Some People Need Killing is the title of Patricia Evangelista's meticulously reported and deeply human chronicle of Rodrigo Duterte's drug war.
The discussion will draw from Evangelista’s on-the-ground account of killings carried out by police and vigilantes. It will consider the impact on survivors, the grammar of violence, and the human impulses to dominate and resist.
This seminar will take place online via Zoom.
Speaker and Chair Biographies:
Patricia Evangelista is a trauma journalist and former investigative reporter for Philippine news company Rappler. She covered armed conflict, natural disasters, and human rights issues for more than a decade. Her first book, published in October by Random House (Grove Atlantic in the UK), is an investigation of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's drug war."Some People Need Killing," has been called a "journalistic masterpiece" by the New Yorker, "harrowing and brave" by TIME, and was included in the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2023. She lives in Manila.
Prof. John Sidel is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, and the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Professor Sidel received his BA and MA from Yale University and his PhD from Cornell University. He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (1999), Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories (2000), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (2006), The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (2007), Thinking and Working Politically in Development: Coalitions for Change in the Philippines (2020, with Jaime Faustino) and Republicanism, Communism, Islam: Cosmopolitan Origins of Revolution in Southeast Asia (2021).