Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Muhammad Suhail Mohamed Yazid, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Asia Center at Harvard University.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seap@cornell.edu.

Abstract

How could an anti-racist, liberal project on the global stage reinforce an illiberal national regime? This talk explores the ways Malayan and Malaysian leaders negotiated simultaneous belonging across multiple ‘worlds’—namely the Commonwealth, the United Nations, and the Muslim World. Departing from conventional histories of Third World solidarity, it reveals how these Southeast Asian postcolonial statesmen mobilized the liberal grammar of self-determination to entrench privilege and power at home. In doing so, this talk exposes the deep paradoxes of global decolonization and the fragile foundations of the contemporary international system.

About the Speaker

Muhammad Suhail Mohamed Yazid is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center. A historian of global and international history, his research focuses on decolonization, the Global South, and the Malay World. His upcoming book project examines how Malaysian leaders sought to reshape post-war international organizations. Suhail earned his PhD in History from Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 2025. He is the author of He Who is Made Lord: Empire, Class, and Race in Postwar Singapore (ISEAS Publishing and University of Hawai’i Press).