Sat | Oct 4, 2025

UWI Mona outlines mission to advocate for social change, good

Published:Tuesday | January 16, 2024 | 12:11 AMSashana Small/Staff Reporter
Densil A. Williams (right), principal of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, speaking with Dennis Cohen (left), former deputy CEO, NCB Financial Group; Joseph Taffe (second left), former deputy CEO, Grace Kennedy Financial Group; and Professor M
Densil A. Williams (right), principal of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, speaking with Dennis Cohen (left), former deputy CEO, NCB Financial Group; Joseph Taffe (second left), former deputy CEO, Grace Kennedy Financial Group; and Professor Marvin Reid, deputy principal, The UWI, Mona, at The UWI’s press conference at the Council Room, UWI, Mona, yesterday.

Principal of The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, Professor Densil A. Williams, has signalled the institution’s renewed intention of becoming a global activist academy; one, he said, that works in the best interest of the people.

“We want an academy where our people are on the frontline being activists for social change for good, because the investment the people have made in us, now say that we must repay that investment,” Williams said.

He was speaking at a press conference yesterday where he outlined several initiatives the university will be undertaking to transform the institution in the short and long term.

Williams noted that only a small percentage of citizens matriculate to tertiary education.

“If you really think about it from a public finance perspective, we have roughly about 2.5 per cent or so of our people within the university setting, do you recognise that it’s really the greatest transfer of wealth?” he questioned.

Work to improve society

This acknowledgement, he said, should inform a desire to work to improve the society for the betterment of all.

“When we speak about global activism, we are saying that you come to a university like ours that is publicly funded, that people are transferring their wealth to you, it is not for you to just get a degree, move off and cocoon away somewhere in the hills and having the best car, best house, going to the most salubrious restaurants – that’s not the role that you are supposed to play,” he said.

“Your role is to say how do I get this resource that people have invested in me, and then I use that investment to make their lives better off,” he added.

According to Williams, the activism will involve attacking the big issues of the day such as climate change, injustice, and economic equality on behalf of the masses.

“As an academy, we have to have our voices there as well, we can’t just say we come here, we publish in the best journals – high-quality, high-impact journals and only two people read them; yourself and your professor,” he said. “We have to be very clear in our minds that that is not the academy we want.”

And while noting that the university has not been “completely removed” from activism, political commentator Ronald Thwaites stated that there was a time when it was more fervent.

He pointed to the 1970s, where he said social scientists of The UWI “were highly definitive in policymaking and reference to the direction of the country”.

“The university needs to help itself and remind the society of the extent in details of the outreach it has offered over the years in respect of contemporary problems and contributions to public policy. I think the discussions I’ve heard about recently and discussed publicly lack almost an inventory of some of the projects that have impacted or were designed to impact internationally as well as locally,” he asserted.

Positing that the university has a primary responsibility to be the “thinking arm of the state”, and the Caribbean by extension, Thwaites contends that its integration with public activity is essential for progress.

“When I served in the Ministry of Education, I invited, for example, the department of education to have a representative at all our executive meetings and it proved very helpful, because what that person did was to avail us… of the historical thinking, the present research of the university,” he said.

But, he noted that activism is an obligation of all universities.

“It is incumbent in any society for those who have the privilege of higher education, the time and the enablement to do research for the more intense pursuit of knowledge, what could be a higher cause than to serve the society, the community which has so enabled them or which needs them,” he said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com