Leloy Claudio wins 2019 George McTavish Kahin Book Prize

MANILA, Philippines – Rappler columnist and “Basagan Ng Trip” host Lisandro “Leloy” Claudio has won the George McTavish Kahin Book Prize for 2019 for his book Liberalism and the Postcolony: Thinking the State in 20th Century Philippines.

Claudio’s book was published by the National University of Singapore Press, the Kyoto-CSEAS Series on Asian Studies, and the Ateneo University Press.

The Association for Asian Studies says the Kahin Prize is given biennially to an “outstanding scholar of Southeast Asian studies from any discipline or country specialization to recognize distinguished scholarly work on Southeast Asia beyond the author’s first book.”

George McT Kahin was professor emeritus at Cornell University and taught at the Department of Government. Kahin, together with 3 other scholars (one of them Frank Golay, then one of the leading economists on the Philippines) formed the core that built the Southeast Asia Program into the most prominent centers of Southeast Asian studies globally. Among Kahin’s students was Benedict Anderson, known today as the author of the iconic book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins of Nationalism.

Kahin’s book Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (published in 1952) was described as “a masterpiece of committed scholarship” for bringing out the voices of Indonesian nationalist in their war against the Dutch. It was his sympathies toward Southeast Asian nationalism that also informed his opposition to the Vietnam War. He was one of the professors who joined the first student sit-ins at Cornell, wrote columns, and testified in Congress against the war.

According to one of his former students, “Kahin drew no lines between the demands of scholarship and those of public engagement.” He was the quintessential liberal who knew how to speak truth to power.

It was in recognition of Kahin’s intellectual and political stature that the Southeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies established a book prize in his name.

Claudio, a history and literature teacher in De La Salle University, released the book in 2017.

The book  “traces the role of liberal philosophy” in the building the Philippine nation and primarily draws on the chronicles of the lives and times of Filipino scholars and bureaucrats Camilo Osias, Salvador Araneta, Carlos P. Romulo, and Salvador P. Lopez. – Rappler.com