Last Friday, the Filipino@Brown (Tagalog@Brown) initiative hosted the first installment of its fall 2026 lecture series, which highlighted the benefits of language programming in higher education. Friday’s event featured talks by four individuals passionate about Filipino and Southeast Asian language instruction at Brown and other institutions of higher education.
The lecture series follows a nearly two-year-long push for Brown to offer a Tagalog language course, an effort led by Co-President of the Filipino Alliance Alexa Theodoropoulos ’27 and a number of other student activists. Theodoropoulos described this movement as part of a larger push across several Ivy League universities. Last year, the University approved a $18,000 donation from the Philippine Consulate for Filipino Studies programming at Brown, which can be used to fund events such as the lecture series.
Theodoropoulos says she hopes the success of the lecture series instills confidence in the relationship between Filipino@Brown (Tagalog@Brown) and the Philippine Consulate. “If we maintain the relationship, they could potentially give a similar amount in the future,” she added.
“Despite being the third most spoken immigrant language in the United States, Tagalog is not offered at Brown, even though there are over 25 languages taught here,” Theodoropoulos said at the lecture. “We hope that the support, awareness and community generated by the speaker series supports our eventual goal of hiring a permanent Filipino language instructor.”
The lecture series “presents an excellent opportunity for students to engage with programming and collaborate with their advisers to advance the study of the Philippines and Filipino American history, culture and society,” Senior Associate Dean of the Faculty Zachary Sng wrote in an email to The Herald.
Sng added that any proposal for a Tagalog course “would be subject to established processes for creating new courses and proposing new teaching positions at Brown.”
In the first talk, Preceptor in Filipino Tagalog at Harvard Lady Aileen Orsal argued how Tagalog courses can benefit language learners from a range of backgrounds. The creation of Harvard’s Tagalog program has been a “homecoming for everyone” since it started, she said.
“We see how it’s really very helpful as we hone our students to not be only graduates of certain degrees, but really people who contribute to the communities they are serving afterwards,” she said.
The evening’s second speaker, Louward Allen Zubiri, has taught Filipino language courses at Yale since the program started in 2025. “The Philippines has always been a part of Yale’s history,” he said. “What we are doing now is ensuring that it remains part of Yale’s future.”
Students approach reconnecting with their language in different ways, he explained. Yale’s Philippine studies program aims to engage students through various avenues in addition to direct language-learning.
“Some people are not yet ready to learn their heritage language, but they like food, they like music, they like folklore. That’s their entry,” Zubiri said. He said that including language and cultural learning encourages more students to participate in the program.
Visiting Lecturer in Vietnamese Trang Tran spoke about the success of Brown’s Vietnamese program, which was introduced in 2021 following student activism urging the University to offer Vietnamese language courses. She said, “we have seen the student population growing, so now we are double the (students) that we first started in 2021.”
The evening’s final lecture came from Maria Theresa Savella, a teaching professor in the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell, who teaches Tagalog. She spoke about Cornell’s Tagalog program and the founding of the Consortium for the Advancement of Philippine Languages and Cultures in 2024.
According to Savella, the consortium serves to “establish the infrastructures needed so that future generations of Filipino teachers can be served.”
Reflecting on the lecture, Lex Ababon ’30 said, “The main thing that I thought was really interesting and inspiring was how so many people are willing and actively seeking out ways to connect with their heritage through language and through academic courses.”
Kaden Tan Eustaquio ’28, co-president of the Southeast Asian Studies Initiative, attended Friday’s lecture. He grew up in the Philippines but moved at a young age, so he lost the ability to speak Tagalog over time. He wishes he had access to heritage language learning courses analogous to those Brown offers in Chinese, because he wants to maintain that connection to his culture.
“I feel like Brown really has an opportunity here to demonstrate why we have this open curriculum,” he added.
Jeanus-Luc Canlapan ’27 grew up in a community that embraced his Filipino culture through speaking Tagalog at home and cooking Filipino meals.
“Coming to Brown, I’ve been able to meet Filipinos that don’t have the same experience as mine, and I’d want for them to be able to experience that, especially through a language course,” he said. “I feel like we also have a responsibility to try and keep that part of our culture alive.”
“It seems like we just got to keep fighting for our language course and just keep putting our name out there through events like this.”
The lecture series has three more installments on Oct. 6, Oct. 13 and Nov. 2. Additionally, the next Filipino Ivy League Conference, which expects hundreds of participants, will be coming to Brown, according to Theodoropoulos.
Tyler Timmers is a senior staff writer covering undergraduate student life.
