Keynote Address of Senator Loren LegardaPhilippine Studies Program Book Launch | June 25, 2025

Excellencies, esteemed colleagues, friends:

Allow me to begin with a question that frames our purpose today: Who are the Filipinos?

Walk through the islands of our archipelago, and you will encounter a people of many tongues, rituals, and traditions that shift with every coast. What you hear sung in Cebu differs from what you taste in Pampanga, or what welcomes you in Marawi. We are a people of many ways of being, yet listen closely, and you will find a rhythm: centuries old and still in motion.

To truly know us is to recognize a civilization that stood on its own. To understand us is to witness how colonization did not erase us—it layered us, tested us, and in many ways, forged us. We are heirs of tradition and authors of resistance. And still, we are becoming.
This is why, when we speak of foreign policy—of shaping our place in the world—I offer this proposition: Understanding must precede influence.

I learned this from a realm I have long championed: the environment.

For decades, I have stood on global platforms, from the Climate Vulnerable Forum to the Global Commission on Adaptation, and through initiating the Manila Call to Action on Climate Change, a landmark appeal that helped pave the way for the historic Paris Agreement. More than science, I spoke for those whose lives are shaped most intimately by nature’s shifts: our farmers, coastal communities, and indigenous peoples. I have sat with world leaders and asked them to listen, not just to data, but to the defiance of Filipino families who stitch back their lives, storm after storm.

And it taught me this: no matter how vast the world may seem, we shape one another. Our narratives intersect, and in these crossings, we discover deeper ways of speaking and listening.

It is this conviction that led me to champion a form of diplomacy that utilizes the power of our storytelling. In a world so fractured by uncertainty, we are reminded—now more than ever—that the strongest bridges are built through understanding.

I have seen this power come alive through each of the 38 Sentro Rizal or cultural centers around the world, spaces where Filipino arts, language, and heritage are celebrated and shared. We saw it, too, in our historic return to the Venice Biennale in 2015, the world’s most prestigious contemporary art and architecture exhibition, after a 51-year absence, where Filipino artists and architects redefined the boundaries of global engagement by placing human stories at the center.

This year, we step onto another world stage, as Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the world’s largest literary fair, and only the second Southeast Asian country to receive this distinction. There, we will present a portrait of the Filipino, written in over 130 languages, yet bound by the same voice that has carried us through disaster, colonization, and dictatorship. After all, we are a nation where a book once stirred a people into consciousness, and, ultimately, into freedom.

Because diplomacy does not begin in embassies alone. It begins in libraries, in classrooms, in acts of curiosity. And for the Philippines, it begins when the world speaks about us with nuance, with depth, and with dignity.

This is the soul of the Philippine Studies Program.

First established in 2017 through our pioneering partnership with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London—where Secretary Enrique Manalo was then serving as our Ambassador to the United Kingdom—I envisioned a global platform where the Philippines would not merely be an object of study, but a source of insight. A partner in scholarship. A nation contributing meaningfully to the world’s understanding of democracy, resilience, identity, and coexistence.

Today, that vision has evolved into a global initiative present in 24 universities, and the outcomes are tangible.

Our scholars are undertaking bold, necessary work:

On climate gentrification in Tacloban, helping cities adapt to displacement and inequality after disaster;

On human rights and indigenous languages, safeguarding cultural integrity in an age of digital dominance;

On the medicinal potential of Philippine plants, reintroducing ancestral knowledge into modern science;

On the Philippines’ pivotal role in global history, tracing foundational links through the Manila Galleon trade and its profound impact on early modern social, cultural, and economic integration.

This is soft power at its most strategic: scholarly, reciprocal, and deeply human. The Filipino experience, presented on the world stage—on our own terms—sparking new conversations about our heritage in ways that ripple across sectors, from tourism and research partnerships to stronger bilateral and multilateral ties.

To our partner universities, embassies, cultural institutions, and scholars: your work has made this possible. You have given the Filipino identity space to breathe and to grow. By opening your classrooms and your minds to our stories, you have allowed them to travel across borders and disciplines. In doing so, you have nurtured two of the most vital currencies in diplomacy today: trust and understanding.

For that, I thank you.

And to those who have yet to join us, consider this our invitation. Let us create more spaces where education becomes a language of partnership and knowledge inspires empathy.
Because this vision is not unique to the Philippines.

Every nation represented here holds a story, a knowledge tradition, and a worldview worthy of the global stage. What the Philippine Studies Program models is a way forward, for all of us, to see ourselves not only as inheritors of identity but as contributors to global thought and co-authors of a shared future.

Ultimately, this is not simply about how the world sees the Philippines.

It is about learning to see one another beyond our differences, in full depth, with greater clarity and acceptance.

Maraming salamat at isang luntiang Pilipinas sa ating lahat!