Villazor named MCS AlumKnight of the Year

Mt. Carmel School’s 2016 AlumKnight of the Year, Class of 1991 graduate professor Rose Cuison Villazor. (Thomas A. Manglona II)

Professor Rose Cuison Villazor was named Mt. Carmel’s School AlumKnight of the Year at its annual alumni fundraising banquet, Night with the Knights, last Saturday as a part of Catholic Schools Week. The MCS class of 1991 graduate and mother of two is the first non-indigenous recipient of the prestigious award.

While she was not present to receive the award due to her teaching schedule, Villazor delivered her acceptance speech via video.

She recounted singing Church hymns throughout her years at MCS and singing the same songs in her church in the mainland. The songs, she said, made her feel a sense of belonging.

“As a child of Filipino contract workers growing up in early ’90s, I did not always feel like I belonged,” Villazor, who moved with her family from the Philippines to Saipan in the 1980s, said in her remarks.

Despite derogatory terms being used to describe foreign families like hers, she explained that singing songs in church made her feel “at peace and a part of the community.”

“It reminds me that I am part of something bigger: a larger Catholic community.” She added, “[The songs] serve to remind all of us of God’s calling to love others, neighbors, strangers, even outsiders and to show them that they too are God’s people and therefore they belong to our community.”

Villazor has worked as a law professor in some of the world’s most prestigious law programs, including at Hofstra University, Columbia University, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis.

Her lifelong passion for teaching began at MCS, where she taught social studies after earning her Bachelors of Arts degree in Government from the University of Texas at Austin. Following her time at her alma mater, Villazor matriculated to American University in Washington, D.C., graduating cum laude as a Myers Law Scholarship Recipient and a Valentin Fuentes Fellow.

A longtime human rights advocate, Villazor is also a published law author in publications such as the California Law Review, New York University Law Review, Huffington Post, and New York Times.

Villazor also published numerous books as a co-editor and conducts extensive lectures around the world while researching and writing in areas regarding immigration and citizenship law, property law, Asian Americans and the law, equal protection law and critical race theory.

“In her work as a professor, scholar, and writer, [Villazor] has distinguished herself as one of the country’s most sought after legal minds on immigration law, having appeared on television panels on C-SPAN,” school president Galvin Deleon Guerrero said in his remarks.

Currently, the professor is working on research about the history of “non-citizen national status” and its contemporary implications on citizenship; the immigration status of guest workers in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and whether they should be granted a path to citizenship; and the federal regulation of marriage in Germany post-World War II.

“As an advocate, she is passionate but open to other perspectives. As a scholar, she is erudite yet down-to-earth. And as a teacher, she is challenging but supportive,” Guerrero added.

He noted that, as past awardees, recognized AlumKnights have distinguished themselves as noted leaders in business, government, and the community.