Penman for Monday, February 6, 2017

I’VE HAD the pleasure and the privilege of winning a number of awards for my writing and teaching, but none of them has been as personally overwhelming for me as a recent honor bestowed upon me by my university and by a private benefactor.

At its 1323^rd meeting last December 16, the University of the Philippines Board of Regents approved the creation of the One UP-Jose Yap Dalisay Jr. Professorial Chair in Creative Writing, to be awarded once every three years to a deserving professor (an assistant professor at the minimum) in the Department of English and Comparative Literature (DECL) who has distinguished himself or herself in creative writing and its teaching.

The awardee will receive a grant of PHP 120,000 per year for a three-year period, and will be selected based on criteria set for One UP professorial chairs and by a committee of the DECL.

The chair will be funded by a donation of PHP 4.15 million contributed by a donor based in the United States, who wishes to remain anonymous and to be identified only as “a longtime friend of the Philippines.” The donation was coursed through the Friends of the UP Foundation in America (FUPFA), with the assistance of the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs and the UP Foundation.

My department and I are profoundly grateful for this great honor which, until it happened, was something I never imagined would fall on me, especially within my lifetime—and while I’m still in active service, two years’ short of retirement. Professorial chairs are usually set up by wealthy families or corporations in their own names. We have several endowed chairs in the humanities at UP, but this is our first for creative writing, and it will go a long way toward ensuring that young Filipino writers and their work get due recognition. (And just to make it clear, I myself won’t be seeing a single centavo of this generous grant—but that’s all right and as it should be, as I hold another chair.)

I have to admit that I do know the anonymous donor—a dear friend who spent many years in the Philippines and who has written about her experiences here with deep affection and insight. I’ve helped her bring those experiences to fruition as the editor of her books and, she says, her mentor, and later her friend. She could just as easily and more logically have named the chair after herself or her family, as I had urged her to do when she first broached the idea of endowing a chair at UP, but she insisted that it be in my name until I could no longer demur. While she has had no personal connection to UP, her late husband’s developmental work involved UP, and she and her late husband had many friends there—Carlos P. Romulo, Salvador P. Lopez, and Cesar Virata among others—so the chair recognizes those valuable relationships as well.

I can say that while our donor is by no means a Bill Gates or a Rockefeller—she lives modestly by herself in her advancing years—she is unfailingly generous and hospitable whenever Beng and I pay her a visit, and she knows the world (and I do mean the whole wide world, beyond the Worldwide Web) more intimately and more wisely than most people do.

The plans for the chair were put together over the past few months, and we have to thank outgoing UP President Fred Pascual, Vice President for Academic Affairs Giselle Concepcion, UP Foundation Executive Director Gerry Agulto, Friends of the UP Foundation in America Vice-Chair Polly Cortez, and DECL Chair Lily Rose Tope for facilitating the process. (Yes, folks—if you have friends and fellow UP alumni in the US who may want to give donations to UP for various causes, these can be coursed through Ms. Cortez at fupfa.org).

I know she doesn’t want too much of a fuss to be made about this, but once again I’d like to thank my friend for this singular honor, which will long outlive both of us. At current rates, the chair will be endowed for 34 years, although we’ve provided for the necessary adjustments to be made to account for inflation and other supervening circumstances. I look forward to the imminent selection of the first chairholder, who will also be expected to produce a book-length work and to deliver a lecture over his or her tenure. A life in academia has few pleasures, but this is one of them, and one of the best ones—for the recipient, the donor, and the honoree alike.

And this is as good a time as any to say thank you as well to Fred Pascual, Giselle Concepcion, and the other members of the UP System administration, whose six years in service will end with the turnover of the university’s reins to incoming President Danilo “Danicon” Concepcion and his team on February 10. I’m amazed by and rather sad at how quickly those six years have passed. Being a non-academic, Fred Pascual assumed the presidency as a relative unknown and got off to a rocky start, and I was among the vocal critics of some early missteps that could have been avoided with better advice.

But I came to be impressed by how hard Fred and Giselle worked over the years to raise UP to global standards (an initiative still not without its critics, UP being UP) and to expand its reach and resources. And while I never sought or held office under this administration other than the directorship of the Institute of Creative Writing, I was glad to be of some quiet service to Fred and his people when I could. We citizens of the Diliman Republic wish them well, as we look forward to even more achievements (let’s hear it for those Maroons!) under President Danicon and returning UPD Chancellor Mike Tan. Push on, UP!