for the denial of tenure. In some cases, departmental autonomy is used to justify the lack of transparency in the decision-making process. Although appeals may be submitted, there are no clear rules on how long the decision-making process of administrators deciding on the appeal may last. As such, untenured faculty members have no job security, have limited resources, and are vulnerable to being deprived of their rights to due process, transparency in decision-making, and the swift resolution of appeals.

This vulnerability of untenured UP faculty to arbitrary and unfair decisions on tenure application and appeal is the rationale behind the formation of the alliance Rights of Untenured UP Faculty (R.U.U.P. Faculty). The denial of Prof. Sarah Raymundo’s application for tenure by the Department of Sociology and the ruling of Chancellor Cao against her appeal, among other cases, illustrate the need to strengthen unity among untenured colleagues in the University.

On October 28, 2009 UP Diliman Chancellor Sergio Cao ruled against Sociology Prof. Sarah Raymundo’s appeal for tenure. This decision, which came after almost a year since Prof. Raymundo first appealed to his office in November 2008, is flawed and unjust in claiming that Prof. Raymundo is not academically qualified for tenure and that her case was handled judiciously by the Department of Sociology. The chancellor’s decision reveals that Prof. Raymundo’s denial of tenure is political harassment in the guise of academic and bureaucratic procedure.

We raise the following major points against Chancellor Cao’s decision to deny Prof. Raymundo’s tenure:

1. On Prof. Raymundo’s academic requirements for tenure: The Sociology Department and the College Executive Board of the College of Social Sciences never, at any instance, questioned Prof. Raymundo’s academic excellence in the longstanding issue of her tenure appeal. Prof. Raymundo has fully satisfied the academic requirements for tenure in the Sociology Department, as stated in the justification for tenure signed by the tenured faculty of the Sociology Department in April 2008 which is annexed in Chancellor Cao’s memo containing his decision. The justification signed by the majority of the tenured faculty of the department acknowledges Prof. Raymundo’s "excellent quality of mind," "expansive intellectual interest," "competence in current and emerging academic discourses (as) reflected in her teaching" and "capability to engage in sustained scholarship."

Moreover, it is absolutely unfair to compare Prof. Raymundo’s academic accomplishments to a College of Science (CS) Professor’s academic record. Chancellor Cao denied Prof. Raymundo’s tenure by indicating that she does not have a PhD and has less publications compared to a CS professor who was also appealing for tenure. However, the chancellor should know that this false equivocation cannot be used in this case, considering that majority of the academic units in UP base their tenure decisions on the university’s general academic tenure requirements. In instances when colleges and departments actually adopt requirements more stringent that those set by the university, untenured faculty members are made aware of these upon hiring—which is certainly not the case in the Sociology Department. Prof. Raymundo has fully satisfied the existing academic requirements for tenure implemented in her own department and college, a fact that was affirmed and was never questioned by the tenured professors of the Sociology Department. It is therefore surprising and puzzling why Chancellor Cao suddenly raised and used the academic basis in his decision, when Prof. Raymundo’s academic excellence was never the crux of the matter to begin with.

2. On the issue of Prof. Raymundo’s involvement in relation to the Karen Empeno case as evidence of lack of professional ethics: The tenured faculty of the Sociology Department never questioned the fact that Prof. Raymundo had satisfied the minimum requirements for tenure: at least a masteral degree, teaching and publications record. Even Prof. Clemen Aquino, then the chairperson of the department, recognized Prof. Raymundo’s teaching and publication accomplishments in her April 18, 2009 letter attached to Prof. Raymundo’s basic papers.[1] It should be clarified that the issue raised against Prof. Raymundo was in relation to her ethical conduct and professionalism. The minority and Prof. Aquino based their non-recommendation of tenure on the provision that "academic grounds include professional ethics, intellectual honesty, and other values central to academic life" (contained in the document “Shaping Our Institutional Future: A Statement on Faculty Tenure, Rank, and Promotion”; OVPAA, 2004, page 12).

In the 13-page October 17, 2008 minority report to Vice Chancellor Lorna Paredes by Profs. Marcia Fernandez, Clarissa Rubio and Marie Arguillas, Prof. Raymundo is accused of “dishonesty” and breaching “professional ethics” in relation to the issue of Karen Empeno, a Sociology student who has been missing since 2006, believed to have been abducted by the military. These issues against Prof. Raymundo remained "departmental secrets" until Chancellor Cao attached to his memo this minority report. There was no real, formal and written correspondence addressed to Prof. Raymundo, and thus, she was never given the formal chance to defend herself.

The minority report states that Prof. Raymundo gave inconsistent statements regarding her involvement in a press conference on human rights violations held on June 30, 2009. Prof. Raymundo is further accused of breaching professional ethics when she did not officially inform the Sociology Department chairperson about the said press conference. Furthermore, the minority report insists that Prof. Raymundo did not uphold the truth by not clarifying that Karen Empeno had an AWOL status at the time of her abduction during a University Council (UC) meeting, where the UC agreed on a position that affirmed Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan as UP students.

We find it disturbing that Prof. Aquino raised the issue of Karen Empeno’s AWOL status as basis for not recommending Prof. Raymundo’s tenure application in 2008, considering that as early as 2006, the UC meeting’s presiding officer Chancellor Cao already affirmed Karen’s status as a student of the university, despite her AWOL status. This UC position was reaffirmed in the statement released by the UC concerning the disappearance on July 12, 2006. Furthermore, we do not see how Prof. Raymundo’s presence or involvement in a press conference on human rights violations became proof of dishonesty or breach of professional ethics.

After 16 long months since Prof. Raymundo’s recommendation for tenure was withdrawn, the Fernandez-Rubio-Arguillas minority report finally confirms that Prof. Raymundo is being denied tenure based entirely on her progressive positions, not on academic merits. The serious allegations against Prof. Raymundo in the minority report should have been the matter addressed by Chancellor Cao. By turning Prof. Raymundo’s case into a matter of academic requirements, Chancellor Cao skirts the real issue of this tenure struggle—that Prof. Raymundo’s denial of tenure is a case of political persecution.

3. On the so-called “2/3 rule” for tenure in the Sociology Department: The Sociology Department, under the leadership of former chairperson Dr. Clemen Aquino and current chairperson Prof. Randy David, was inconsistent in invoking this so-called 2/3 rule for tenure. This rule was never raised during any of the tenured faculty and College Executive Board voting, nor was this rule raised in previous letters from the Sociology chairpersons to the chancellor.

The 2/3 rule was only invoked by Sociology Department chairperson Prof. Randy David in a meeting on June 16, 2009 with Chancellor Cao and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Lorna Paredes, in what seemed to be a last-minute idea to deny Prof. Raymundo’s tenure. Prof. David insisted that the 2/3 rule be upheld in the second voting by the Sociology Department’s tenured faculty on Prof. Raymundo’s case, resulting in votes of 5 for, 4 against, 1 abstain, and 1 waiver of tenure. However, it is worth noting that the so-called 2/3 rule was not upheld in the first voting of the tenured faculty which resulted in Prof. Raymundo’s favor, with votes of 7 for, 3 against.

In his decision denying Prof. Raymundo’s tenure appeal, Chancellor Cao upheld this questionable 2/3 rule without justification, even when this was one of the issues raised by Prof. Raymundo in her letter of appeal. Chancellor Cao falsely assumed that this 2/3 rule was in fact a valid premise for the Sociology department’s non-recommendation of Prof. Raymundo’s tenure.

4. On the lack of due process and the Sociology department’s “minority report”: Chancellor Cao maintained that the Sociology department “sufficiently explained” the non-recommendation of Prof. Raymundo’s tenure. While it is true that a number of meetings with Prof. Raymundo were held by tenured faculty members (June 2008 with Prof Aquino, end of July 2008 with some faculty members, March 2009 with tenured faculty members) regarding the Karen Empeno case, these were merely clarificatory meetings for Prof. Raymundo. She was never given a copy of the 13-page minority report, dated October 17, 2008, signed by Profs. Fernandez, Rubio, and Arguillas. The significance of the minority report was never explained to Prof. Raymundo. This was not raised in her meeting with Prof. Aquino in November 6, 2008 when the latter informed Prof. Raymundo of the tenured faculty’s decision to withdraw her tenure recommendation. When Prof. Raymundo asked for the grounds of this decision, she was told by the chair that the latter was bound by the tenured faculty’s wish that Prof. Raymundo merely be informed of the decision.

It is clear that Chancellor Cao did not take into account Prof. Raymundo’s repeated appeals that the reasons behind the Sociology Department’s decision be made known to her. As early as November 20, 2008, Prof. Raymundo had already written to the chancellor, expressing that she had not been informed of the reasons for the Sociology department’s decision. On June 24, 2009, the All UP Academic Employees Union-Diliman Chapter also sent a letter to the chancellor concerning the Sociology Department’s lack of transparency in Prof. Raymundo’s tenure application, which was not replied to by the chancellor. Prof. Raymundo was never able to defend herself in writing nor had the chance to consult with a lawyer regarding the allegations raised against her, which points to the obvious lack of due process in the Sociology Department’s handling of Prof. Raymundo’s tenure application.

Chancellor Cao himself should be made to answer for his long period of inaction regarding Prof. Raymundo’s tenure. Although Prof. Raymundo brought the matter to his office in a letter in October 2008, the Chancellor never answered Prof. Raymundo, either in writing or through other means of communication. The chancellor only initiated actions in February 2009, after receiving letters supporting Prof. Raymundo’s appeal, almost four months after Prof. Raymundo’s letter. Such inaction is a direct violation of Section 5 of the Code of Ethics for Government Officials, which stipulates that public officials should respond to official letters within 15 working days from the receipt.

5. On the chancellor’s selective use of arguments: Given the numerous documents and letters submitted to the chancellor related to Prof. Raymundo’s tenure case, Chancellor Cao was not able to take into account the relevant documents that should have been given due attention. A case in point is the non-citation of Prof. Walden Bello’s letter of support affirming Prof. Raymundo’s academic excellence. In this letter, Bello also said that the allegations against Prof. Raymundo’s ethical positions cannot be used to deny her tenure and should instead be addressed in a venue separate from the tenure vote. Another glaring flaw in Chancellor Cao’s selection of arguments is his misuse of a paragraph from Prof. Laura Samson’s letter (November 3, 2008), which he cited to highlight dissent within the department, without considering Prof. Samson’s concluding statement that actually supported Prof. Raymundo’s appeal for tenure.

Chancellor Cao’s skewed, arbitrary, and unjust decision-making which is tantamount to abuse of authority has no place in a university that stands for academic freedom and service to the people. The R.U.UP calls for the immediate reversal of Chancellor Cao’s decision to deny Prof. Sarah Raymundo’s tenure.

CHANCELLOR CAO'S DECISION, FLAWED AND UNJUST!

TENURE FOR PROF. SARAH RAYMUNDO NOW!

Visit http://tenureforsarahraymundo.blogspot.com.

We urge you to sign the online petition http://www.gopetition.com/online/32122.html in support of Prof. Raymundo’s continuing campaign for justice and tenure.

Rights of Untenured U.P. Faculty (R.U.U.P. Faculty Alliance)

All U.P. Academic Employees Union | All U.P. Workers Union | CONTEND-U.P. | Concerned Faculty Members, Administrative Staff, REPS, Students and Individuals

[1] “Kinikilala ko po ang akademikong nagawa ni Prop. Raymundo sa larangan ng pagtuturo at publikasyon. Kahanga-hanga ang kanyang sigasig na makapag-ambag sa pagpapayaman ng disiplina ng sosyolohiya at magamit ito tungo sa ikauunlad ng ating lipunan”

Sarah's Appeal Letter to U.P. Pres. Roman

2009-11-21T22:18:00.000-08:00

November 16, 2009

Professor Emerlinda Roman, PhD

President

University of the Philippines System

Quezon Hall, Diliman, Quezon City

Dear President Roman:

The purpose of this letter is two-fold. First, I seek redress and appeal for a reversal of the denial of my tenure by the Office of the Chancellor of the University of the Philippines – Diliman. Second, I wish to apprise you of the grave injustice that I have endured in my overdrawn and highly irregular tenure application process.

Read / download Sarah's appeal letter in PDF: Sarah's Appeal Letter to UP Pres Roman

Read / download Sarah's answers in PDF to allegations against her detailed in the Arguillas-Rubio-Fernandez October 17. 2008 Minority Report: Sarah's Reply to Minority Report

SIGNATURE CAMPAIGN / PETITION: AN APPEAL TO U.P. PRESIDENT ROMAN AND THE BOARD OF REGENTS TO GRANT PROF. SARAH RAYMUNDO TENURE*

2009-11-15T09:26:00.000-08:00

SIGN THE ONLINE PETITION by clicking this: APPEAL TO GRANT SARAH RAYMUNDO TENURE
OR DOWNLOAD THE PETITION AND MANUAL SIGNATURE SHEETS: sarah petition statement and sarah petition signature sheets

WE, FACULTY MEMBERS, ADMINISTRATIVE staff, REPS, students and concerned individuals, appeal to University of the Philippines (U.P.) President Emerlinda Roman and the Board of Regents (BOR) to grant Sociology Professor Sarah Raymundo the tenure she truly deserves.

On October 28, 2009, U.P. Diliman Chancellor Sergio Cao ruled against Prof. Raymundo’s appeal for tenure. This decision, which came after almost a year since Prof. Raymundo first appealed to his office in November 2008, is flawed and unjust. We raise the following major points against Chancellor Cao’s decision to deny Prof. Raymundo’s tenure:

A.) PROFESSOR RAYMUNDO HAS FULLY SATISFIED ALL THE ACADEMIC REQUIREMENTS FOR TENURE:
1. The Sociology Department and the College Executive Board of the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP) never, at any instance, questioned Prof. Raymundo’s academic excellence in the longstanding issue of her tenure appeal.
2. The majority of Prof. Raymundo’s tenured colleagues, as stated in their original justification for recommending her tenure, acknowledge her "excellent quality of mind," "expansive intellectual interest," "competence in current and emerging academic discourses (as) reflected in her teaching" and "capability to engage in sustained scholarship."
3. Prof. Raymundo exceeded the minimum tenure requirements set by her department and college. Thus, it puzzles us why the Chancellor applied the tenure requirements of the College of Science (CS) to Prof. Raymundo, a CSSP faculty member; unless the Chancellor undermines the tenure requirements of CSSP and other non-CS units.

B.) PROFESSOR RAYMUNDO’S DENIAL OF TENURE IS POLITICAL PERSECUTION IN THE GUISE OF ACADEMIC EVALUATION:
1. Testimonies detailing alleged instances of Prof. Raymundo's "breach of professional ethics" or "dishonesty" are all personal opinions of three or four individuals coming from the Sociology Department. These "facts" have neither been established by consensus nor adequately supported by any investigation undertaken by the Department itself.
2. In the minority report dated October 17, 2008 sent to Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs (VCAA) Lorna Paredes, three tenured faculty members (Profs. Marcia Fernandez, Clarissa Rubio and Marie Arguillas) of the Sociology Department strongly opposed to Prof. Raymundo's tenure presented their own "facts" and a (contentious) "interpretation of a poem" which merely represented their own opinions and not that of the Department itself. One issue hurled at Prof. Raymundo is her alleged failure to uphold the truth by not clarifying that Karen Empeno had an AWOL status at the time of her abduction during a University Council (UC) meeting in 2006.
3. However, during the same UC meeting, presiding officer Chancellor Cao affirmed Karen’s status as a student of the university, despite her AWOL status.
4. The Fernandez-Rubio-Arguillas minority report finally confirms that Prof. Raymundo is being denied tenure based entirely on her progressive positions, not on academic merits. Chancellor Cao skirts the real issue of Prof. Raymundo’s tenure struggle by turning Prof. Raymundo’s case of political persecution into a matter of academic, including ethical, requirements.

C.) PROFESSOR RAYMUNDO’S TENURE CASE WAS NOT GRANTED FAIR AND DUE PROCESS:
1. Chancellor Cao ignored Prof. Raymundo’s repeated appeals that the reasons behind the Sociology Department’s non-recommendation of tenure be made known to her.
2. Regardless of the number of times she met with the tenured faculty, Prof. Raymundo has never been given the opportunity to answer the allegations against her. The specific allegations and the supposed evidences supporting these have never been formally presented to her by any accusing party. This flatly violates her right to due process. Prof. Raymundo was never able to defend herself in writing nor had the chance to consult with a lawyer regarding the allegations raised against her.
3. Prof. Walden Bello in his January 12, 2009 letter of support to Prof. Raymundo wrote that, "The conflation of the tenure process with a disciplinary process - especially one that has not reached any conclusion on the guilt or innocence of the defendant - is wrong and constitutes a dangerous precedent that would destroy the academic objectivity that is central to the tenure process."

D.) CHANCELLOR CAO UPHELD SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT CHAIR RANDY DAVID’S QUESTIONABLE 2/3 DEPARTMENTAL RULE FOR TENURE:
1. Prof. Randy David insisted that a so-called 2/3 rule be upheld in the second voting by the tenured faculty, which resulted in votes of 5 for, 4 against, 1 abstain, and 1 waiver of tenure. But this rule was not upheld in the first voting of which resulted in Prof. Raymundo’s favor (7 for, 3 against).
2. The so-called rule was never raised in any previous voting or correspondence. It was only invoked by Prof. David in a meeting on June 16, 2009 with Chancellor Cao and VCAA Paredes.

E.) CHANCELLOR CAO DID NOT GIVE DUE ATTENTION TO ALL RELEVANT DOCUMENTS:
1. Chancellor Cao did not cite Prof. Walden Bello’s letter of support affirming Prof. Raymundo’s academic excellence.
2. The chancellor also misused a paragraph from Prof. Laura Samson’s letter, which he cited to highlight dissent in the department, even though Prof. Samson’s concluding statement actually favored Prof. Raymundo.

Chancellor Cao’s skewed, arbitrary, and unjust decision-making which is tantamount to abuse of authority has no place in a university that stands for academic freedom and service to the people. We call for the immediate reversal of Chancellor Cao’s decision to deny Prof. Raymundo’s tenure.

Thus, we reiterate our appeal to Pres. Roman and the BOR to grant Prof. Sarah Raymundo the tenure she truly deserves.
*Drafted by the alliance Rights of Untenured University of the Philippines Faculty (RU UP Faculty)