Francisco Nemenzo
Francisco Alfafara Nemenzo Jr. (9 February 1935 – 19 December 2024) was a Filipino political scientist, educator, and activist. He served as the 18th president of the University of the Philippines (UP) from 1999 to 2005. Before that, he was the chancellor of UP Visayas, a member of UP’s Board of Regents, and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at UP Diliman. A prominent Marxist voice in Philippine academia, he taught political science at UP Diliman and helped form political coalitions BISIG and Laban ng Masa.
Nemenzo came from a scholarly family. His father, Francisco Sr., was a marine zoologist known as the father of Philippine coral taxonomy, and his mother, Catalina Alfafara, was a senior librarian. He was married to Ana Maria “Princess” Ronquillo, and they had three children: Fidel, Leonid, and Lian.
Education: He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public administration from the National College of Public Administration and Governance at UP Diliman in 1957 and 1959. He earned a PhD in political history from the University of Manchester in 1965.
University presidency and impact: During his UP presidency, the Revised General Education Program (RGEP) was introduced to broaden students’ education through a flexible, holistic approach. The RGEP was later refined and blended with the university’s traditional general education program, an arrangement UP kept after 2012.
Death: Francisco Nemenzo Jr. died in Quezon City on 19 December 2024, at age 89.
Selected publications:
- The Philippines after Marcos (1985), co-edited with May R.J.
- U.P. Into the 21st Century and other essays (2000)
This page was last edited on 1 February 2026, at 21:58 (CET).