Letter Re: Ateneo Population Management Program
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Dr. Napoleon K. Juanillo, Jr.
Program Director
Leadership and Managerial Excellence in Health Systems
Health Unit – Ateneo Graduate School of Business
Ateneo Professional Schools
Rockwell Drive, Makati City
Dear Dr. Juanillo,
We are privileged to have become privy to the correspondence between you and Ms. Rosie B. Luistro of ALLiance for the FAMILY Foundation Philippines, Inc. (ALFI) regarding the Ateneo de Manila University-Packard Foundation Population Resource Management Program. In its light, we are extremely disappointed to learn about ADMU’s collaboration with Packard Foundation, specifically on the matter of population management, and take this occasion to add our voice to ALFI’s in protest of this program.
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Our concern is focused on the collaborative relationship between Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU), a Catholic and Jesuit university, and Packard Foundation, which openly and strongly supports “ the development of effective policies to uphold access to reproductive health services, particularly safe and legal abortion.”
In the face of your highly academic defense of the role of the Health Unit-Ateneo Graduate School of Business in Leadership Innovations in Population Management, allow us to explain our stand by way of a simple metaphor.
There is a marketing gimmick in the fashion industry that has proven quite effective. To advertise their brands, big fashion houses give expensive designer clothes to selected celebrities, for free. Although the celebrities are not expected to publicly endorse their brands, verbally or in writing, the fashion houses know that when they wear the clothes in public places and highly publicized events, it will be publicly perceived as a clear act of approval and endorsement of the brand. That’s great advertising without the high cost of paying for professional modeling fees, isn’t it?
ADMU’s affiliation with Packard Foundation is a close comparison to this situation. Your acceptance of a Packard Foundation grant, your creation of a course program as a vehicle for its use, your public announcement of the program as an “Ateneo de Manila-Packard Foundation” program – all these will surely be publicly perceived as a collective stamp of approval of Packard Foundation’s goals. And given the high stature of ADMU, that is invaluable service towards advancing Packard Foundation’s cause indeed!
Although we appreciate that the program was, as you say, precisely created “to engage all stakeholders in a focused, logical, and reasoned debate about population concerns,” we doubt that such can be done effectively, considering that the money that allows you to do so comes from an entity that has expressed a strong, partial opinion on the matter. Who was it that said that one ought not to bite the hand that feeds him? In addition, your assurance that “there is nothing in the curricula that will teach the fellows or short course participants about ‘promoting the use of artificial contraception …’ comes to us as a naïve pacifier to put a serious and valid concern to rest. We all know that realities in the classroom may not necessarily fully reflect written curricula.
Finally, we agree, as you say, that today’s population issues “fall right in the alley of multi-faceted discourse.” But corollary issues on population, like abortion and artificial contraception, are moral issues, which, at the end of the day, require us to make a stand. By affiliating with Packard Foundation, ADMU’s stand as a Catholic educational institution has become ambivalent.
For the sake of upholding the integrity of ADMU, we ask you to cancel the Ateneo de Manila-Packard Foundation Program on Population Resource Management before the first batch of fellows are awarded.
Sincerely,
MARITA F. WASAN
Executive Director
Noted by:
SR. MARY PILAR VERZOSA, RGS
Chairperson
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