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Piloting UWI Mona And Port Authority - Not Positions For A Temp!
Published: Friday | June 28, 2013 0 Comments
Wilberne Persaud
By Wilberne Persaud
On February, 1, 1947, Thomas Taylor opened the first office of the University College of the West Indies at 62 Lady Musgrave Road in Kingston.
The house had been the home of the leading West Indian journalist of his time, a strong opponent of those who advocated the establishment of a university in Jamaica.
The college had been provided upon recommendation to the secretary of state for the colonies, Oliver Stanley, as a 'gift to the people of the West Indies by the imperial government'.
That these facts present an interesting irony is evident.
More significantly, this act of generosity, delayed for centuries, represented implementation of a decision on the part of the British government that appears to have been a relatively abrupt break with the past.
Indeed, prior to this development, stretching over the previous 200 years, there had been several independent local initiatives aimed at introducing tertiary education in the British West Indies - none attracted support of colonial governors or the imperial government.
As Lord Moyne noted, efforts to establish institutions of university rank in the West Indies, "in spite of a frequently expressed feeling that this lack should be remedied, have come to nothing".
Commitment to education
Nevertheless, the colonial West Indian's commitment to education was legendary. The West Indian working man or peasant woman had to perform tremendous feats of sacrifice to provide an education for the next generation. Sherlock and Nettleford illustrate this with the following:
"Any West Indian knows of peasant market women like the bone-thin elderly woman in the Duncans market in Trelawny, who, week after week, year after year, out of her meagre earnings sent her son Amos Foster to Scotland as a medical student and kept him there until he qualified and returned home."
This was the surest way to climb out of the individual poverty trap. As Arthur Lewis points out in an autobiographical sketch, even the professions, really the only avenue of upward mobility for West Indians during that period, held major obstacles for locals.
"I wanted to be an engineer, but neither the colonial government nor the sugar plantations would hire a black engineer, [effectively] law, medicine, preaching, and teaching were the only professions open to young blacks in my day," Lewis wrote.
"Alternative pathways to social and economic mobility were either hazardous in the extreme or non-existent. Becoming 'Afro-Saxon' required a level of cultural assimilation which sadly, or fortuitously happily, depending on one's point of view, was unavailable to the majority of the population. In this context, introducing tertiary education to the British West Indies in the mid-20th century therefore had immense potential for improving conditions within the society. It had the germ in it of both individual and societal material/economic, as well as cultural/national upliftment."
The foregoing is a quote from Introducing Economics and Social Sciences to UWI - 1955 to 1962: The Influence of Sir Arthur Lewis - an unpublished paper your columnist completed in 2004.
We referred also, to the Irving Committee that proposed establishing the university, and their view that "the capital cost of the institution as well as its recurrent expenditure should be a gift to the people of the West Indies by the Imperial Government - some, then as now, may have preferred it described as partial settlement of a debt obligation. That there could be any question of the local treasury finding the funds, was never at issue."
Took a while
Undoubtedly, the University of the West Indies is one of the most important institutions in existence in the Commonwealth Caribbean today. But the fact is, 400 years of a living colonialism preceded tertiary education in the Caribbean.
In British North America, the Pilgrim Fathers founded Harvard a mere 16 years after they landed at Plymouth.
These differences are stark and glaring, reflecting contrasts in the approach chosen to achieve the objectives of rival European colonial enterprise as it created colonies of settlement and of exploitation.
Universities are complex organisms that play a remarkable and indispensable role in civilised life - the arts, culture, philosophy, science, technology, health, you name it - of a society. Never should it be seen merely as a tool to train and provide worker bees for industry.
Were this the case, we could look at the current handling of leadership at the Mona campus as an everyday event crying out for no mature contemplation. That is not the case. It is, indeed, alarmingly short-sighted to entrust leadership of such a critical part of the fabric of society to an acting captain, essentially with no mandate of his or her own.
A university requires critical mass of lecturers and their students. It prides itself on the fact that the idea, the opinion, the evidence or result is what matters; not where it originates or which rank of the community claims paternity!
Oh, you may say, 'not the reality in practice' and you're in some instances correct. But in the choice of leadership, you shall find an important difference. Universities - and UWI has been no exception over the years - choose their leadership with reference to an array of critical factors.
The job is truly multidimensional - advocate, mediator, fund-raiser, negotiator, diplomat, researcher, bearer of burden - one may continue. Critical among these are the perceived vision of the chosen leader and the period of tenure in which he or she may be expected effectively to implement it.
The idea of a three-year holding pattern is an approach no thinking regents, university council or set of politicians should contemplate.
It is fair neither to Professor Gordon Shirley, the Port Authority of Jamaica, the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, nor his successor to be so hamstrung by a period of tenure in which little may be accomplished.
Indeed, a salt-worthy candidate might well consider this detail a deal-breaker!
Published: Friday | June 28, 2013 0 Comments
Wilberne Persaud
By Wilberne Persaud
On February, 1, 1947, Thomas Taylor opened the first office of the University College of the West Indies at 62 Lady Musgrave Road in Kingston.
The house had been the home of the leading West Indian journalist of his time, a strong opponent of those who advocated the establishment of a university in Jamaica.
The college had been provided upon recommendation to the secretary of state for the colonies, Oliver Stanley, as a 'gift to the people of the West Indies by the imperial government'.
That these facts present an interesting irony is evident.
More significantly, this act of generosity, delayed for centuries, represented implementation of a decision on the part of the British government that appears to have been a relatively abrupt break with the past.
Indeed, prior to this development, stretching over the previous 200 years, there had been several independent local initiatives aimed at introducing tertiary education in the British West Indies - none attracted support of colonial governors or the imperial government.
As Lord Moyne noted, efforts to establish institutions of university rank in the West Indies, "in spite of a frequently expressed feeling that this lack should be remedied, have come to nothing".
Commitment to education
Nevertheless, the colonial West Indian's commitment to education was legendary. The West Indian working man or peasant woman had to perform tremendous feats of sacrifice to provide an education for the next generation. Sherlock and Nettleford illustrate this with the following:
"Any West Indian knows of peasant market women like the bone-thin elderly woman in the Duncans market in Trelawny, who, week after week, year after year, out of her meagre earnings sent her son Amos Foster to Scotland as a medical student and kept him there until he qualified and returned home."
This was the surest way to climb out of the individual poverty trap. As Arthur Lewis points out in an autobiographical sketch, even the professions, really the only avenue of upward mobility for West Indians during that period, held major obstacles for locals.
"I wanted to be an engineer, but neither the colonial government nor the sugar plantations would hire a black engineer, [effectively] law, medicine, preaching, and teaching were the only professions open to young blacks in my day," Lewis wrote.
"Alternative pathways to social and economic mobility were either hazardous in the extreme or non-existent. Becoming 'Afro-Saxon' required a level of cultural assimilation which sadly, or fortuitously happily, depending on one's point of view, was unavailable to the majority of the population. In this context, introducing tertiary education to the British West Indies in the mid-20th century therefore had immense potential for improving conditions within the society. It had the germ in it of both individual and societal material/economic, as well as cultural/national upliftment."
The foregoing is a quote from Introducing Economics and Social Sciences to UWI - 1955 to 1962: The Influence of Sir Arthur Lewis - an unpublished paper your columnist completed in 2004.
We referred also, to the Irving Committee that proposed establishing the university, and their view that "the capital cost of the institution as well as its recurrent expenditure should be a gift to the people of the West Indies by the Imperial Government - some, then as now, may have preferred it described as partial settlement of a debt obligation. That there could be any question of the local treasury finding the funds, was never at issue."
Took a while
Undoubtedly, the University of the West Indies is one of the most important institutions in existence in the Commonwealth Caribbean today. But the fact is, 400 years of a living colonialism preceded tertiary education in the Caribbean.
In British North America, the Pilgrim Fathers founded Harvard a mere 16 years after they landed at Plymouth.
These differences are stark and glaring, reflecting contrasts in the approach chosen to achieve the objectives of rival European colonial enterprise as it created colonies of settlement and of exploitation.
Universities are complex organisms that play a remarkable and indispensable role in civilised life - the arts, culture, philosophy, science, technology, health, you name it - of a society. Never should it be seen merely as a tool to train and provide worker bees for industry.
Were this the case, we could look at the current handling of leadership at the Mona campus as an everyday event crying out for no mature contemplation. That is not the case. It is, indeed, alarmingly short-sighted to entrust leadership of such a critical part of the fabric of society to an acting captain, essentially with no mandate of his or her own.
A university requires critical mass of lecturers and their students. It prides itself on the fact that the idea, the opinion, the evidence or result is what matters; not where it originates or which rank of the community claims paternity!
Oh, you may say, 'not the reality in practice' and you're in some instances correct. But in the choice of leadership, you shall find an important difference. Universities - and UWI has been no exception over the years - choose their leadership with reference to an array of critical factors.
The job is truly multidimensional - advocate, mediator, fund-raiser, negotiator, diplomat, researcher, bearer of burden - one may continue. Critical among these are the perceived vision of the chosen leader and the period of tenure in which he or she may be expected effectively to implement it.
The idea of a three-year holding pattern is an approach no thinking regents, university council or set of politicians should contemplate.
It is fair neither to Professor Gordon Shirley, the Port Authority of Jamaica, the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, nor his successor to be so hamstrung by a period of tenure in which little may be accomplished.
Indeed, a salt-worthy candidate might well consider this detail a deal-breaker!
