Renowned Caribbean scholar and writer Prof Selwyn Ryan has passed at age 86
The St Augustine Campus community of The University of the West Indies (The UWI) as well as UWI alumni around the world have been thrown into mourning on the passing of Professor Emeritus Selwyn Ryan, recognised as one of the Caribbean’s foremost scholars and writers of political history. He died on March 12 after battling illness.
Over his prolific career as a researcher and writer, Professor Ryan wrote newspaper columns, academic papers, and articles for journals, documenting exciting moments in the contemporary political history of Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean.
Dr Acolla Lewis-Cameron, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, recalled his passion for Caribbean development, while Campus Principal Brian Copeland reflected on Prof Ryan’s fervent wish at his last book launch that younger academics pick up where he left off, and continue to write and record our history.
“We can pay no greater tribute to a man who has done so much for this country and region”, said Professor Copeland, “than by fulfilling his most earnest desire. Students and graduates of The UWI will continue – as succeeding generations have done for the last 75 years ¬– to advance learning, create knowledge, and foster innovation for the positive and sustainable transformation of this region and, indeed, the wider world.”
Despite his highly regarded presence as a public intellectual, it was the St Augustine Campus that Professor Ryan considered his home away from home and where, in 2019, he chose to launch his last book, Ryan Recalls – Selwyn Ryan: His Memoirs. At that time, UWI’s Alma Jordan Library also celebrated the launch of the Selwyn Ryan Collection, a collection of manuscripts, correspondence, and scrapbooks from his early life at home and abroad, all donated by the professor as research material for students and younger academics.
Speaking at Prof Ryan’s funeral on Friday, March 18 at St Finbar’s Roman Catholic Church in Diego Martin, Dr Keith Rowley, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, said, “Professor Ryan was and is a leading light and example of the best we could be in our region.”
