UNIVERSITY OF GUYANA
Posted by: randallbutisingh on: May 20, 2008
UNIVERSITY OF GUYANA – Inaugural Dissertation -1963
The following is an excerpt from the Inaugural Dissertation entitled “A University in a Changing Society”, given by Prof. Lancelot Hogben, Vice Chancellor and Principal of the University of Guyana, on the occasion of its opening on October 1, 1963.
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“As members of this species of so many inter-fertile somatic varieties with such common potentialities for good and evil we face the enticing possibility of a future well-being inconceivable to our grandfathers. The alternative is a doom no generation of the human species could hitherto and rightly have regarded as thinkable. We can choose the benefits to which scientific discovery invites us to share with the prospect of a hitherto inconceivably abundant life for all. Alternatively, we can choose a common coffin of nuclear annihilation for men and women of every creed, country and colour. We have now to learn to live together unless we choose to die together. Accordingly, our civic responsibilities have assumed global dimensions.
If peoples of different territorial ancestry cannot live at peace here in British Guiana, how gloomy is the prospect of mankind! For this reason my colleagues are of one mind. A contemporary curriculum of civic studies anywhere, but especially in our own multi-racial community, should make its students aware of what successive peoples of different stocks and skin pigmentation have contributed to the world wide community of what we thanklessly call western Science. It must also make all students aware of what circumstances have impeded the cultural progress of communities which are now as backward as my own forebears in the era referred to as the “Glory that was Greece”.
Because we are, though small, a multi-racial community, it may be that w can make a unique contribution to civic education in what we may hope to be the Age of Plenty only if peoples of different colour, creed, and country coexist peacefully. One of my favourite English poets, William Blake, expressed it thus:
In my exchanges every land
Shall walk, and men of every land
Mutual shall build Jerusalem
Both heart in heart and hand in hand
In this small society let us therefore take courage from the circumstances that the tradition of our world wide culture of so-called western science has preserved its continuity by the perennial rebirth which signalizes the emergence of the novel impact of a hitherto less sophisticated culture in a hitherto less unlikely setting. In this assurance let us hopefully go forward to adapt what is worthy from the past to local needs, which may contribute new benefits to the future”.
Prof. Lancelot Hogben, Vice Chancellor and Principal, University of Guyana, October 1, 1963.
3 Responses to "UNIVERSITY OF GUYANA"
May 22, 2008 at 1:15 am
Thanks Pat for your usual appropriate comments. There are those who cannot see beneath the skin and are not able to realise the wisdom and purpose of that diversity. When cultures meet in a melting pot, they produce something glorious. India has been able to achieve this. She never fought against her conquerors but absorbed them and garnered the best of what the different cultures could offer. That is why she has such a glorious culture which the West has recognised, though it took them a long time to do so. Until man can appreciate the wisdom of “Unity in Diversity,” there will always be unnecessary conflicts.
November 28, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Racial profiling is discrimination. Many speak of discrimination as though it is an abnormality. It is not it is the purest of innate attributes. babies discriminate for the mothers breast against the father less-than-gentle mother caress. It is about choice based most time on instinct relative to time and space. The argument for racial profiling must take into account the elements – time and space/location. Thus white cops will do (prefer) any other color and black cops the same likewise Hispanic cops. I have been stopped by cops, not frisked, at times for what i do not know. But i leave the scene with a view of always letting the cop know that there are better persons out here…who understand that there is respect to be obtained from doing a job the right way. I believe that much ado-about-nothing comes from the initial respect that persons have for law. It determines how the initial exchange between the law and the object of the law the person stopped) takes place. If I am respectful to the cops about their right to stop anyone, then I am to relate that respect to them based on the courtesy my response to them. This is irrespective of the tone of the cop. I have it is important. It is not being submissive nor penitent. It is just respecting the rights (based on roles) that society as an institution has given to the cop. Nothing aggravates a situation more that anyone in the lower stratum of society function not being cognizant of that.
It is basically, a function of how we perceive ourselves as good citizens. If the cop is in an environment in which blacks are predominant then black will represent the greater proportion of the stop-and-search. It just happens that blacks and Hispanics are in the majority in the Bronx and in New York City — including the five boroughs. Of course that is a function of their own self-development, manners and perception of their cultural standing. Yes, there is strength in diversity and it is the responsibility of everyone to share in that for nation building. Citizens must help the society by supporting actions of those institutions establish for their public safety. The probability of any citizen being chosen form scrutiny by “the law” is the same except where imbalances occur in the population that is skewed for a particular ethnic group. Thus from time-to-time we have to be prepared to be chosen. It is then that our assessment of the behavior of the “law” come to bear. If the institutions are not functioning they should abolish. Until such time they must help to build them.
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May 20, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Part of the Honorable Professor’s speech,
“If peoples of different territorial ancestry cannot live at peace here in British Guiana, how gloomy is the prospect of mankind!
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
NY Post Reporter Fired After Suing NYPD
And the New York Post has fired a Jamaican-born reporter after he filed a lawsuit against the New York Police Department for racial profiling. Leonardo Blair sued the police department after two officers stopped and frisked him near his Bronx home moments after he parked his car on the street. Blair filed the lawsuit on the same day the New York Post ran an editorial defending the police department’s stop-and-frisk policy. During the first three months of the year, the New York police stopped and frisked a record 145,000 people. The majority of the stops targeted African Americans and Latinos.
Extracted from “Democracy Now” 5/20/08.
How gloomy is the prospect of mankind?
More than forty-four years later the same evil stares us in the face, WITHIN the color of law, in what some call “the greatest nation in the world.”