Blog
What A Hero This Hickling!
The following statement is issued by the Vice-Chancellor of The UWI, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles in tribute to the late Frederick W. Hickling, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, The UWI. Freddie my friend and psychic freedom fighter was an inspiration to many generations. We met in Birmingham and he embraced me as a Jamaican. From UK […]
ONE LOVE/ONE UWI #9 | Message from the Vice-Chancellor
A Series from Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles The senior executive leadership of The University of the West Indies—the Campus Principals, Pro Vice-Chancellors, University Bursar, University Registrar, and I—have all committed to allocating a percentage of our salaries for the next three months towards a student hardship fund. The aim of the fund is to promote […]
ONE LOVE/ONE UWI #8 | Message from the Vice-Chancellor
A Series from Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles “In another life I’ll let the overgrowth grow over me, once in a while not pass the afternoon hedge clipping. Come to think of it, maybe I’ll not keep a hedge, nor hedge my bets nor live so much in parenthesis. I’ll study the passions and subtleties of […]
Saving the Caribbean
The following statement is issued by the Vice-Chancellor of The UWI, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles. The opportunity to participate in last week’s CARICOM Heads of Government meeting served to focus my mind around the existential threat to the Caribbean posed by the COVID-19 virus. Caribbean imagination can be forgiven if it is beginning to head […]
ONE LOVE/ONE UWI #7: Message from the Vice-Chancellor
A Series from Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles “The Third World is an artificial construction of the West—an ideological empire on which the sun is always setting.” [Shiva Naipaul, An Unfinished Journey] We know why we must persist. We know our mandate as a dedicated public university serving our region. It seemed even clearer when the […]
ONE LOVE/ONE UWI #6: Message from the Vice-Chancellor
A Series from Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles “After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities. I would have hidden in my hole and been crippled by my sentimentality, doing what I was doing, and doing it well, but always looking for the wailing wall. And I would never have […]
ONE LOVE/ONE UWI #5: Message from the Vice-Chancellor
A Series from Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles “Yeah – said Dan – Now if the half has never been told, you must know what has been told and have some wind of what has not been told. Yeah – said Willie. Well, tell man tell – said Dan.” (Myal, Erna Brodber) In the past seven […]
ONE LOVE/ONE UWI #4: Message from the Vice-Chancellor
A Series from Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles “Watch the landscape of this island…And you know that they coulda never hold people here surrendered to unfreedom. The sky, the sea, every green leaf and tangle of vines sing freedom…Things here have their own mind…” (Salt, Earl Lovelace) COVID-19 we know poses an existential threat to Caribbean […]
ONE LOVE/ONE UWI #3: Message from the Vice-Chancellor
A Series from Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles “The weeping Rainstorm from our reading book bore strong resemblance to my sister Carmen, here full head of hair whipping up great shocks of black rain clouds; her tall, full body wedged between heaven and earth’s birth passage and rainfall her long eye-water on storm days.”(Rainstorm is Weeping, […]
ONE LOVE/ONE UWI #2: Message from the Vice-Chancellor
A Series from Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles The mountains of the Caribbean stand shoulders square unflinched sustained by the blood and sweat of our ancestors they know all sores and welts will be refashioned we have done it before emerging from filthy holds rebounding (The Storyteller’s Return, Opal Palmer Adisa) This week, in many ways, […]
ONE LOVE/ONE UWI #1: Message from the Vice-Chancellor
A Series from Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Hilary Beckles This is my first ‘ONE LOVE/ONE UWI’ message to our community since the suspension of face-to-face teaching on ALL CAMPUSES and our transition to online programme delivery. and in the salt chuckle of rocks with their sea pools, there was the sound like a rumour without any echo of History, really […]
Message from the Vice-Chancellor – International Women’s Day 2020 | Saluting our UWI Women
The UN recognises 2020 as a pivotal year for advancing gender equality worldwide, as the global community takes stock of progress made for women’s rights. As an institution, for over 71 years we have been witness to UWI women making remarkable strides in this cause, through widespread and lasting contributions in the Caribbean region and […]