The Caribbean and the Wider World

Commentaries on My Life and Career

Alister McIntyre

• Publisher: Radcliffe Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781786720832
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

In 1974, McIntyre temporarily left behind his academic career as a developmental economist at the University of the West Indies to take up appointment as Secretary-General of CARICOM (the Caribbean Community and Common Market). He subsequently held positions as the Director of the Commodities Division of UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) and then Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD in both Geneva and New York. In 1988 McIntyre returned to the Caribbean as Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and, on his retirement in 1998, he assumed the post of Chief Technical Advisor at the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery. This book outlines McIntyre's extraordinary life and wide-ranging international career in diplomacy, politics and academia. It provides key perspectives on the development of Caribbean regional government and international institutions in the twentieth century.

Section 5

Development Of The University Of The West Indies (Uwi)

15

Vice-Chancellor, 1988–98

Early interest

When I joined the staff at Mona in 1960, I became almost immediately involved in the ongoing discussions among other staff members in the Faculty of Social Sciences about the future of the university and what should be its strategic aims. This experience was enriched by the scholastic exchanges that I was able to have with the contacts that opened up as a result of my secondment to Princeton and Columbia universities and my participation in high-level exchanges, of which the Rio Conference on Inflation and Growth stands out as a very seminal occasion.

As a result of these experiences I developed particular views on the development of the UWI and how it should try to locate itself in the academic world at large. While I was Secretary-General of CARICOM, Vice-Chancellor Preston gave Gerald Lalor the assignment of discussing with the CARICOM committee set up for this purpose what particular projects they would submit for financing from the European Development Fund. The Heads of Government had already agreed that the university should get some of the money. Lalor came to Georgetown with a ‘wish list’ of projects. When he came, I listened to what he was going to propose and then said to him that I did not find the list sufficiently impressive. He replied that this was what Vice-Chancellor Preston wanted. So I called the Vice-Chancellor and told him that in the light of my experience with the European Community, I doubted whether this would be an attractive package to them. The Vice-Chancellor then gave me carte blanche to change the project list and so I informed Lalor when we met the next day.

When the meeting convened, Lalor presented my version of the list, and I followed by saying that, in the light of my experience with Brussels, they would be impressed by a list that indicated that we were thinking as a region and giving emphasis to human development, an area to which they attached considerable importance. The meeting agreed and in the end the university got a very substantial sum from the first and second Lomés.

From then on, the future of the university and its development needs attracted my attention and I developed concrete ideas that I would later seek to implement while I was Vice-Chancellor.

I had met Vice-Chancellor Aston Preston just by chance on a flight to Bogota in 1986. I do not remember what either of us was doing there. We started chatting and he said he would like to have a conversation with me about the future of the university. Among other things, Preston indicated that he wanted to establish a Business School at Mona. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) had expressed interest in providing support for such a school. They hoped that the university would break new ground and identify suitable leadership. Subsequently, Preston telephoned me in Geneva to say that he had a proposition to put to me about the leadership of the new business programme.

I replied that I did not think I would be available, because I was in the midst of the Common Fund negotiations. I would therefore have to decline his invitation, but I fully supported what he was trying to do and hoped he could find someone else to lead it.

He went on to ask whether I would be willing to meet with him at a convenient time during the coming months to discuss the project, and I agreed. In thinking about a possible date for a meeting, I indicated to him that because of a standing arrangement that the CARICOM Heads had made with the UN Secretary-General for me to attend meetings of CARICOM Heads as requested, I would be going to the next meeting of the Heads being held in Georgetown. Preston said that he would also be there, and we could possibly meet during that time to have the conversation. Indeed, if that was not possible, I could arrange to come to Kingston immediately after the meeting for a few days, before returning to Geneva.

Very shortly after that conversation, I received a message that Vice-Chancellor Preston had died. I was in a state of shock because I had so recently been speaking with him.

CARICOM Heads initiative

I went to the Heads of Government meeting as I had originally planned, with no thought about being involved with university matters. As a matter of fact, John Compton, Prime Minister of St Lucia, saw me in the lobby as I arrived at the conference hotel and asked me to assist him in preparing a draft proposal in the field of tourism that he wished to put to the Heads. Accordingly, I asked him to mention to the chairman that I would be somewhat delayed because I was helping him with finalizing a proposal.

I was just settling in to that assignment when Sonny Ramphal came to tell me that the Heads wished me to come to the plenary session because they wanted to discuss the vice-chancellorship of the university with me.

It seemed that following Vice-Chancellor Preston’s death, the CARICOM Heads of Government had initiated an informal process in parallel with the university’s own process to identify a successor. The actual authority for the appointment resided in the University Council. I was somewhat hesitant to participate in a process that could be thought of as conflicting with the university’s statutes. So I told Ramphal that the Heads were not in a position to make such a proposal to me, since the appointment of a new vice-chancellor was the prerogative of the University Council.

He countered my statement by saying I should not be concerned with the constitutional aspects of the discussion; they were, after all, Heads of Government of the states participating in the university and it was in order for them to have a discussion with me on the matter.

So I went down to the plenary meeting of the Heads and reiterated what I had told Ramphal, adding that there was also the question of my family’s reaction to the proposal. It was represented to me that the Heads were anxious to speed up the process of identifying a replacement. As one prime minister explained to me: ‘You are not looking for work, the work is looking for you!’

On my return to Geneva, I did in fact discuss it with my family and there were pros and cons.

Some time after that, I was invited to Kingston for an interview with the committee set up by the University Council to select the Vice-Chancellor. I was one of three candidates. I was subsequently informed that I had been selected by the committee.

Arthur Brown, who usually visited Geneva in the summer for meetings of the UNDP and ECOSOC, came to my home as he usually did and urged me to make a decision about accepting the post. Arthur, in his capacity as chairman of the Mona campus council, was ex officio a member of the University Council. They had asked Arthur to encourage me to accept the position, because the other candidates were not appointable. I enquired from Arthur whether he knew what the terms of the appointment were, because I was not uncomfortable in Geneva.

He promised to find out and then returned to tell me that he did not want to mention the difference in salary to me because it was so substantial. I indicated to him that I would have to give the matter considerable thought since my family, particularly the children, were well-adjusted to Geneva.

After further consideration, I decided to accept the job offer at the UWI with effect from September 1988. The advantage of this was that it gave me sufficient time to arrange my family affairs, including the children adjusting to an entirely new and somewhat unfamiliar schooling system.

Eric Williams Memorial Lecture

In May 1988 I was invited by the Governor of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago to deliver the Eric Williams Memorial Lecture. I thought that the establishment of the lecture was a timely and appropriate initiative and I accepted his invitation. In thinking about what I would talk about, I recalled that, prior to the establishment of the university at Mona in October 1948, Prime Minister Williams had himself done a lecture on the idea of a West Indian university. In searching for a copy of the lecture, I was advised to visit the Public Library at 42nd Street in New York. I was very impressed with the comprehensive collection of Caribbean papers that the library had at that time. And indeed, I was able to locate a copy of the lecture without any difficulty.

I read it and there were several ideas in it that were still relevant. Accordingly, I decided to construct my idea of a West Indian university as the topic for my lecture. I did this and entitled it: ‘The West Indian university revisited: aspects of the intellectual task ahead’. Dr Williams’ ideas were never fully taken into consideration when the UWI was originally established. Subsequently, some of his ideas were taken up, but perhaps not quite in the way he had envisaged at the time.

As part of the agreement on Chaguaramas in 1962, the United States Government gave a substantial grant to Trinidad and Tobago. Some people thought of this as representing payment of rent for the Chaguaramas Base during World War II. One part of the payment financed the construction of the John F. Kennedy College of Arts and Sciences, a concept that Williams and the Americans had developed which I thought made a lot of sense.

Dr Williams had the idea that within the university there could be two systems of instruction. The John F. Kennedy College, named after US President John F. Kennedy, would teach on American lines, of which the principal features were: a credit system, four years undergraduate study, a broad education, not highly specialized. It was designed to meet the personnel needs in sectors such as teachers for primary education, civil servants, and other sectors where a non-specialized education was the appropriate starting point. The university would have been unique. It would have had two systems of instruction, side by side. There need not have been any conflict between them. It was just a different concept.

The John F. Kennedy College approach could have generated a supply of teachers, because an American undergraduate degree is actually far better than the British type for primary and the early stages of secondary education teaching, because you get a much broader base. For teachers, especially at the pre-secondary level, this is much more important than simply studying two or three subjects over the course of their degree.

The US government also gave money for an...

Table of contents

• Author biography
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1_Growing up in Grenada
• 2_Early employment
• 3_Education in the UK
• 4_University college
• 5_Teaching in the US
• 6_UWI St Augustine
• 7_UWI Mona
• 8_Working for the Region
• 9_External Economic Relations
• 10_Working at the UN
• 11_Other International Activities
• 12_Assignments in Trinidad
• 13_Principal Assignments in Jamaica
• 14_Assignments in other countries
• 15_Vice Chancellor
• 16_Brief Thoughts
• Appendix