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opinion

Also in this section:
Jackson, Freedom for Panama's own sake
Leis, Invisible indigenes
Garraway, Measuring tourism's sustainability
Gutiérrez, China's economic invasion of Mexico
Birns & Kozyn, Haiti's upcoming "elections"
Avnery, Iraq's fate
Human Rights Watch, Bush and Castro team up to deny Cuban travel rights
Rodríguez, Selling Panama's beaches and islands
Bernal, "We don't want you here"

It's not so much that it makes us look bad...

by Eric Jackson

Some essential freedoms are on the line here in Panama, their defenders come from different places and perspectives, and the arguments are various. Thus one voice from the right side of the spectrum in Panama notes that the international notoriety that Panama has received because of public officials using defamation laws in an attempt to silence critics is doing serious harm to this country's reputation. Another critique, from the left part of the spectrum in the United States, warns that the University of Panama's reaction to revelations of administrative corruption by way of persecuting the tenured law professor who filed a complaint about it tends to isolate this country in the academic world.

Let me suggest that, although the arguments cited above are serious and worthy of consideration, they shouldn't be the trump cards in the debate that Panama should be having. Yes, there are international norms and obedience to international law is important, especially for a world crossroads like Panama. However, whether or not we have freedom of expression and academic freedom are most of all matters of Panama's own way of life, and this country's own economic and cultural future.

I make the distinction first because at a time of globalization under rules set by other people in other countries who don't particularly have Panama's best interests in mind, certain things get defined abroad in ways that we should never accept for ourselves.

In the United States, for example, the courts have more or less held that the first amendment protections of freedom of speech and of the press mean that wealthy interests have the right to shout down their election time adversaries through unlimited campaign spending, and meanwhile these same constitutional principles mean that television networks that are usually subsidiaries of defense contractors and in any case always subject to regulation by the administration in power can as a matter of constitutionally protected editorial discretion refuse to run paid advertisements which deliver antiwar messages.

The 18th century advances in the field of freedom of expression that accompanied the American Revolution were important milestones for all humanity, but now that era's sweeping statements about inalienable individual rights have been jammed into a “marketplace of ideas” mold, and the shape of that mold is ever more determined by way of monopolistic practices. That's something that we shouldn't want in Panama, even if by way of free trade agreements, intellectual property conventions, the World Trade Organization and so on the concept becomes something of an international norm.

One reason why we should not want a US-style “marketplace of ideas” is that this tends to eradicate Panamanian culture. When “free expression” means that television content becomes a matter entirely for the market, whose buyers for this entire nation are a few wealthy individuals, then Panamanian creativity gets drowned under waves of Hollywood imports, with an undertow of Colombian telenovelas. Not only do our artists starve, but new generations are raised according to different values.

Similarly, we ought to look to historical examples like the University of Paris in the Middle Ages to understand the roots of academic freedom in our culture, and understand that despite all of the abuses over the centuries this concept has served as the incubator of new ideas and the preservative of classical ones, much to the benefit of society as a whole.

Yet over the centuries we have time and again seen academia swept by various forms of hysteria, with many a religious, partisan or ideological purge. We have seen after every great disruptive wave the entrenchment of oily, self-serving administrators whose main skill is talking the jargon of the movement caused the preceding ruckus, even if they don't believe in that movement's principles or anything much other than their own personal welfare.

Two economic forces that have shaped university life in most places are the economic protectionism of the professions and big industrial combines' desire to control course of and appropriate the fruits of academic research. The non-elite universities tend to get less of the endowed research and educate fewer of the top professionals, but in the market scheme of things they often get sucked into an exaggerate quest to align their curricula to where the jobs are --- in the end generally yesterday's jobs, not tomorrow's.

I think that neither the highly specialized European form of university education nor the corporate oriented North American model --- the former more than anything the product of professionals' protectionism and the latter the basis for a globalization of education that Washington would like to impose --- well serve the needs of a little country that must live by its wits and be highly adaptable if it wants to prosper.

Yes, Bernal's persecution is an outrageous assault on academic freedom that tars the reputation of all Panamanian academia around the world. (Remember that by law the University of Panama exercises a great degree of control over all other institutions of higher learning in this country, and is a necessary component to the corrupt proliferation of diploma mill “universities” that have no valid excuse to exist.) And yes, people who drive on the Transistmica often do get a jaded view of university autonomy when it gets defined both by the campus radicals and the Rector Magnifico as the right of students to block the road, throw things at the cops, then scurry back onto campus before they are arrested.

But far more insidious is a university mission review now being conducted by Gustavo García de Paredes's corrupt political patronage machine. In light of government funding cuts and their self-imposed imperative of preserving the existence and perks of a hideously bloated administration, these people are now performing a crummy imitation of US-style corporate higher education, wherein whole departments are in danger of elimination and new ones may be created on the basis of industry's current demand for trained technicians. Implicit in that is the final renunciation of higher education's role in forming leaders and innovators.

So yes, what's going on at the university looks tacky by US standards, but that's largely beside the point. Panamanian values and Panamanian needs --- which can not and must not be defined by the intellectually lazy and morally corrupt political hacks among us if this nation is to get ahead --- ought to inform the operating concepts of university autonomy and academic freedom in this country.

The problems in each case become ever more complicated when one realizes that the solutions can't be left up to those who speak for authority. Our print and electronic media are controlled by and speak for a tiny, wealthy and mostly partisan-aligned elite of broadcasters, publishers and ad agency owners. Our national university is held in a stranglehold by a crooked and narrow-minded political patronage machine. However, freedom of the press is an individual right, possessed by every human being and closely linked to the right to be informed.  And we must understand --- and insist --- that the people of Panama own the University of Panama, and that everyone, citizens and non-citizens as well, has a stake in a society that's well educated. Those who hold themselves out as the authorities in the media and academia don't and can't speak for the rest of us.

We may want to glance at what others think as one of many points of reference. But Panamanians of all walks of life need to fight this battle for fundamental freedoms, on Panamanian terms, for the benefit of Panama.