Breaking, 1pm: The #UPDiliman faculty convened as the University Council issued today a statement upholding the academic freedom of all state universities against moves from the NTF-ELCAC and the CHED to purge  libraries of certain books and online materials based on authorship, titles, subject matter, school of thought

Documentary on Nazi book-burning produced by the Holocaust Memorial Museum,

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Breaking, 1pm: The #UPDiliman faculty convened as the University Council issued today a statement upholding the academic freedom of all state universities against moves from the NTF-ELCAC and the CHED to purge  libraries of certain books and online materials based on authorship, titles, subject matter, school of thought.

The statement came in the heels of the recent CHED Memo to state universities under its administrative “supervision” to remove certain books and online materials from their libraries on the ground that they were “subversive”. The UP Diliman Chancellor’s Executive Staff called out the move as an affront to academic freedom — but CHED Chair J.Prospero de Vera III replied that it was “disrespectful” to make such a statement.

The UP Diliman faculty University Council upheld the statement of the UP System Library Council

(which essentially stated that: “Book purges are practised by dictatorships, not democracies; and inevitably, book purges prove futile, as those who banned the Noli and the Fili for being subversive eventually realized. Knowledge advances not by the exclusion of ideas, but by intellectual inquiry and scientific practice. Insurgencies are contained by addressing their root causes, not by banning books that explain how and why they happen.” (Statement of the UP System Library Council) ) ,

and the statement of the UP Diliman Chancellor’s Executive Staff

(which summed up the essential function of libraries as repository of thought: “Ang aklatan ang puso ng bawat unibersidad at simbolo ng progresibong pag-iisip. Ang pagtatanggal ng mga aklat nito ay pagyurak sa malayang pag-iisip at pagpigil sa pagtuklas ng katotohanan. Pahalagahan at pangalagaan natin ang ating mga aklatan. Panatiliin nating malaya ang ating mga unibersidad bilang mga kanlungan ng kaalaman.” (At the heart of each academic institution is its library, which is a symbol of progressive thought. The removal of certain books from its repository is a violation of free thought and a restraint on the discovery of truth. Let us uphold the academic freedom of all institutions of higher learning.(translation supplied) (Statement of the UP Diliman Chancellor’s Executive Staff).