SELECT DOCUMENTS UWI in Barbados, 1963-1968 Compiled, edited and with a foreword by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles H.R.H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone Chancellor of the University of the West Indies CONTENTS 2 FOREWORD Professor Sir Hilary Beckles Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Principal, Cave Hill Campus 5 VICE CHANCELLOR’S ADDRESS Harbour Site, Bridgetown 12th October, 1963 Dr. Philip M. Sherlock Vice-Chancellor of the University 15 INAUGURAL ADDRESS 12th October, 1963 Honourable J. Cameron Tudor Minister of Education, Barbados 30 CAVE HILL CAMPUS Selected Images 35 CHANCELLOR’S ADDRESS Harbour Site, Bridgetown 13th March, 1964 H.R.H. Princess Alice Countess of Athlone 39 MINISTER’S ADDRESS Laying of Foundation Stone, Cave Hill Campus 26th January, 1966 Honourable J. Cameron Tudor Minister of Education, Barbados 47 GRADUATION ADDRESS Cave Hill Campus 6th February, 1968 Rt. Hon. Errol Walton Barrow Prime Minister of Barbados FOREWORD Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Principal, Cave Hill Campus Moving beyond its network of extra-mural centres, the University of the West Indies extended its reach into the community of Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean with the establishment of a College of Arts and Science. Opened on Saturday, October 12, 96, at the Deep Water Harbour, Bridgetown, the latest enterprise of the UWI took on board a mere 118 students. The project was placed in the care, for the first year, of Acting Principal Mr. Leslie R.B. Robinson, MA, the talented young Jamaican mathematician who had established a reputation for sound management at the Mona campus. Some of the finest minds in the region were mobilized to give shape and form to this eruption in capacity building. Vice- Chancellor Sir Arthur Lewis had bequeathed to his successor Sir Philip Sherlock, a strategic plan for university expansion in the Eastern Caribbean. Lewis was committed to Barbados as a prime and proper location following the development of the St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad in 96. Premier Errol Barrow of Barbados, an admirer of both Lewis and Sherlock, was keen to fashion with the help of UWI a critical component of the education revolution he prepared to unleash, and took personal responsibility for advancing the Lewis initiative. Barrow placed in charge his loyal and dependable Deputy Premier and Minister of Education, the intellectually astute Cameron Tudor. The project team, now led by Vice-Chancellor Sherlock, could only but succeed. Brilliant, passionate, and focused, these architects of Caribbean educational transformation went about their task like missionaries impatient of the future imagined. The regional university was at its best with this test of its commitment to community development. It did not disappoint. The Chancellor of the University, Her Royal Highness, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, made an inspection visit to the college in its temporary buildings at the Harbour on Friday March 13, 964, following a meeting at Mona of the University Council. Her blessed journey to the dusty site of an academy in the making was more than an act of validation. It constituted a seminal moment in the history of the regional university, and in particular a transformational development in higher education in Barbados, and the Windward and Leeward Islands. The persistent oversight and presence of Dr. Eric Williams, Pro- Chancellor of the University, provided intellectual validation of the project. His conceptualization of the course of the college spoke to the energy within UWI as the development engine of the region. The laying of the corner stone for the college at its permanent residence at Cave Hill took place on January 6, 966. In 970 when the regional Faculty of Law was placed on these premises the college evolved into its present form – The Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies. Its journey represented a spectacular process in regional institution building and national resource mobilization. Starting with an Extra-Mural Studies Unit, and moving on to a Liberal Arts College, the UWI finally birthed a fine progeny, a fully fledged campus in Barbados. It is fitting, therefore, fifty years later, that the university present for purposes of reflection a selection of key addresses delivered at the college in its first five years. They capture so precisely the spirit of enterprise and sacrifice that informed the effort to drive our societies away from their colonial scaffold through an investment in higher education. Critically, they capture the concept of publicly funded university education as a reparatory ‘politic’, a discourse that problematized legacies of imperial exploitation and imagined in their place states of intellectual freedom and citizenship. The founding architects of education did not retreat from the magnificent moment so pregnant with movements of liberation. They harnessed the energy of the tide, and crafted a campus which they invested with a remit to be the soul and salvation of the people of the Eastern Caribbean. Vice-Chancellor Sherlock spoke in the soulful tone of unrestricted truth, while Chancellor Princess Alice laid bare the expectation that Caribbean people would seize their destiny and push forward an “enlightened development’. Minister Tudor, unmatched in oratorical skill, set forth the case for a university campus distinguished for its intellectual maturity, research relevance, and moral commitment to community. These articulations have stood the test of time; they belong to discourses still pressing upon the present. Taken from our archives, these documents return to us like commandments for academic crafting in a turbulent, disturbing, distorting present. They are as relevant today as they were then. The truth of this relevance is found in its clearest form in the graduation address delivered by Prime Minister Errol Barrow at the College of Arts and Science at Cave Hill on February 6, 968. It was the first occasion on which the Prime Minister addressed a full gathering of university stakeholders at Cave Hill. His message was clear: the University, he urged, must stand with the people, and for the people. It should use its resources with the greatest prudence, and be an example of commitment and concern in difficult and generous times. In this way, he said, the host community would develop a “settled conviction” that the “efficient growth” of the campus was critical to its well being. In fact, he said, the community would come to realize that the campus was their “PATH TO PROSPERITY”. These historic documents, then, belong to the present and to the future. They ought to be read and digested by all invested with care for the regional university, and by all within the academy whose responsibility it is to protect and nurture this grand enterprise of the Indies. 4 UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES CAVE HILL, BARBADOS, W.I. ON OCCASION OF THE OPENING OF THE COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCE The Vice-Chancellor’s Address Dr. Philip M. Sherlock Vice-Chancellor of the University Twelfth of October One Thousand Nine Hundred and Sixty-three (1963) 4 THE VICE-CHANCELLOR’S ADDRESS Speech by Dr. Philip M. Sherlock, Vice-Chancellor of the University, on the occasion of the opening of the College of Arts and Science, Barbados, on 12th October, 1963; Your Excellency, Hon. Premier, Hon. Chief Minister, My Lord Bishop, Hon. Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen. On Thursday evening I left a meeting of the Senate at Mona to come to Barbados for this ceremony. And just before taking off as it were from one stratosphere to another, I was asked by the Senate to convey their greetings and best wishes to this gathering, to you, Mr. Premier; to you Mr. Principal; and to the new College. This is a part and a most valued-part of a great enterprise. I would like to begin by saying that I join with the principal, Mr. Robinson, in recording our sincere thanks to all those who have made this gathering possible and who, in fact, have made it possible for us to begin this programme. It was only in February that the University Council decided that teaching should begin in Barbados this year, and so we were working against time. But you, Mr. Premier, and your Government have been most generous in your support, and we thank you. We thank also all those who have contributed in every way to the start of this programme. We owe so much to so many. And I think not only of the present and not only of those here, but of the foundations which are of such assistance to us, great philanthropic foundations like the Nuffield, the Ford, which have been abundantly generous, the Carnegie Foundation (one of our earliest friends) and the Rockefeller Foundation. And it is a particular pleasure to me tonight to express our thanks also, not only to these great foundations, but to the foundation which, in a peculiar way, is a part of us — the American Foundation of the University of the 6 7 West Indies, the Chairman of which is Mr. Ronald Tree who is happily with us this evening. I think also of the past, of the services rendered to us by two Council members in particular who came from this region. I refer to Sir Grantley Adams, and also to Sir Garnet Gordon. And I think that at this time they must, both of them, rejoice at the developments which have taken place. As the Principal pointed out tonight, and as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor emphasized at the great gathering which was recently held in Trinidad at St. Augustine, the University of the West Indies has embarked on a programme of expansion, bringing the courses for the new General Degree into the Eastern Caribbean — into this community, into the community in Trinidad, and, we hope, in increasing measure, into the other island communities.