Binay: UP Global City makes us proud

MANILA, Philippines - Vice President Jejomar Binay welcomed yesterday the construction of the University of the Philippines (UP) Professional Schools in Global City in Taguig.

In a speech delivered during the groundbreaking ceremony, Binay said the construction of the UP Professional Schools in Global City, Taguig is something that makes every UP alumnus proud.

Binay was a graduate of the UP College of Law in Diliman, Quezon City.

“This is something that makes every UP alumnus stand a little taller and more upright — even those who share my physical size and height — my natural cousins, I like to say, those with the same size and height like me,” Binay said.

 Binay chairman of the UP Law Centennial board of advisers, said he was informed that it took seven years for the UP Professional Schools project to come to Global City.

“So depending on how long the actual construction will take, we shall soon have in the heart of this great metropolis, a new UP campus sparkling with modern structures dedicated solely to post-graduate professional studies,” Binay said.

 “But speaking as chairman of the UP Law centennial board of advisers, this is something that fills me with great optimism, confidence and hope that in the not too distant future, when we speak of great scholars of the law, we would be speaking no longer of erudite men and women who had gone to Yale or Harvard or some distinguished graduate school abroad. We would be speaking rather of distinguished scholars who have honed their legal expertise in our UP Graduate School of Law in Global City or Taguig,” Binay added.

Binay said Filipinos should “brace for greater, if not indeed the greatest, competition among nations and individuals for the most vital of all human and material resources as they brace for the future.”

“I refer to the ultimate universal resource called knowledge. For the first time in human history, we have arrived at a universal consensus that knowledge is indeed mankind’s primary and ultimate resource,” Binay said.

“But knowledge has to be consciously and artfully cultivated, and the best place for that is the university at its finest. The university is the best place where the best minds can advance best, because it is the place where they can best interact freely and vigorously with other minds, both among the living and among the dead,” Binay added.

“But in speaking of what I hope this new U.P. Campus can accomplish, I hope no one among us will want to suggest that UP Taguig or UP Global City will simply add to the number of university campuses in the Philippines. I would ask all of us to make sure that this new campus will add strength —the greatest strength if possible — to our universities, and to the way our society values, uses and reproduces knowledge,” Binay said.