By Egbert Gaye From Montreal Community Contract

Kari Polanyi Levitt worked with some the Caribbean must illustrious economists. She was recently appointed to the Order of Canada.

On June 30, Kari Polanyi Levitt was one of 86 new appointments to the Order of Canada, made by His Excellency the Right Honorable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada.

Professor Levitt was recognized for her contributions to the establishment of international development studies as an interdisciplinary academic field, and for her research on political economy in the Caribbean.

The connection between the Vienna-born economist and the Caribbean extends well over 50 years and started with her work for the then West Indian Federation government.

Her initial foray into Caribbean economics and politics brought her in contact with several young West Indian economists, including Alister McIntyre of Grenada, Lloyd Best and William Demas of Trinidad and Tobago, all of who went on to international acclaim.

Kari recognized their potential immediately: “I was attracted by their brilliance and enthusiasm and their intellectual efforts to break out of colonial modes of thinking and to construct new paradigms suited to the development of the Caribbean,” she writes.

After she graduated from the London School of Economics in 1947, she moved to Toronto.

In 1961, she accepted a position at McGill University department of Economics, and for much of that decade maintained contact with a cadre of emerging global thinkers in the Caribbean.

She became one of the driving forces behind the Center for Developing Areas Studies at McGill.

Under her mentorship, dozens of students made their way to McGill University to do their graduate studies, including Ainsworth Harewood, Adlith Brown and Edwin Carrington, all of who would attain regional and global repute for their work.

During that time she co-founded the Montreal Group of the New World Movement and wrote a book.

McIntrye went on to serve on the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD); secretary-general of Caricom; vice chairman of the West Indian Commission and vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies.

In the early 1970s, Levitt’s passion for Caribbean politics and economic development prompted her to take leave from McGill University and work for the government of Trinidad and Tobago on one of its national economic plans. She also accepted appointments at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Jamaica as visiting professor.

In 2009, she published “Essays in Plantation Economy,” a collaborative book she worked on with Lloyd Best from the 1960s to the time of his death in 2007.

In 1970 Levitt published Silent Surrender, described as “a () classic of Canadian political economy and suggested that the American ownership of Canadian industry would result in national disintegration and the loss of sovereignty.”

Montreal Community CONTACT joins others in our community and across Montreal and the Caribbean in congratulating Kari Polanyi Levitt on her appointment as a Member of the Order of Canada.

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