opinion

The education and renaissance of our population only can be obtained through renovations, true innovations, by means of perseverance, boldness and knowledge taking research, science and culture by the hand. However, for the administrative hierarchy of the University of Panama, presided over by its rector and his team of vice-rectors, deans, vice-deans, and directors and sub-directors of the regional centers, it's much more important to search for mechanisms which permit them --- exclusively for themselves --- to maintain the most important institution of higher education in the country under their control, than to confront with sincerity and imagination the great contemporary challenges demanded of higher education in today's world.

Knowledge has an ethical basis. Something is going very wrong in our society when the University of Panama, over the past three decades, goes on training professionals with little culture, indifferent to the main problems of our time, who live with their backs turned to the shameful national reality. The principal issues, like the strengthening of the democratic institutions, economic growth and development, the environment, the role of the Panama Canal and Panama's responsibilities as a part of international society, a neither discussed nor debated at the University of Panama.

The revitalization of democracy happens through the university, which is the basic tool to obtain the direct participation of all citizens in the role that's up to them to play in the present and in the future of their people, their city, their country and in the world. But the current university regents have chosen to impose mechanisms that permit them to maintain a university that's disoriented, perplexed, deceived, skeptical to the point of being adrift, proudly and joyfully walking not toward the light, but backwards toward the darkness at a surprising gallop, as a result of their individualist, exclusionary, intolerant and anti-democratic ambitions.

Proof of the above is the "Proposed Draft Organic Law of the University of Panama," the content of which encompasses 71 articles, each more retrograde than the previous. A unilateral and exclusionary proposal, which has not been the object of a true examination by the university community or by the society which the university must serve; which has been elaborated behind the backs of the mechanisms of democratic participation; which don't contain the basic principles of contemporary higher education; which does not reflect a thorough analysis; which does not permit the university to comply with its teaching function; which would put the University of Panama --- even more --- at the rear guard of higher education; which distances us from the generation of knowledge and a true and close relationship with scientific innovations; which impedes the university from lending significant support to the development of Panama; which does not facilitate in an effective manner democratization in the participation in discussions or taking of decisions; which does not respect the roles of the professors or of the students; which mocks serious academic thought; which decapitates the possibility of raising institutional efficiency and efficacy; which offers us an obsolete model of the university career; which distorts the principles of higher education; which ignores the gains accomplished by humanity and its vanguard educational organizations such as UNESCO; which seeks to satisfy the gluttony for power of the "same old same old."

It is fitting to remind those who have imposed, amidst a deadline, a "plebiscite" so that --- without discussion, debate, dialogue, time or proper conditions, two days from the last day of classes --- the university community may say "yes" or "no" to their proposal. As Thomas Erskine teaches us: "If reason is opposed with reason, and an argument with another, all good government will be safe. Opinions and knowledge are not articles that can be monopolized and turned into leaflets, statues or banners. We must not convert knowledge into merchandise, ticket it and put a price on it...." I make mine the words pronounced by Federico Mayor Zaragoza, in closing a conference that he gave at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, when he held the post of director general of UNESCO: "Mr. Rector, I hope that we will never be docile. The university can never be that. In her the scientists who have to counsel the leaders are forged and in her they have to formulate questions that perhaps irritate many, but are necessary to pose."

All of us university citizens have many questions to formulate. We have a role to play in designing and developing the university we want. Let us not deceive ourselves: if there isn't a university for everybody, there won't be a university for anybody. Enough of the impositions, enough of the persecutions. Let's walk toward the light, not toward the darkness of submission and corruption.



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