SUNDAY 11 AUGUST 2019 – UWI TODAY
5
CAMPUS NEWS
UWI and the University of Glasgow
have signed the first ever
agreement for slavery reparations since British Emancipation in 1838.
The £20 million agreement was signed at the Regional Headquarters
ofThe UWI in Kingston, Jamaica on July 31, 2019 by Vice-Chancellor,
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles and Dr David Duncan, University of
Glasgow’s Chief Operating Officer, representing Vice-Chancellor,
Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli.
The terms of the agreement call for the University of Glasgow
to provide £20 million to fund research to promote development
initiatives to be jointly undertaken with The UWI over the next two
decades. The sum of £20 million was the amount paid to slave owners
as reparations by the British government when it abolished slavery
in 1834.
The agreement represents the first occasion on which a slavery-
enriched British or European institution has apologised for its part in
slavery and committed funds to facilitate a reparations programme.
In this instance, the two universities have adopted a regional
development approach to reparations.
The funds will facilitate the operations of a jointly-owned and
managed institution to be called the Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for
Development Research. The Centre will target and promote solutions
to Caribbean development problems in areas such as medicine and
public health, economics and economic growth, cultural identity and
cultural industries, and other 21st Century orientations in Caribbean
transformation.
The seminal agreement, the first of its kind in the West, brings
to closure negotiations between the two institutions that began when
the University of Glasgow published a report in 2018 revealing that
between the 1780s and 1880s it received millions of pounds in grants
and endowments from Scottish and English slave owners that served
to enrich and physically expand the nearly 600-year-old university.
Professor Sir Hilary Beckles, who brokered the historic
agreement, complimented Dr Duncan for his astute leadership of
the Glasgow Reparatory Justice Task Force, and Vice-Chancellor,
Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli for his visionary leadership.
Commenting on the globally anticipated moment in the long
reparations struggle, Sir Hilary noted that the University of Glasgow
acknowledged that a university cannot be excellent if it is not ethical,
and that this agreement places the university on a highmoral ground.
UWI, University of Glasgow sign £20 million
CARIBBEAN REPARATIONS AGREEMENT
Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles and Dr David Duncan, University of Glasgow’s Chief Operating Officer,
shake hands after the signing.
The £20 million will be invested in policy research in science, technology, society and economy,
and education and advocacy that seek to repair the debilitating consequences of slavery and colonisation
that continue to hold back Caribbean development. The Centre will therefore focus on joint efforts
to clean up the “colonial mess” that continues to subvert efforts at Caribbean social and economic
growth. It will be formally established on the two campuses in September 2019.
