EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is the commencement address delivered by the author at the recognition rites of the Asian Center and the TriCollege Philippine Studies Program of the University of the Philippines Diliman last July 28. She was vice president for academic affairs in 2017-2023 at UP, where she was a professor of sociology. She was also a commissioner at the Commission on Higher Education.  

I am deeply honored to congratulate the 2024 graduating class of the Asian Center and the TriCollege Philippine Studies Program on your patience and grit in completing your degrees despite the multiple challenges posed by the SARS-Covid-2 virus. You have balanced your responsibilities to your families, your respective offices, and, for some of you, the broader demands of public service and artistic networks.

I also express my profound appreciation to the faculty and staff of the Asian Center, College of Arts and Letters (CAL), and College of Social Sciences and Philosophy (CSSP) for their unwavering support and dedication to your intellectual and personal growth. They have navigated unprecedented demands at the height of the pandemic, adapting patiently to online and blended learning delivery modes without prior notice and understanding your personal challenges during those crisis years. Today, we celebrate your remarkable achievements and honor the mentors and staff who supported you throughout your graduate school journey.

Our beloved UP would have been better equipped to hone your intellectual and work-related competencies had the pandemic not thrust our academic community into uncharted territory. Nevertheless, I am certain that your academic and social experiences at the Asian Center, CAL, and CSSP, though impacted by the pandemic, have broadened your intellectual horizons. Whether you enrolled in the Asian Center’s programs or in the TriCollege Philippine Studies Program, your classes, seminars, and discussions have made you acutely aware of the emerging regional and global order.

Disruptive future

This evolving landscape remains fluid, suggesting that the disruptive future we anticipated as the reason for changing our teaching and learning methods during many Zoom faculty webinars when I was vice president for academic affairs is now upon us.

In those webinars, I repeatedly emphasized that climate change, zoonoses, and other potential pandemics, the technology-based Fourth Industrial Revolution—more recently referred to as the Fifth Industrial Revolution to highlight the inevitable interaction and coexistence between humans and artificial intelligence and not another technological revolution—the normalization of lies, fake news, and disinformation, a crisis of democracy with the global drift to authoritarianism, and geopolitical polarization, with the South China Sea being a battleground of a much colder Cold War, these shape and define our disruptive future.

We are collectively experiencing the impact of climate change, zoonoses, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution in our everyday lives. Additionally, the normalization of lies, the fabrication of facts, and widespread disinformation are becoming alarmingly commonplace. This is particularly concerning—although we in the humanities and social sciences may have unwittingly contributed to it through postmodern arguments, which distrust grand narratives that claim to explain large-scale natural, social, and historical phenomena, such as the grand narrative of science and the rationality of the Enlightenment on which it is based—because they have been used to legitimize power structures and marginalize alternative perspectives.

More worrisome than the fabrication of facts is the “death of the belief in fact,” which manifests in at least two ways: First, since everyone is entitled to construct their own reality, what was once consensually agreed upon is no longer regarded as such but is instead replaced by fabricated facts in the citizen’s constructed reality. Second, even more disconcerting is the relegation of truth and facts to secondary importance, with feelings mattering more than the veracity of statements.

The world of fabricated facts is complex and difficult to unravel. Still, your education at UP has equipped you with some intellectual tools to critically examine and unpack your own ideas about this world of misinformation. Be mindful, as I am now, of the possible contradictions you might find in your thinking as you begin sorting out the assumptions underlying your views.

Geopolitical struggle

Now, I move closer to your world as budding Asian and Philippine scholars and practitioners by citing the current colder Cold War. The protagonists are no longer as easy to delineate, given the great divide in the US and Europe between so-called democratic, outward-looking forces and the authoritarian, inward-oriented forces that often seem to align with the opposite side of their country’s position in the Cold War. We all know the Philippines is caught in the middle of this geopolitical struggle, and I can imagine the dilemma some of your professors face.

In 2019, I joined the first of the two Temasek-NUS Programmes on Leadership I attended in Singapore. This session focused on the “Asean Miracle: Opportunities for Regional Growth in Higher Education.” The discussions highlighted Asia’s central position on the world stage since 2000, with its economy poised to become the world’s largest. We discussed China’s increased leverage in regional and global political, economic, and cultural processes, the multiple power centers (India, China, and Japan), and Asean’s promise as an economic community that aims for mobility among skilled workers within the Asean region rather than in other regional economies.

However, my biggest takeaway from that workshop was this: People speculated about how long it would last when Asean was established, given the contentious issues among its countries. That it crossed its 50th year is a remarkable feat. Still, its future lies in Asean’s ability to navigate the geopolitics of China, the US, and Western powers while striving to be as neutral as possible. The discussion also highlighted the crucial role of universities and people-to-people diplomacy in this endeavor in the long term.

This takeaway reminded me of the programs some of the UP faculty from the three colleges have benefitted from—the Ford Foundation’s Asia Scholarship, the Toyota Foundation’s Southeast Asian Studies Regional Exchange Program, or SEASREP, and the Nippon Foundation’s Public Intellectuals Program. These initiatives aimed to foster mutual understanding among Southeast Asians–who historically have cast their sights on the regions of their colonizers–and build their scholarship around each other’s political economy, culture, environment, geography, and social movements, among areas of knowledge production.

Against this backdrop, it is uplifting to note that, a week before your formal graduation this morning, the Asian Center hosted the 2024 Southeast Asia Biennial Conference on the theme “De-Centering Southeast Asia.” This noteworthy event was organized in collaboration with a diverse team from different units within UP Diliman. From what I hear, the 3-day conference impressed the governing board of the Consortium for Southeast Asian Studies in Asia, with one member noting that this may have been the best of the five biennial conferences held so far.

The conference featured more than 350 participants, 280 presenters from 25 countries, 53 panels packed up to the last day, and seven plenary sessions covering almost all facets of Asean life. Topics ranged from philosophical reflections on empire and epistemology to methodological database concerns and empirical accounts of the region’s challenges. No wonder Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University colleagues, who will organize the next conference, now say the University of the Philippines is a tough act to follow.

The success of this conference is particularly heartening as it signals the Asian Center’s recovery from the pandemic-induced paralysis of academic life, allowing it to fulfill its mission “to continue bringing the reality of Asia to the Philippines, and the Philippines to the rest of Asia.” The Asian Center is mandated not only to develop closer and broader contact with Asian neighbors but also to focus on and develop Philippine studies in collaboration with CAL and CSSP.

Having taught research methodology in the TriCollege in my past life, I am ecstatic to note the production of three major knowledge products that deepen our understanding of our cultural heritage and our people: 1) a cultural history of the Philippine Symphony Orchestra from 1986 to 1996, and 2) narratives of the home of the Laonganon, which I am personally interested in to better understand better the culture of my mother’s family. The equally valuable third knowledge product of the Philippine Studies TriCollege addresses contemporary geopolitical realities within and outside the Philippines.

I was also happy to note the wide range of interests reflected in the titles of your master’s theses. Congratulations to those who painstakingly pursued your research and those who chose the non-thesis track.

Personal tips

I would be remiss if I ended my commencement speech by only citing your academic achievements and those of the Asian Center, CAL and CSSP without sharing at least three tips for your personal life.

First, find fulfillment and wonder in continuous learning. Although your degree may open doors or give you an edge in your work in [education], the defense sector, foreign service, art, museums, or the University, continue honing your competencies to excel further in your work and personal endeavors. In today’s world of qualifications frameworks, skills frameworks, credit transfers and equivalencies, certifications, and credit banking, there are multiple opportunities and means, like nano badges and micro-credential certificates, for retooling yourselves to better adjust to “the evolving requirements of the labor market” and “better master the changing timeframes and rhythms of individual existence.” 

Even if you are not keen on acquiring micro-certificates, further cultivate the habit of reading. Keep abreast of developments in the country, the region, and the world—not only because you, dear graduates, are alumni of the Asian Center, CAL, and CSSP but also to exercise your minds continuously. Young as you are, this can help avoid future dementia, provide a much-needed escape from the harsh realities of life, and uplift your spirit. Of course, it goes without saying that caring for your health is essential to maintaining a vibrant life of the mind and spirit.

Second, each of us has a mission in life or a series of connected tasks that we must discern from our experiences. This mission is not laid out clearly but comes in disparate bits and pieces: through assignments, menial tasks, duties, significant challenges, small challenges, heartaches, and joys. It is delivered by many people, including those we may not get along with, who might not even know they are contributing to our mission. Given this big picture, we are urged to give our best in everything we do, regardless of the outcomes, because everything we do is part of our mission, no matter how small.

Since our mission comes in bits and pieces, we must value patience—a challenging trait for a younger generation of multitaskers with shorter attention spans—and value diligence, perseverance, fidelity to work, and grit to continue despite frustrations and uncertainties. The mission’s connection to a bigger picture will drive you to find meaning and purpose in all events of your life, to aspire for excellence, and to give your best in all tasks, whether they are domestic chores, academic work, extracurricular activities, community work, or significant work beyond your small communities, whether your efforts are seen by others and appreciated or not.

In addition, we are encouraged to strive for the best, especially when the area of our mission has been defined. In his book Outliers, sociologist Malcolm Gladwell studied successful people over the last 50 years. He found that more than the opportunities given to them by the lottery of birth, it was how these individuals turned the baggage of their history into opportunities, how they continuously honed their skills—dedicating at least 10,000 hours to practice their craft—and how they used their skills to improve the lives of others and address the needs of their time that spelled their success.

In other words, the future is not solely defined by the past or current circumstances. It is shaped by how challenges are met and turned into opportunities—by how we give our best in all that we do, irrespective of the cards we have been dealt—all within the framework of our mission.

Because our mission is not easy, and there will be many trials in our effort to strive for excellence, those who believe in a Supreme Being value prayer and the faith that goes with it. Humanist nonbelievers in a Supreme Being can distance themselves from the world and draw from their inner resources through reflection or meditation. Whether believers or nonbelievers, this practice of going into a sacred space has saved my friends and me many times over the past half-century in the face of competing demands and overwhelming challenges.

In the book Thrive, Arianna Huffington asserted that the idea of success in the modern world is usually anchored on two legs: money and power. According to her, however, this formula is unsustainable. She argued for a third metric or measure of success with four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving. Yes, giving or service.

This brings me to my third tip:  Our purpose in life is always bigger than ourselves. It involves serving others—our family, the people served by our organization, our friends and colleagues, our geographic community, the nameless, faceless nation, and the marginalized in our midst. For those who pass UP’s portals like you, a deep sense of mission, the call to serve our people, the resolve to give your all in any circumstance, and the perseverance to strive for excellence despite extreme challenges are reflected in UP’s maxim of “honor and excellence” not for oneself but always in the service of others and the nation.

In Huffington’s book, she quoted Renaissance Indian Rabindranath Tagore as saying: “I slept and dreamt that life was a joy/. I awoke and saw that life was service/. I acted, and behold, service was joy.”

Life of the spirit

Sadly, not all UP alumni live by UP’s motto. Some colleagues, even friends, strove for excellence and occupied honorable posts for themselves and their cliques. I fervently pray that you will not be in their ranks.

One way to avoid joining their ranks is to nurture the life of the spirit. In preparation for its centennial year, one of the faculty conferences affirmed the need to nurture not only the life of the mind but also that of the body and the spirit. This entails maintaining a sacred space where you can reflect, process thoughts and emotions, find purpose, and discern your destiny is important. Nurturing the life of the spirit is essential for maintaining integrity while facing life’s challenges. A solid inner core is crucial for meeting moral challenges without sacrificing integrity for expediency. Solitude and reflection also prevent disillusionment, resignation, and despair, fostering a positive spirit to face severe problems and difficulties.

A wise man once said that the limitations faced by people who try to make a difference have nothing to do with a lack of energy and capacity. They have to do with disillusionment, resignation, and despair.

In our fast-paced world, getting lost in pursuing wealth, power, and fleeting material gains is easy. Amid future disruptions and countless vexations to the spirit, always remember your core values, who you are, whom you live for, and why you are alive. Reflect on your evolving mission, seek the grace to excel with honor in whatever you do for the mission, and develop the strength to persevere.  

Once again, congratulations, dear graduates. May you strive to be your best selves and continue thriving in the rapidly changing world. May you do your best to develop your respective life and work communities, the Filipino nation, and humanity! May you find joy, laughter, and lightness of being, especially in trying times! May you move from strength to strength as you fulfill your life’s purpose. May you be blessed abundantly and protected from all harm!

And as UP alumni, may you keep the spirit of honor and excellence in selfless service to others, especially the poor and marginalized.

Mabuhay po kayo!

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