UP and the case for State subsidy

Less than two years from now, the University of the Philippines will mark its centennial.  It will do so in a world far more complex than the colonial era that saw its founding.  Additional campuses and new curricular offerings mirror the basic changes in function that it has assumed as a State university.  Over the … Read more

The intellectual is political

Nothing perhaps more bluntly shows the present government’s authoritarian bent than the recent filing of rebellion charges against former University of the Philippines President Francisco Nemenzo. In both its legal and ordinary senses, rebellion means taking up arms against the government.  Nemenzo has not taken up arms against the state, nor has he advocated its … Read more

How much poverty can a nation take?

How much poverty can a nation take before it starts to disintegrate? The latest Social Weather Stations survey reports that 51% of the people they asked rated themselves poor, and that almost 3 million Filipino households experienced hunger in the last three months. In themselves, surveys about poverty have no intrinsic meaning. Individuals have different … Read more

After people’s initiative

What we are seeing in the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on fundamental questions is a legal system painfully weaning itself away from extra-legal influences. It is understandable that some of the magistrate’s opinions, if not the decisions themselves, have been rather sharp in language.  I view this as the Court’s way of serving notice that … Read more