To all concerned,

The IYSSE at the University of California, Berkeley unequivocally condemns the slanders and falsehoods concocted by Jose Maria Sison, the founder of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) against UC Berkeley historian Joseph Scalice. Sison has accused Dr. Scalice of being an “agent of imperialism and reaction” and a “CIA agent.”

This lie is a pathetic effort on the part of Sison to distract workers and students, throughout Asia and the world, from the naked fact that Sison supported Duterte’s election. “I’m proud, I’m very proud of him,” said Sison, referring to Duterte on CNN, “I wish him to succeed in his mission as president.” Sison, trying to cozy up to the new regime, stated that Duterte had a “socialist orientation” and that Duterte “promises to be the first left president of the Philippines.”

With Sison’s politics naked and exposed in front of him, Sison is resorting to the crudest form of defense: slanderously calling his opponent a “CIA agent.”

Meanwhile, Sison himself, and the CPP, are actively calling for the US-backed military to intervenein Filipino politics!

Recently, Sison has gone so far to declare that “Scalice’s Trotskyite anti-CPP research and publications were funded by the CIA. All Berkeley knows this.”

What nonsense. Dr. Scalice, or Joseph as his hundreds of students called him, was a graduate student on food stamps, trying his best, year-by-year, to teach and receive the measly stipend that Berkeley gives to all its Graduate Student Instructors. Scalice taught multiple classes at multiple institutions, including Oakland Unified School District, in order to support his family. The idea that Dr. Scalice was funded by the CIA and that “All Berkeley knows this,” would be met with laughter and then anger by the hundreds of faculty members, students, and staff members who had the privilege of working with Joseph over the years.

Dr. Scalice was a serious, dedicated member of the Berkeley student body and faculty. He has never received money from the CIA and would never receive money from the CIA. Never, in a million years, could Sison find a single individual on the Berkeley campus, let alone “all Berkeley,” who believed such a crude and, frankly, stupid lie.

The IYSSE at UC Berkeley, speaking for dozens of our members on the Berkeley campus, hundreds of our supporters in the Berkeley area, condemn and denounce these attacks on this historian and his work.

We call on all young people and workers in the Philippines to examine these issues for themselves and see what is real and what is false.

September 23, 2020

Berkeley, California

International Youth and Students for Social Equality

University of California, Berkeley

Registered Student Organization (RSO)