Urgent support needed for the University of the West Indies
November 25, 2020
No regional institution has contributed more to the intellectual, cultural, social and economic development of the English-speaking Caribbean in the latter half of the 20th century than the University of the West Indies (UWI).
With the university facing its greatest challenge in its 72-year-history because of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s a need for urgent investment to support the university.
UWI has produced several current and former Caribbean Prime Ministers, including Jamaica’s PJ Patterson who is urging graduates in Canada and across the world to dig deep and contribute either money or services to their alma mater.
“It can make a tremendous contribution,” he said during a virtual Canadian launch of his memoir, ‘My Political Journey’, on November 2. “Governments can no longer provide the huge sums that afford and allow subsidy of education. And we don’t want to go the elitist route.”
Patterson also appealed directly to Caribbean nationals educated in Canada to consider supporting UWI.
“At one time, there were only three faculties and people who wanted to engage in Engineering, Economics or for that matter Law had to go overseas,” he said. “I am hoping they can be encouraged and stimulated to make a meaningful contribution to the educational programs which are being run in the Caribbean. That’s why I have agreed to serve as patron of the university’s Global Giving program.”
Upon coming to Canada to study, some of those nationals who were Patterson’s schoolmates in Jamaica, remained after completing their higher education and have made significant contributions in their adopted homeland.
“Canada owes us a lot, a lot and I hope the Canadian government would recognize that it’s more than a question of affording them honours,” he said. “It’s really a signal that we ought to have a partnership in the provision of knowledge and the inculcation of skills which are necessary not only in the Caribbean, but in Canada.”
UWI holds a special place in Patterson’s heart.
He graduated from the University College of the West Indies in 1958 with an English degree and was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal in 2006.
“That university was conceived to be the shining light in the Caribbean which would radiate its learning into wider spheres,” Patterson said. “We all went into that university insisting on the primacy of the country’s from which we originated, but during the course of time, most of us moved from being Jamaicans, St. Lucians, Kittitians and Guyanese to be regionalists. It wasn’t something that the university taught in any of its formal subjects. But it was a process within that environment and, from then, I have always felt that I owe something to the university. It’s an attempt to give back so that succeeding generations can benefit from the intellectual discourse and that vision of a Caribbean civilization.”
The incoming cohort in Patterson’s freshman year at UWI included late Guyanese cabinet minister Shirley Field-Ridley who taught History at Rusea High School for a year before preceding him to read law at the University College, London in 1959. Married the following year, they separated shortly after she returned to Guyana in 1964.
Last June, the PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy was launched at UWI.
It’s expected to build bridges through academic exchanges and collaboration with institutions around economic and trade policy, cultural interaction and governance, climate change and other critical areas.
“We constitute, when we act together, one-third of the members of the United Nations,” Patterson noted. “That gives us power and negotiating clout. We can’t stop trying on the need and the justification for a New World Order until we have some signal that the developed countries are ready to engage in meaningful dialogue to secure that.”
Jamaica’s sixth and longest serving Prime Minister from 1992 to 2006 was widely regarded as an outstanding political strategist and astute negotiator.
In the wide-ranging fireside chat with UWI Open Camps Principal and Pro Vice Chancellor Dr. Luz Longsworth, he discussed his role as CARICOM chairman in arranging for deposed Haitian leader Jean-Bertrand Aristide to spend a few months in Jamaica in 2004.
In the midst of a three-week uprising in his country, Haiti’s first democratically elected president was flown on an American chartered jet to the Central African Republic (CAR).
“I found that to be repugnant, “ Patterson said. “But what really angered me most was that when the plane with Aristide landed in Antigua to refuel, the declaration on the manifest was, ‘No Passengers, Cargo Only’. I said, no matter what it costs, we came across the Caribbean as human cargo and so long as I had breath and so long as I controlled the levers of political office and, in relation to my colleagues in the Caribbean, it is something we should denounce. It was one of my most difficult periods because we were threatened for having the courage to stand up, but it had to be done.”
Aristide spent almost three months in Jamaica with his family before going to South Africa.
Patterson had planned to come to Toronto at the end of October 2019 to launch his memoir at Ryerson University.
Two weeks before the trip, he was involved in a motor vehicle accident near his home.
“The intention of writing was not so much an autobiography about me, but a narrative of my perspective of what had happened since I happened to be born and bred in Hanover, a few miles away from the Frome factory which really opened a new chapter in our fight against colonialism and the legacy of slavery,” Patterson said. “I had no idea what was to happen by the pandemic…It’s a single story of the evolution of the world and it’s certainly in my case speaking about what has happened in Jamaica, the Caribbean and our interface with the international community over many years.”
Built in 1938, the sugar factory was the setting for a nationwide labour dispute that ended in violence, tragedy and the transformation of Jamaican politics.
In addition to people’s health, Patterson said the pandemic poses a serious threat to economies, particularly in the developing world with the accumulation of debt and the fight against hunger, poverty and ignorance.
‘What this is showing is that no part of the world is really immune from what is happening in another part of the world,” he noted. “We keep on talking about a global village. This is perhaps the clearest example that what happens in one place can have serious effect throughout the world. It’s almost a call of urgency that we have to come together in the fight against disease and climate change.”
The proceeds from the book sales will go to Patterson’s endowment fund that places an emphasis on regionalism.
“A scholar that benefits from this fund will be afforded the opportunity of spending a semester or two on a campus other than that which he or she belongs to,” he said.
