Next year, Yale University will offer Tagalog courses for the first time in its 322-year administration.
According to Inquirer.net, starting in the fall of 2025, Yale will offer courses in Tagalog, the base language for the Phillippines.
Prior to this decision, students were limited to learning Tagalog through the university’s Directed Independent Language Study (DILS) program in which students were matched with language partners as opposed to attending professor-led, credit-bearing instruction.
Yale’s Filipinx club, Kasama, and their Tagalog @ Yale initiative were the driving force behind expanding Filipino representation in higher education and creating an official language course.
With the support of members from the Yale College Council and the Center for Language Study (CSEAS), Kamasa began their formal campaign for a Tagalog program and garnered over 380 signatures in a petition in the fall of 2023.
“Our formal advocacy began in fall 2023 with the petition, but informal discussions among Filipino students have been ongoing for years,” Kasama member Samantha Fajardo wrote in an email to the Yale Daily News. “Prior efforts were mostly individual- students inquiring about Tagalog courses or expressing interest to language departments. The petition marked our shift to organized, strategic advocacy.”
In spring, Kasama members published an open letter addressed to university administrators, including President Peter Salovey, calling for official Tagalog courses to be offered.
The letter was a reflection of the student’s frustration with the limiting nature of the DILS program and the university’s disregard of Filipino culture.
“I think a big part of [attending college] is being able to honor your cultural identity,” Kasama board member Janina Gbenoba said in a May interview with the Yale Daily News. “So, it hurts to not know the Filipino language already, and it hurts even more to come into a world renowned institution and find out that they don’t offer Tagalog.”
One of over 180 Filipino languages, Tagalog is the fourth most spoken language in the United States according to U.S. census data. Despite Tagalog’s significant presence in the U.S., the language is often not represented in the higher education system.
Other prestigious universities have only recently begun adopting programs for students to learn Tagalog. Harvard University, an institution with a 388-year history, had not offered Tagalog courses until the university’s Asia Center finally introduced the courses in the fall of 2023.
With Yale University’s student body being comprised of 11.5% Asian and .142% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander students, the need for a comprehensive and diverse curriculum that mirrors the diversity of the student body is clear.
Students say more still needs to be done to improve Filipinx studies on campus.
“I’m an ER&M major- ethnicity, race and migrations- and even though ER&M is a very interdisciplinary field, there is still not one class that is dedicated to Filipinx studies, and there’s also not a hired professor who is Filipino in our department,” said Marissa Halagao, a student activist, to Yale Daily News.
Southeast Asia Studies were established at Yale in 1947, yet the fight for Southeast Asian representation in education is still ongoing.
“Tagalog at Yale is very much a testament to the power of student voice and the power of coming together as a community,” Gbenoba told Yale Daily News. “So Tagalog at Yale is not the end. It’s just something that we’ll be able to draw inspiration from as we continue our advocacy efforts moving forward.”
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