Courtesy of Marissa Halagao

Last week, the Council on Southeast Asian Studies at Yale posted a job advertisement for a lector in Filipino (Tagalog) who will begin to teach courses next fall. 

The new course offering comes after months of formalized student advocacy from Tagalog @ Yale, an initiative within Yale’s Filipinx club, Kasama. Since fall 2023, students in the initiative have been working with faculty in CSEAS and the Center for Language Study as well as members of the Yale College Council to make the course offerings a reality. Previously, students were able to learn Filipino (Tagalog) through the Directed Independent Language Study, a program that matched students to a language partner, rather than a professor, and did not offer course credit. 

“Tagalog is the fourth most-spoken language in the US,” Janina Gbenoba ’27, a Kasama member active in the initiative, told the News. “So we feel very strongly about it having a place at Yale, both for members of Yale’s Filipino community and because we really do believe that even people outside of the Filipino culture would have an interest in studying it.”

According to Gbenoba and Marissa Halagao ’27, another advocate in Tagalog @ Yale, students were in contact with CSEAS Chair Erik Harms throughout the 2023–24 academic year to demonstrate high student interest in the Filipino (Tagalog) language. Harms filed a formal proposal for the language to be taught at Yale, which was approved by CLS and the Yale College Dean’s Office. 

While the government of the Philippines designates Filipino, a standardized version of Tagalog, as its national language, Halagao said that the label “Filipino (Tagalog)” is meant to recognize a broader set of experiences with Filipino languages and culture.

“We called it Tagalog @ Yale because a lot of us grew up referring to the language as Tagalog,”Halagao said. “Filipino (Tagalog) gives the distinction that it’s not the only Filipino language.”

Outside of Filipino (Tagalog), there are over 180 other languages spoken in the Philippines, such as Ilokano, Cebuano and Ilonggo, according to Halagao. 

Halagao later told the News that she hopes more languages from the Philippines can be “represented and celebrated,” pointing to her family’s history of speaking Ilokano in addition to Tagalog.

“Yale, like any institution, is an evidence-based place,” Harms told the News. “So the smart thing that Kasama students did was actually start to generate numbers and things like that to show there’s a strong interest among students.” 

The Tagalog @ Yale petition garnered over 380 signatures from students and faculty last year.

While members of Kasama said that student activism and interest in Filipino (Tagalog) have been long standing, according to Samantha Fajardo ’27, this advocacy coalesced into a formal initiative last fall.

“Our formal advocacy began in fall 2023 with the petition, but informal discussions among Filipino students have been ongoing for years,” Fajardo wrote in an email to the 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.”

According to Harms, there have consistently been around two to four students enrolled in the DILS program for Filipino (Tagalog) since 2010. 

Per Harms, however, these enrollment numbers do not necessarily represent the full extent of previous student interest in Filipino (Tagalog) because aspects of the DILS program, such as its self-driven nature, lack of instruction from a professional language instructor and ineligibility for course credit, may have discouraged students from enrolling.

“Anecdotally, students have been happy that DILS existed, but also, as they get more into it, they get a little bit disappointed that it’s not the same thing as a regular language class,” Harms said. “It’s hard to have the same motivation versus if there’s a class that’s available, in which case the numbers would be much higher.”

According to the job posting, the Filipino (Tagalog) lector will teach six courses each year and initially will be appointed for three years, with the possibility of renewal. The lector will also work with lectors in the Vietnamese and Indonesian languages to further develop Southeast Asian Studies programming at Yale, including study abroad opportunities. 

Beyond language course offerings, Gbenoba and Halagao said that there is still a need for courses in Filipinx studies more broadly.

“I really hope that the momentum that we have from Tagalog @ Yale will lead to more departments offering Filipinx Studies,” Halagao said. “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.”

Both Gbenoba and Halagao also expressed hope that Yale may offer courses in more Filipino languages in the future, as well as other languages that they say currently lack academic support at Yale, such as Cantonese and Bangla (Bengali). 

This Saturday, Kasama will be hosting a workshop in collaboration with the Asian American Cultural Center on Filipino language empowerment and colonial linguistic suppression. During the workshop, students will celebrate the new Filipino (Tagalog) course offering and learn about Yale’s role in colonial histories in the Philippines.

Going forward, Tagalog @ Yale plans to continue their Filipino (Tagalog) advocacy and work with relevant faculty and administrators to ensure that next year’s language offerings will meet student needs.

“Tagalog at Yale is very much a testament to the power of student voice and the power of coming together as a community,” Gbenoba said. “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.”

Southeast Asia Studies at Yale was established in 1947.

Correction, Oct. 3: Halagao retracted a quote regarding the interchangeability of Filipino and Tagalog as incorrect. The article has been updated to reflect more context on languages in the Philippines.