FORMER UST Social Research Center director Assoc. Prof. Ernesto Gonzales died on Aug. 25 following a heart attack. He was 71.
His death was confirmed by his son, Leejay, who said that Gonzales had tested positive for Covid-19.
Gonzales started teaching economics at the University in 1995, retiring after 14 years of service.
He obtained his bachelor’s degree in economics at UST in 1975. Gonzales then finished his master’s degree in economics at the Asian Social Institute (ASI) in Manila in 1981.
He took his post-master’s fellowship at the geography department of Cambridge University in the United Kingdom in 1991 before returning to ASI to start his doctorate in 2002.
In 2004, Gonzales was admitted to the London School of Economics for his postdoctoral fellowship and went back in 2018 to do research in environmental economics.
Gonzales’s former colleague, ex-UST associate researcher Herman Joseph Suhendra, remembered Gonzales as a “warm and hospitable” person who helped him in his stay at the research center.
Leejay said his father was known for being beyond reproach, recalling that he once refused a P30-million bribe.
“He never had second thoughts, even if at that time we were financially down. He taught and told us that he can never accept and will never feed us from any dirty money, nor any money that he didn’t honestly work for,” Leejay said.
Gonzales’s remains were cremated on Aug. 28.
