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.