Ateneo fetes journo-activist in rites shadowed by athlete deaths

MANILA, Philippines — The Ateneo de Manila University, reeling from the deaths of two of its athletes that have prompted multiple investigations into allegations of hazing, negligence and lack of due diligence by school officials or personnel, featured a known photojournalist-activist in its 2026 college commencement exercises Friday.

The university’s recognition of renowned Bangladeshi photojournalist Shahidul Alam came as the community and its leadership continued to handle the fallout from the deaths and what observers have called a disaster in crisis communication handling.

Alam was conferred by Ateneo with a Doctor of Sociology, honoris causa, during the commencement exercises for this year’s graduating class. He is known around the world for using photography and journalism to advocate for freedom and democracy.

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In his acceptance speech, Alam urged the graduating class of 2026 to use their education to help others.

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“When you leave this room today, you will carry a credential that opens doors. This is real, and it matters. But credentials do not tell you which room to walk into, or what to do once you’re inside. My question for you is not what you will achieve — I have no doubts about that — but what you will refuse to do, refuse to look away from, refuse to go along with because something in you says no,” Alam said.

Alam wove a string of parallels from household helpers in his native Dhaka to Filipino workers overseas.

“I say this to you here in the Philippines with particular intention. Your country sends millions of its people abroad to work, to build other nations’ cities, to care for other nations’ elderly, to raise other nations’ children, and yes, to keep other nations’ homes,” he said.

“Many of them sit in a drawing room not so different from ours in Dhaka. Many of them watch from a similar distance. They are not invisible because they are unknown; they are invisible because it is convenient for them to be. What you do with this education, whether it extends its reach toward them or turns away, is one of the central moral questions of your generation,” Alam added.

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The reference to Filipino workers has to do with around 2.19 million registered overseas Filipino workers, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority in 2024, although some estimates say there are about 10 million OFWs worldwide. They accounted for as much as P262 billion, or about $4 billion, in remittances in 2025.

READ: PSA: OFWs increase by 1.5% in 2024, remittances reach P262 billion

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The ability to speak out even when it is uncomfortable, or to call out things that are wrong until society refuses to unsee, was a major theme in his 17-minute speech at the Blue Eagles Gym in Katipunan.

Alam cited the name of the gym and the Areté, a popular campus landmark, in his talk.

“Areté is virtue in action, a capacity exercised, a life lived at the full height of its possibility,” he said. “That word resonates in this particular room. A gym is not a place for comfortable contemplation. It is not a place for theory or for certificates. A gym is where you find out what you are actually made of, where the distance between potential and performance becomes measurable, where discipline is not a concept but a daily practice, where you discover what you can do when you’re prepared to accept pain.”

“This room has seen champions made. But the Blue Eagles did not become champions by admiring excellence from a distance. They became champions by showing up, by training when it was hard, by choosing the difficulty on purpose,” Alam said.

He then mentioned the cases of Ateneo men’s basketball team members Divine Adili and Rene Baterbonia, who died during a training activity along the shore of Dipaculao, Aurora, earlier this month.

“It also held grief. Divine trained in rooms like this one. Rene was the kind of athlete who made his teammates better. Before we talk about what excellence demands of you, we owe it to them to say their names here, in a space like this one, where effort and courage are understood,” he said.

“Divine Adili, Rene Baterbonia — may the work you do with what you have been given honor them. And this room, this gym, this space of honest effort, may be exactly the right place to ask what it demands of you now,” he added.

On the morning of the commencement Mass and exercises, former Ateneo men’s basketball team coach Tab Baldwin appeared at the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group headquarters in Camp Crame, Quezon City, for the first time.

READ: Ateneo drowning probe: Baldwin arrives at CIDG

The multi-awarded Alam founded Drik Picture Library in 1989, a pioneering Bangladeshi photo agency that supports local photographers and challenges Western-dominated perspectives in visual media.

He later established Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, a major photography and media school in Dhaka, and co-founded Chobi Mela, an international photography festival regarded as one of the most important in Asia.

Alam has exhibited at major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Modern in London and Centre Pompidou in Paris. He has chaired the international jury of World Press Photo and was noted as the first person of color to do so.

He was named a Time magazine Person of the Year in 2018 and has received numerous honors, including Bangladesh’s Ekushey Padak and international awards such as the Lucie Award and the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award.

Alam served as one of the international resource speakers for academic sessions of the Diploma in Photojournalism of the Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo from 2007 to 2008. /dm

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Editor’s note: Arlene Burgos is chief content officer of Inquirer Interactive Inc. and director of the Asian Center for Journalism at the Ateneo.