The Institute of Critical Thinking

Dr. Bhoendradatt Tewarie is Pro Vice-Chancellor, Planning and Development at The University of the West Indies (UWI). He is also the founding Director of the Institute of Critical Thinking located on the UWI St. Augustine campus.

Pro Vice Chancellor Tewarie has served the University, Trinidad and Tobago and the region over the course of his career and has effectively bridged the worlds of academia, public service and private enterprise.

He has served the University as Lecturer (six years), Executive Director, UWI Institute of Business (now Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business – nine years) and Principal, UWI St. Augustine (six years) before assuming responsibility for Planning and Development in August 2007.

He has served Trinidad and Tobago as a Member of Parliament (five years), Minister of Government (five years), Chairman of the National Institute for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology (NIHERST – six years), Board Member National Training Agency (NTA – three years) and Chairman of the National Tertiary Education Policy Committee for Vision 2020. At NIHERST he facilitated the creation of the College of Science, Technology and Applied Arts (COSTAATT) and the foundation work for the establishment of the Accreditation Agency of Trinidad and Tobago (AATT). He also authored the rationale for the establishment of the NTA and was the lead author for the Vision 2020 policy for Tertiary Education. He has also served over the years on several private sector boards.

Regionally, Dr. Tewarie has served on the Board of the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC), the Trust Fund for the Caribbean Court of Justice, has been a feature speaker in the CARICOM Distinguished Lecture Series and has been an invitee, participant, presenter and contributor to several CARICOM and other regional fora over the years.

He has published many articles and book chapters on economic, educational and developmental issues as well as a book on University Governance in the Twenty-First Century (Jossey-Bass, 2003) (with Dennis Gayle and Theodore White). In 2002 he guest-edited for Caribbean Quarterly a special issue to commemorate V.S. Naipaul’s award of the Nobel Prize and wrote the lead article “A House for Mr. Biswas Revisited: Ethnicity, Culture, Geography and Beyond”. In 2007, he published two books; one on V.S. Naipaul entitled V.S. Naipaul Revisited: Ethnicity, Marginality and the Triumph of Individual Will and the other entitled Trade, Investment and Development: In the Contemporary Caribbean (with Roger Hosein).

Dr. Tewarie was educated at Curepe Presbyterian School, Queen’s Royal College, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, the Pennsylvania State University and has done programmes on leadership and higher education at Oxford University.