In “UW professors to participate in panel on recently removed Volunteer Park plaque,” which features Jackson School and History Faculty Christoph Giebel, as well as Vicente Rafael and Ileana M. Rodríguez-Silva, both faculty with the History department, UW News highlights the issue of the park’s memorial plaque, installed in 1953 that describes the war as one of liberation for the peoples of the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico, is now a war widely viewed as one of imperial conquest.
The public presentation by the faculty about the memorial plaque, which was recently removed from Seattle’s Volunteer Park due to concerns of accuracy, was held on May 7, 2022 and hosted by the Southeast Asia Center at the University of Washington.
In May 2021 — around the same time a community member requested that Seattle Parks and Recreation remove the plaque — Christoph Giebel published a Northeast Asian Weekly op-ed titled “The Big Lie in Volunteer Park.” Seattle Parks removed the plaque that summer.
