Stephen Vasciannie UNDER THE misleadingly benign heading 'Targets for the UWI', The Gleaner launched an unsubstantiated attack on the University of the West Indies in its editorial on February 3, 2004. The attack is part of a broader picture, for the UWI has no shortage of critics; but even so, it is an attack built on no real basis in fact.
At some point in the editorial, The Gleaner condescendingly notes: "We do not subscribe to the view that the UWI must be dismissed as an 'intellectual ghetto'". This no doubt is meant to be an act of charity on the part of the editorial as it veers frightfully off course. For, notwithstanding that minimal concession, the editorial seeks to construct a picture of the UWI that could lead any reasonable reader to believe that the institution is failing in its mission as a university.
The editorial falls short on objectivity. It indicates correctly that the Caribbean is besieged by a myriad of problems begging for intellectual rigour, research and solutions - and then it presumes, on the basis of a few examples, that the UWI is not providing the academic leadership to address those problems.
Naturally, given the number, magnitude and enduring character of the manifestations of underdevelopment in the Caribbean, anyone can identify areas that call out for greater research in the region. But to move from the proposition that the UWI is not undertaking research in some areas, to the suggestion that UWI is not working as a centre of intellectual excellence is a long jump that reminds one of James Beckford at the Olympics.
MISALLOCATION?
And in any event, it is one thing to identify areas where the University could be doing more work; it is quite something else to suggest that the resources at the UWI are currently being misallocated. The editorial accuses the UWI of misallocation in the following terms:
"As Professor Hunte conceded last week, (UWI) has concentrated so far on too few areas of research, such as natural resource and environmental management, social, economic and cultural studies, and we might add, studies of marginal relevance to pressing problems. Those areas are important in the search for knowledge. But surely, given the paucity of resources to finance the university and the urgent need to generate wealth in and across Caribbean societies, the UWI cannot continue to afford expenditure on subject matters such as slavery."
This passage is depressing in the grandeur of its overgeneralisations. The entire Social Sciences faculty is, by definition, concerned with social and economic studies, and, indeed, has had a distinguished journal (for over 50 years) dedicated to the publication of research findings in the very area that UWI's inadequacies are said to lie.
Fairness alone requires The Gleaner to indicate why the books and journal articles emanating from this Faculty fall short of the mark; instead, I daresay, the editorial sweeps with generalisations that miss their target entirely.
Consider, more specially, the charge of marginal relevance, and the Faculty of Social Sciences. On January 30, just four days before the editorial appeared, Professor Alvin Wint received the UWI Principal's Award for best publication for 2002 to 2003 for a book entitled Competitiveness in Small Developing Economies: Insights from the Caribbean, which considers areas in which our economies may survive and thrive in the neoliberal, free market international dispensation. Is this the kind of thing that The Gleaner regards as marginally relevant?
Again, just four days before the editorial appeared, Dr. Anthony Harriot received the Principal's Award for outstanding research, essentially for work in helping to understand the nature, causes and implications of crime in Jamaica; this, in a country which is both violent and reputedly violent, where crime is more than a passing phenomenon, and where some politicians have more than a passing familiarity with gunmen. Harriot's publications include Police and Crime Control in Jamaica and an edited volume on Understanding Crime. Is this the kind of work that The Gleaner regards as marginally relevant?
And again, just four days before the editorial, Dr. Pat Anderson, Roy Russell and Horace Levy garnered the Principal's Award for the Social Sciences Project attracting the most research funds. This project concerns the UWI/National Housing Trust Census of West Kingston Communities: is this the kind of work that can fairly be regarded as marginally relevant?
RELEVANCE
And I could go on; for just four days before the editorial, the imprimatur of the Principal's Awards was placed on outstanding work at Mona in medicine (nutrition, maternal mortality, chronic renal failure, prostate cancer, AIDS research and so on), in the humanities and in the Pure and Applied Sciences. These awards weigh in heavily in favour of research concerning the Caribbean.
Generally speaking, The Gleaner does its job very well; but its job is to seek relevance every single day, and this, of necessity, requires a short-run orientation and great respect for immediacy. That, however, is not the function of the UWI, or indeed, any university that strives to be a centre of academic excellence. At universities of excellence, lecturers must, I reiterate, be sovereign. They must be allowed to pursue their areas of specialisation without the noise of non-experts constantly second-guessing whether their work is relevant.
This is not to suggest that lecturers qua researchers are not accountable to the wider society. It is, however, to suggest that sometimes the thrust of the criticism about relevance seeks inappropriately to place the lecturer in a short-term strait-jacket - or a unidirectional Procrustean bed - a situation that does not fit the middle and long-run horizon which is the province of intellectual research.
Nor am I arguing that lecturers should wilfully ignore the daily requirements of life in the Caribbean, with its steady supply of urgent, overbearing socio-economic needs. Lecturers should be sovereign in the determination of their research areas, but we can be confident that, as citizens or residents of the region, they will be sensitive to Caribbean concerns.
This conclusion is fully supported by the research record of the UWI in recent years, a point I will demonstrate more fully next week.
Stephen Vasciannie is Professor of International Law at the University of the West Indies and Head of the Department of Government. He is also a Consultant in the Attorney-General's Chambers.
