Unleashed Comment: Harvard blinded by zeros
Martin G. Romualdez, speaker of the Filipino House of Representatives and nephew of ex-Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, has committed $2 million to endow a Harvard chair. Blood money pure & simple
The following commentary was first published in The Manila Times.
By David A. Andelman and Robert I. Rotberg
HARVARD has again been blinded by a number followed by seven zeros.
As The Harvard Crimson reported on September 14, "Martin G. Romualdez, the speaker of the Filipino House of Representatives and a nephew of the former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, has committed $2 million to endow the Filipino (Tagalog) preceptor position at Harvard.
There should be little doubt — this is blood money, pure and simple. There should be equally little doubt about the levels to which the Marcos family has long been prepared to descend — to enrich themselves while in power and in generations-long efforts to whitewash their image after their rule of 21 brutal and corrupt years beginning in 1965 was terminated by a bloody coup in 1986.
Their history in the Philippines and subsequently in exile in the United States after the overthrow and exile of Ferdinand and his wife Imelda has been nothing but larcenous, duplicitous and downright violent. To cement his autocratic rule, in 1972 Marcos imposed martial law, which led to tens of thousands of people being arrested and detained and thousands of others tortured, forcibly disappeared and killed, according to Amnesty International.
In October 1976, when serving as Southeast Asia bureau chief of The New York Times, Andelman personally witnessed, as he wrote at the time, "More than 400 families were forcibly evicted and their houses demolished ... carted, many in garbage trucks and with armed police, to remote sites as far as 20 miles" from the Tondo slum of Manila, scene of a major urban renewal project of the World Bank that Imelda Marcos had looted of the funding.
It seems the bank's president Robert McNamara, was due to make an inspection. This, of course, is only one small incident, emblematic of a decades-long rule of corruption and violence.
There is no question that the creation of a "preceptor" position to enable the study and teaching of Filipino (Tagalog), the fourth most spoken language in the United States, is highly commendable. It is simply the blindness of Harvard to the source of such funding that is appalling.
The Marcos family has been and continues to be one of history's most singularly corrupt dynasties. At the same time, its current heirs are doing their best to rehabilitate or expunge the memory of some of this most stunningly abusive period of their nation's history. During his campaign for the presidency, Marcos Jr. did his best to rehabilitate the memory of his parents, describing his father as a "genius" in a CNN interview.
While the United States is commendably doing its best today to woo the Philippines to its vision and priorities in Asia while China is equally cultivating this strategically placed nation, it is unseemly for Harvard to be placing its thumb on the scale and on the side of corruption and whitewashing of a deplorable historical legacy.
Romualdez is the nephew of Ferdinand E. Marcos (and first cousin of the current ruler of the Philippines, Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr.), and does not bear his uncle or cousin's name. Still, this should be no distraction from the source and nature of his own wealth.
Romualdez himself, while holding the powerful role of Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives, has been accused in Delaware Chancery Court of receiving a substantial payment to induce him to pressure the Philippine Supreme Court in favor of a Japanese entertainment company that was seeking to reclaim control over a Manila resort and casino worth $2.6 billion. US court filings charge that Romualdez called justices of the Supreme Court, urging them to allow the Japanese company to reclaim the resort. The court did allow this to take place.
There should be no question as to the impropriety, if not the outright corrupt actions, of Romualdez in such a transaction. Indeed, Filipino news site Inquirer.net deleted the first article reporting on his involvement, according to the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
Inquirer.net is owned by Sandy Prieto-Romualdez, the sister-in-law of Martin Romualdez. Rene Ciria Cruz resigned as US editor of Inquirer.net as a result of the article being taken down, as The Crimson reported.
How unseemly is it of Harvard yet again to be siding with money and power over justice and probity?
David A. Andelman, a former New York Times and CBS News correspondent and author of "A Red Line in the Sand," is a columnist for CNN Opinion and writes the SubStack page Andelman Unleashed.
Prof. Robert I. Rotberg is founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School's Program on Intrastate Conflict and author of "Overcoming the Oppressors." He writes the SubStack page Robert's Conflict Mitigation Newsletter.
So sadly right, Melissa ... I fear, however, that Harvard will never arrive at that epiphany .... so sad!
Thank you so much for writing this! I am behind on all your posts but am glad I caught this one because I just read a headline that Saudi Arabia's MBS said he will continue using his beaucoup bucks to "sportswash" his kingdom's horrible human rights record. After the travesties of the Sackler opioid family, every institution should make a commitment not to take blood money. Especially when you are as rich as Croesus/Harvard!