Teachers air support for suspended AIM professors

Teachers from the University of the Philippines (UP) and De La Salle University (DLSU) and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) have expressed their support for the embattled Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Faculty Association.

All-UP Academic Employees Union president Dr. Judy Taguiwalo, DLSU Faculty Association president Dr. Joy Cruz, and ACT chairman Antonio Tinio urged AIM Faculty Association (AFA) chairman Vic Limlingan and president Noel Leyto to press on with their bid for academic freedom and justice.

Limlingan and Leyco were suspended for one year starting last July after they raised questions before the school’s board of governors regarding the observance of the laws granting AIM faculty a share in tuition increases imposed through the years since 1974.

In an academic freedom symposium last Friday, the three educators’ groups said the suspension was a violation of the internationally recognized principle of academic freedom the two men were supposed to enjoy for being tenured professors of an institute for higher education.

AIM officials allegedly refused to recognize the AFA since the union was formed in 2004.

AFA members who attended last Friday’s symposium said that faculty members of the school primarily decided to form the association after AIM officials departed from tradition and appointed a dean in 2004 who was not voted to the position through an election conducted among the school’s faculty of tenured professors. — Rainier Allan Ronda