Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Mark Sanchez, Assistant Professor of Asian Studies (Asian American) at Vanderbilt University.

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

Abstract
This talk explores how legal advocates fought to defend civil liberties during the martial law era in the Philippines (1972-1981). During martial law, legal activists tried to challenge the Marcos regime in Philippine courts while trying to avoid legitimating martial law. Other legal advocates sought to garner international support while maintaining the centrality of Filipino people’s voices and experiences. The Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), an organization started by former Senator Jose W. Diokno and other lawyers to fight for the civil liberties of everyday Filipinos helped lead such fights. So too did anti-Marcos activists in the National Democratic Front (NDF) of the Philippines and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). This work operated on a local level with documentation efforts and habeas corpus filings as well as an international level, with examples such as the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) trial against the Marcos government in 1980. Despite the challenge of laying claim to the law against an authoritarian state, legal activists continued to advocate against the regime’s excesses and worked to shift local and international opinions against the Marcos state. Their work greatly contributed to transnational efforts to document human rights violence in the Philippines and offers insights into productive collaborations between grassroots and international solidarity activists.

About the Speaker
Mark John Sanchez teaches Asian American and Philippine history courses at Vanderbilt University. He is currently completing a book on the making of a transnational opposition to the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. He is also working on a project on Philippine labor migration, speculation, and gambling.

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Wednesday, February 25, 2026 4:00pm Africana Studies and Research Center

Speakers: Kassim Kone, Professor, Anthropology, SUNY Cortland; Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel (Associate Professor, Textiles and Fashion, University of Education, Winneba); and Akousa Mawuse Amankwah (Senior Lecturer, Department of Industrial Art, Faulty of Art, of the College of Art and Built Environment (CABE)- Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Kumasi Ghana.

April 22-23, 2026 401 Warren Hall Artificial intelligence (AI) is viewed by some as having great promise, while others view the arrival of this novel technology with skepticism or concern. AI is certainly having a significant impact in many arenas of life. What are the specific implications of AI for people living in the Global South? This conference will examine the specific social, political, environmental and economic impacts of AI in and for the Global South, taking a holistic, perspective that considers the historical, socio-cultural, environmental and political-economic context in which AI is embedded in and entangles with across the Global South. Keynote speakers from a range of disciplines will focus on specific themes.

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Dr. Victor Taleon is a Research Fellow at IFPRI, specializing in the nexus of crop biofortification and food processing. With a Ph.D. in Food Science and Technology from Texas A&M University, he investigates the stability and bioavailability of micronutrients in staple crops like maize, beans, and rice. His research focuses on the post-harvest value chain to identify strategies that preserve the nutritional benefits of biofortified foods from farm to plate. Dr. Taleon collaborates with partners across Africa, South Asia, and Latin America to scale these solutions and combat hidden hunger.

In this talk, I analyze the relationship between criminal governance and citizen claim-making for public goods. Millions of people across Latin America live in urban peripheries marked by uneven state presence but where criminal organizations are often present and govern everyday life. What impact does this overlapping reality have on the strategies citizens use to make claims on the state for public goods? A comparative analysis across three peripheral Mexico City neighborhoods shows that claim-making strategies vary in both level – individual or collective – and mode – brokered or direct. I argue that criminal governance influences claim-making through two channels: social capital and political brokerage. I use this argument to structure a comparative analysis of claim-making for a basic but fundamental public good: water. The study contributes to broader debates on distributive politics, citizenship, and democracy.

Eduardo Moncada is the Claire Tow Associate Professor of Political Science at Barnard College of Columbia University, and he is also the Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University. His research examines the origins, dynamics and consequences of crime and violence in Latin America, with a focus on how criminal governance shapes political life. He is the author of Cities, Business, and the Politics of Urban Violence in Latin America (Stanford University Press) and Resisting Extortion: Victims, Criminals, and States in Latin America (Cambridge University Press). He is also co-editor of Inside Countries: Subnational Research in Comparative Politics (Cambridge University Press). In his current research, Moncada is examining how variation in the ways that criminal organizations govern territories shapes how citizens make claims on the state for public goods and services. Moncada’s work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Ford Foundation, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, among others.

Faced with a past that seems to repeat itself ad infinitum, through the dynamics of colonialism, neocolonialism, and neoliberalism, we ask ourselves about the past, present, and future of Latin America and Caribbean. The slogan “Otro futuro es posible” –another future is possible– has been appropriated in a wide array of spaces, movements, and temporalities to trigger the imagination of many, from political movements to environmental causes. This symposium is an invitation to explore this expression not as an enthusiastic affirmation but rather a question awaiting an answer: is another future possible in Latin America and the Caribbean? Thinking about and with categories such as encounters, crossings, (dis)continuities, fractures and unions in space and time, and the search for autonomy, we ask: how can we think about the future of the region?

With this in mind, we invite the Cornell community to participate in the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program’s annual research symposium entitled “Futures in (Re)Construction”, to take place on February 20th and 21st, 2026. VENUE In the midst of the current political sphere that especially affects Latin American and Caribbean communities and has sought to silence not only their traditions, heritage, and languages but also the academic study of the land and the impacts of climate change in various communities, we especially welcome abstracts for projects related to categories, concepts, and keywords that, in the current political climate, have been erased and discarded, such as gender, race, climate and environmental justice, and cuir/queer.

Faced with a past that seems to repeat itself ad infinitum, through the dynamics of colonialism, neocolonialism, and neoliberalism, we ask ourselves about the past, present, and future of Latin America and Caribbean. The slogan “Otro futuro es posible” –another future is possible– has been appropriated in a wide array of spaces, movements, and temporalities to trigger the imagination of many, from political movements to environmental causes. This symposium is an invitation to explore this expression not as an enthusiastic affirmation but rather a question awaiting an answer: is another future possible in Latin America and the Caribbean? Thinking about and with categories such as encounters, crossings, (dis)continuities, fractures and unions in space and time, and the search for autonomy, we ask: how can we think about the future of the region?

With this in mind, we invite the Cornell community to participate in the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program’s annual research symposium entitled “Futures in (Re)Construction”, to take place on February 20th and 21st, 2026. VENUE In the midst of the current political sphere that especially affects Latin American and Caribbean communities and has sought to silence not only their traditions, heritage, and languages but also the academic study of the land and the impacts of climate change in various communities, we especially welcome abstracts for projects related to categories, concepts, and keywords that, in the current political climate, have been erased and discarded, such as gender, race, climate and environmental justice, and cuir/queer.