Bernal, Which way for the University of Panama?

To preserve create and transmit culture; to provide a suitable education, accessible to all, which must be put in the best hands, and at the same time improve and strengthen the quality and personal situation of all those in whom have been entrusted the important and high-minded profession of forming citizens and professionals, are integral parts of the task from which the University of Panama is shrinking.

The principal and highest self-proclaimed "authorities" at the University of Panama have elaborated a "Proposed Law of the University of Panama," by which Law 11 of June 8, 1981, Law 6 of May 24, 1991 and other norms that conflict with the proposal would be repealed. A total of 57 articles, distributed in six chapters, attempt to lay the bases for our principal center of higher education to keep the country underdeveloped --- that is to say, in a state of poverty, inequality and dependency. It conserves those elements of an institution that fortify the privileges and sinecures of the patio mandarins and get ever farther from the country's developmental problems. At the same time, it doesn't manage to define the university's role in Panamanian society. It confirms in its content, that which other professors have said: "in these times, in which the governmental estates encysted in the parties and apparatus of power have misunderstood the challenges presented by the country, the lack of clarity of the proposed U of P law becomes self-evident."

In effect, said "proposal," conceived elaborated and edited behind everyone's back, without real and effective participation of the university community or the citizenry, contains none of the progress accomplished by humanity toward the right to education, which have shaped several UNESCO texts. It does not emphasize the importance of the right of education to the enjoyment of all the other human rights and for the development of individuals, and it forgets that the right to education can only be fully enjoyed in an atmosphere of academic freedom and autonomy of the institution of higher education.

Forgetting that universities were conceived to shed light and never to project shadows, the "proposal" does not consider that education must orient itself toward the full development of the human personality and its sense of dignity, as well as to strengthen respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and peace.

Those who conceive this "proposal" have been more concerned with "administrative" aspects and "electoral" mechanisms to maintain themselves in their positions than with the principles of education.

Far from shaping the University's mechanisms and instruments to promote and multiply the search for and use of understanding to further research and the process of teaching and learning, the obscurantist "proposal," in the best top-down vertical spirit, puts the so-called "authorities" above the university community and forgets that these so-called "authorities" are elected to attain the objectives that define the educator, student and administrative estates.

In fact, the estate of "authorities" does not exist, but they create it in Chapter 2 of the "proposal," which dedicates more than half of its articles to the "university authorities" and how they can institutionalize their tenure in their positions.

Every institution of higher education must be involved in the contemporary problems that confront society. To that end, we are taught, the study plans of such institutions as well as their activities must respond to the needs of society as a whole.

However, what we are offered in this authoritarian and anti-democratic "proposal" is more of the same thing that has served to distance the University of Panama from its mission.

Once again it's necessary to refer to what Maestro Octavio Méndez Pereira, the first rector of the University, who never had himself called "Rector Magnífico," taught us when he said, in his discourse at the inauguration of the National University of Panama on October 7, 1935:

"What I have always believed with unbreakable faith is that in weak and small nations like ours, over which the clouds of imperialism hover, general culture, science and research mean, more than anything else, effective autonomy, personality and freedom. Thus I will always consider the creation and formation of our University a work of the highest patriotism. She will be constituted in her own right, by competency and by international solidarity in culture, as our people's most advanced watchtower and our destiny's strongest, most conscious and most effective defender."

Also in this section:
Leis, What our newly inaugurated officials should do
Jackson, Things that Panama's Americans must decide
What they're saying about the attacks on Kerry's military record
Giuliani, Thank God George W. Bush is our president
Aldredge & Kelley, Protests at the Republican National Convention
Thomas & Thomas, SouthCom's contortions to define its role
Human Rights Watch, The Guantanamo military tribunals
Vacca, The Greater Caribbean This Week
Bolivarians, About the pardons of Cuban terrorists
Bernal, Where is the University of Panama going?

opinion

Quo vadis, University?