Randy David | PUBLIC LIVES

For the generation of Filipinos who witnessed and lived through the atrocities of World War II, the Japanese Emperor’s visit to the Philippines this week is bound to summon painful memories that make forgiveness extremely difficult. The voices of the surviving Filipino “comfort women” who were captured and turned into sex slaves for Japanese soldiers … Read more

About four years ago, Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman invited me to join the national advisory committee of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, or 4Ps, the social protection program initiated by the Arroyo administration that President Aquino decided not only to continue but also to expand. I knew that this program was heavily politicized. Like … Read more

The average Filipino’s religious faith is legendary and beyond question. It is strong and it goes into the core of his or her being. It is effusive and often produces a dramatic effect on his or her disposition and conduct. Can such a force, which in other circumstances has been used to justify war and … Read more

If you take an extended break from what you regularly do, you must know how hard it is to get back into the groove, particularly of the creative act. False starts besiege you. What used to take only a couple of hours to write now consumes a whole day. Assailed by doubts about your “lastingness,” … Read more

Asked if he had anything to say about candidates for public office who give away religious items to enhance their public image, Archbishop Socrates Villegas, current head of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, admonished these politicians not to “abuse and misuse” sacred objects to gain political mileage. He said: “If we speak of … Read more

Governance in the modern world has become anything but simple. The more economies are interconnected, the harder it is to predict and control their outcomes. Worsening inequality among and within nations produces problems that are intractable. Because economic growth can now be achieved without necessarily creating jobs for the many, or improving public services, governments … Read more

As we mark the 152nd birth anniversary of Andres Bonifacio, who led the revolution against Spanish colonial rule, there is a clamor to honor his role in our nation’s history by proclaiming him as the nation’s first president. That place is presently reserved to his archrival, Emilio Aguinaldo, who declared Philippine independence from Spain on … Read more

At a press conference for Philippine media last Sunday night in Kuala Lumpur, President Aquino was asked, among other things, what he thought of the cases questioning Sen. Grace Poe’s eligibility to run for president. His answer was: “At the end of the day, sovereignty resides in the people. Let the people decide.” This sentiment … Read more

One important outcome of modernity is the increasing differentiation of knowledge along functional lines. Nowhere is this more visible, and destabilizing in its effects, than in the organization of higher education. We see this primarily in the rise of new narrow specialties in every field or discipline. But we see it, too, in the growing … Read more

The world has changed so much in just the last 25 years that it is discouraging to see how the leaders of the most powerful nations continue to think of its problems in the same old way—as though they were not interconnected. Meeting in Vienna over the weekend, the leaders of 17 nations agreed on … Read more