In celebration of their 71st founding anniversary, the UP Asian Center will hold a Flag Raising Ceremony and Special Lecture on 9 November 2026, 8:00 AM, PST (GMT+8), at the GT-Toyota Asian Center Lawn and ASEAN-Japan Halls. The event is by invitation only.
ABOUT THE GUEST SPEAKER
“The Cold War Warrior is a Filipinist: Modernization, Asianization, Filipinization”
CHARLIE SAMUYA VERIC, Ph.D.
Literary and Cultural Studies Program, Ateneo de Manila University
Charlie Samuya Veric is the author of the landmark book, Children of the Postcolony: Filipino Intellectuals and Decolonization, and of Regarding the Face of Others: Inhuman Sympathy and Social Difference. He is also the author of five critically acclaimed poetry collections, including Songs from Manunggul. He was the first Filipino fellow of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study in 2018 and of the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in 2023. He also served as the inaugural Ricardo Leong Institute for Global and Area Studies Fellow to promote Philippine Studies abroad. The first Filipino to get a doctorate in American Studies from Yale University, where he was awarded the John Hay Whitney Fellowship, he is the Founding Director of the Literary and Cultural Studies Program at the Ateneo de Manila University, where he teaches. He also founded the Ateneo Archive of Philippine Literature in English, the only repository of its kind to focus on the works of anglophone Filipino writers from around the world. A widely published interdisciplinary scholar, he sits on the advisory board of international journals such as Global South Literary Studies, Aguipo Global South Journal, and Asia Mindanaw. He has lectured at the University of the Witwatersrand, University of the Western Cape, Education University of Hong Kong, Brown University, and Yale University, making him a key intellectual from the Philippines. He is the editor of More Postcolonial Than We Admit: Producing the Filipino after 1946 and of Santelmo 14, a special issue on the 40th anniversary of EDSA. Apart from being a distinguished poet and scholar, he is a respected art critic and curator, counting among the few authorities on the artist Fernando Zobel de Ayala y Montojo. For his exemplary contribution to Filipino arts and letters, the National Research Council of the Philippines conferred upon him with the 2025 Achievement Award in the Humanities. He has recently completed a new book project, Forging the Postcolony: How the US Invented Decolonization.
ABOUT THE ORGANIZERS
This event is organized by the Asian Center Anniversary Committee, composed of AC faculty and staff. The Committee is headed by Dr. Aaron Jed Rabena. For inquiries, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 891-8500 loc. 3586.