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Breaking the Reparations Glass Ceiling

For Release Upon Receipt - August 28, 2019

UWI


The University of the West Indies (UWI), in collaboration with the University of Glasgow, has broken the global reparations glass ceiling. In the signing of a landmark Memorandum of Understanding on August 23, in Glasgow, the two universities’ Vice-Chancellors opened a new era in the global reparations movement.

The University of the West Indies is an old contributor to the reparations movement. In the last five years it blazed a discursive trail that transcends the local conversation by connecting to its global aspects. In 2017, with a mandate from Caribbean Heads of Government, it institutionalized the Centre for Reparations Research at The UWI in order to give support to the CARICOM Commission on Reparations established two years earlier.

The choice of date—August 23—for the signing event by the University of Glasgow marked the United Nations Day for the Remembrance of African Enslavement. The UWI’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, was hosted by the University of Glasgow’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli. The event took place, appropriately, in the Victorian campus chapel which is adorned with majestic stained glass windows. There, before an audience of near 100 specially invited persons, the reparations glass ceiling was smashed by signing a £20 million reparations deal into reality.

The purpose of the agreement—the first of its kind for a British university—is to enable The University of Glasgow to formally apologize for its engagement in chattel slavery, defined by the United Nations, as a Crime against Humanity, and commit to redress. This ancient University, established in 1451, by its own published research, successfully extracted millions of pounds from the African-Caribbean slavery enterprise in order to enhance its academic prestige, fund its expansion, and sustain its overall development. 

Sir Anton, a distinguished development economist, understands fully the positive development impact extracted slave-produced wealth had on both the Scottish economy, the city of Glasgow, and the university that bears its name. Sir Hilary, himself an honorary graduate of the University a decade ago, and author of the bestselling book, Britain’s Black Debt: Reparations owed for Slavery and Native Genocide in the Caribbean, has argued that no university can rightly claim to be excellent if its unethical history, that penetrates its present and shapes its future, goes without redress and restitution.

Within this context the two Vice-Chancellors set the stage for negotiations. Sir Hilary successfully designed the reparations model built upon the principle of reparatory justice outlined and publicly articulated by Sir Anton’s team of researchers.  Together, they made provision for a 20-year commitment to invest £20 million pounds. The objective is to assist with confronting and correcting the corrosive legacies of race-based slavery that continue to inhibit post-colonial Caribbean development.

The vehicle on which the agreement will travel is the purpose-built Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research—a jointly managed institute that will operate in both universities—funded by the cash injection. It will select and guide reparatory research projects and initiatives intended to promote social and economic justice and growth in the Caribbean.

Sir Hilary, however, was keen to indicate that while the reparations breakthrough represents an indication of what is possible, and hopefully to come, it does not go far enough into addressing the quantum of reparations owed by Scotland specifically and Britain in general.

Of concern, Sir Hilary noted, “is a considerable body of opinion in the Caribbean that the University of Glasgow will use the event to enhance its reputation without honouring in a principled fashion its commitment”. “I do not share this opinion,” he said. “I would not have signed the agreement if I did.”

Describing the signing event as a “moral moment”, Sir Hilary concluded that “It’s a first small but bold step into what can be humanity’s finest future. It’s a ray rather than a beam of light that has already illuminated the greatest Global-Europe’s racial enslavement of Africans. It further validates seven decades of The UWI’s service as a noble institution vested with a mandate to lead in cleaning up the inherited crippling colonial mess and prepare for the Caribbean Enlightenment.”

 

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Notes to the Editor

Photo: https://flic.kr/p/2h4reYD Courtesy the University of Glasgow

Photo Caption: Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies and Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding on August 23, 2019, the UNESCO Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade.

 

Related Stories:

£20 million Caribbean Reparations Agreement

Historic MoU signed between The UWI and The University of Glasgow

Centre for Reparations Research at The UWI

 

About The UWI

For more than 70 years The University of the West Indies (The UWI) has provided service and leadership to the Caribbean region and wider world. The UWI evolved from a university college of London in Jamaica with 33 medical students in 1948 to an internationally respected, regional university with near 50,000 students across five campuses: Cave Hill in Barbados; Five Islands in Antigua and Barbuda; Mona in Jamaica, St. Augustine in Trinidad and Tobago; and an Open Campus. Times Higher Education has ranked The UWI among the top 1,258 universities in world for 2019, and the 40 best universities in its Latin America Rankings for 2018 and 2019. The UWI is the only Caribbean-based university to make the prestigious lists.

As part of its robust globalization agenda, The UWI has established partnering centres with universities in North America, Latin America, Asia, and Africa including the State University of New York (SUNY)-UWI Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development; the Canada-Caribbean Studies Institute with Brock University; the Strategic Alliance for Hemispheric Development with Universidad de los Andes (UNIANDES); The UWI-China Institute of Information Technology, the University of Lagos (UNILAG)-UWI Institute of African and Diaspora Studies and the Institute for Global African Affairs with the University of Johannesburg (UJ). The UWI offers over 800 certificate, diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate degree options in Food & Agriculture, Engineering, Humanities & Education, Law, Medical Sciences, Science & Technology, Social Sciences and Sport. As the region’s premier research academy, The UWI’s foremost objective is driving the growth and development of the regional economy. For more, visit www.uwi.edu.

(Please note that the proper name of the university is The University of the West Indies, inclusive of the “The”, hence The UWI.)

 

 

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