The UWI expresses sympathy on the passing of Professor of Practice and former Prime Minister the Rt. Hon. Owen Arthur

Regional
Headquarters, Jamaica, Monday, July 27, 2020. “Owen
Arthur, without a doubt, is one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th
century Caribbean. Emerging from the second generation of nation
builders he was a successful champion of the most important
discourses of his time. We knew him as a quintessential regionalist
and a leader in development economics. He was also a humanist with
deep commitment to social justice.”

This reflection
comes from the Vice-Chancellor of The University of the West Indies
(The UWI), Professor Sir Hilary Beckles in expressing condolences on
the passing of the Right Honourable Owen Seymour Arthur, former Prime
Minister of Barbados.

The University
community, of which Mr Arthur was a vibrant part, is saddened by the
news of his death and joins his family, friends, and the people of
Barbados in mourning. In 2018, Mr Arthur was appointed Professor of
Practice: Economics of Development at The UWI Cave Hill Campus and
served until the time of his passing.

Barbados’ fifth
and longest-serving Prime Minister, Mr. Arthur was a notable
Economist, and an alumnus of both The UWI’s Cave Hill and Mona
campuses. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in 1971 in Economics and
History at Cave Hill, and his Master’s degree in Economics in 1974
at Mona. He began working in Jamaica in 1973, first as a Research
Assistant at the University and later as an Assistant Economic
Planner with the Government of Jamaica’s National Planning Agency.
In 1981 he returned to Barbados, and worked for the Barbadian
Ministry of Finance and Planning from 1981 to 1983, then 1985 to 1986
and also served as a Research Fellow at The UWI’s Institute of
Social and Economics Research (now the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of
Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) from 1983 to 1985. His
political career began with his appointment to the Barbadian Senate
in 1983. In 1993 he was appointed as the parliamentary Opposition
Leader as head of the Barbados Labour Party and, upon the party’s
decisive victory in the September 1994 elections, he became Prime
Minister.

After his political
career Mr. Arthur remained connected to his alma mater and continued
to nurture an intimate relationship with The UWI. Since 2016, he
served as one of the eminent patrons of the annual UWI Global Giving
Week, which has been dedicated to cultivating support to strengthen
The UWI’s capacity to drive regional development. As part of his
academic life, he delivered several distinguished lectures, on topics
such as “Caribbean Regionalism in the Context of Economic
Challenges”, “The IMF and the Caribbean: New Directions for a New
Relationship,” and “Brexit and the New Caribbean Trade Agenda.”
In 2017, he was a lead participant at the first major public event
for the SUNY-UWI Center for Leadership and Sustainable Development
hosted in New York—a Symposium titled “The Crisis in
Correspondent Banking and its Impact on Sustainable Economic
Development in the Caribbean.” In 2018, he was among 70 alumni
honoured as part of The UWI’s 70th anniversary celebrations and he
also donated his Cabinet papers collated during his 14-year tenure in
office to The UWI Cave Hill’s special collections.

In his condolences, Vice-Chancellor Beckles also stated, “The UWI he empowered in his role as Prime Minister, and from which he was proud to be a graduate, researcher, and lecturer, Professor of Practice, and Honorary Distinguished Fellow, celebrates his legacy. Condolences are offered to his family, and government and people of Barbados.”

Photo
Caption

Former Prime Minister the Rt. Hon Owen Arthur, pictured speaking in his capacity as Patron of The UWI Global Giving’s 2016 launch event at the Cave Hill Campus.

SEE ALSO BELOW STATEMENT FROM THE VICE-CHANCELLOR, THE UWI : Owen Arthur: The Activist Prime Minister

The
UWI Regional Headquarters, Jamaica, Tuesday, July 28, 2020. The
following statement is issued by Professor Sir Hilary Beckles,
Vice-Chancellor of The UWI, in tribute to the late

Rt.
Honourable Owen Arthur.

Arthur
was authorised by the elders of his era to lead the economic
development charge of the region. As a consequence, there was no
other passion that competed with his commitment to the economic
advancement of Caribbean people.

At
The University of the West Indies (The UWI), he was schooled beyond
the theories of scholarship to embrace the practical and pragmatic
dimensions of this mission. While his feet were firmly planted in the
urgency of post-plantation economic reforms, his intellectual
sophistication kept him focused on the simultaneous need for social
inclusion and justice. This was the nature of his centre of gravity.

As
a young academic he erupted as a development activist and never lost
sight of the role economics could play in serving all sections of the
communities within the archipelago. With this philosophy in hand, he
grew rapidly to professional maturity. The youth from a marginalised
village in plantation Barbados became an activist Prime Minister who
master minded the implementation of the Caribbean Single Market. He
lived and died dedicated to the vision of the single economy.

As
a political leader in a fragmented region, he respected the
constitutional consequences of the indigenous diversity that was
endowed by history and geography. But as a development economist, his
life project was putting together that which God had put asunder. It
began and ended with his sense of belonging to a unified cultural
space, and membership of a cohesive civilization that transcended and
dialectically defied the political fractures and fissures fomented by
superficial features.

Arthur
had no time for Caribbean divisiveness that lacked intellectual
integrity. He was a man for his region, and for this reason he stood
in defiance of those that sought to subvert the dignity of its
sovereignty. Shipriders without approval were told they could not
enter and he denied automatic access to the waters that constituted
the boundaries of Barbados. This controversial commitment constituted
evidence of the consciousness he displayed in the heat of an imperial
moment that tested the tenacity of his authority.

An
optimistic economist, Arthur believed that with the limited
disciplinary tools available, there was still the possibility of
extracting national and regional economic growth from the sometimes
hostile global economy. It required skill, intellectual agility and
an eternal policy search for space and partnerships.

This
belief system worked well for him and anchored his activism as an
example of a best case scenario in the face of the obvious
duplicitous liberal market attitudes to small, vulnerable, developing
states. On this foundation he secured the significant economic
progress of Barbados. At the height of his significant achievement,
another regional Prime Minister proclaimed that Barbados was the
best, black managed political economy in the world.

It
was this nerve as a nation-builder, that saw him rise to place his
beloved UWI above all other institutions. For him, it was the source
of the social capital required to sustain development. He authorised
the release of significant financial and land resources that saw the
Cave Hill Campus soar from an undeveloped academic ecosystem to take
pride of place alongside sister campuses within the regional academic
pantheon.

Always
the scholar with an appetite for discursive engagement, he found in
his ancestral Faculty of Social Sciences, a natural home. He took
great pride in knowing that he was a celebrated member of the
academic community that had embraced and honed his considerable
intellectual talent. Barbados and the Caribbean witnessed in his
life, the principle which the region holds most dear — that
democracy demands the unlocking of the cosmology of every community
for development.

As
a student ‘from below’ he walked many a mile through the northern
village of ‘Mile and a Quarter’ to The UWI, there to find his
path to professional advancement. From these grassroots, he spread
his wings and soared across his region into a wide world that awaited
and resonated his voice. His return to source is accompanied by the
heralding sound of success. The native son has enriched the soil in
which his seed was sown. This remains the finest story of the journey
of humanity.