Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Joseph Scalice, (Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Nanyang Technological University), which will focus on the legacy of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the Kahin Center, but people are also welcome to join us on Zoom. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

Participate by Zoom here.

About the Talk

In May 2022, fifty years after his father declared martial law, Ferdinand Marcos Jr was elected president of the Philippines. The martial law regime of Marcos Sr was a brutal military dictatorship that ruled for more than a decade. How have the perpetrators and representatives of this regime been rehabilitated?

This lecture will detail the extraordinary events and political crisis that culminated in the 1972 declaration of martial law, examining what we now know about how it was carried out. A historical assessment of the Marcos dictatorship is fundamental to understanding the rhetoric, policies, and social significance of the Marcos Jr government.

About the Speaker

Joseph Scalice (PhD, UC Berkeley) is a historian of revolutionary movements and authoritarianism in Southeast Asia with a focus on the postwar Philippines. He is Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His book, The Drama of Dictatorship: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines (Cornell, 2023), uncovers the role played by rival Communist parties in the conflict that culminated in Ferdinand Marcos' declaration of martial law in 1972. Scalice has published articles on social struggles, dictatorship, and the Sino-Soviet split in Southeast Asia in Critical Asian Studies, History and Anthropology, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Modern Asian Studies, Philippine Studies, and Diplomatic History, among other journals.