The
18th Annual Eric E. Williams Memorial Lecture will take place
Friday, September 30, 2016 at Florida International University, 11200 Southwest Eighth Street, Miami, FL at the
university’s Wertheim Performing Arts Center at
6:30 p.m. The lecture is open to the public and admission is free; there will be a reception prior to and following the lecture.
The Honorable Bharrat Jagdeo, former President of Guyana, will address
The Caribbean and American Presidential Power: A Donald Trump Ascendancy.
With the US elections in full swing, the world has its eyes on America.
This year’s election has proven to be controversial on many levels with
Donald Trump being the center
of many debates and controversy. A former president himself, Jagdeo
will address the election, presidential power and Donald Trump.
Bharrat Jagdeo was born in Guyana and has been active in its
political life since the age of 13. Since graduating with a Master’s
Degree in Economics from the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia in
1990, he has held several
high-level governmental positions, ranging from Minister of Finance to
President of Guyana from 1999-2011. Jagdeo has also held a number of
global leadership positions in the areas of sustainable development,
green growth and climate change. In 2008, he was
named Time Magazine’s ‘Hero of the Environment’ and in 2010, the United
Nations declared him to be one of its ‘Champions of the Earth
Awardees.’ Mr. Jagdeo has also served as Chairman of the Board of
Governors of the IMF and World Bank Group in the past. He
is currently his country’s Leader of the Opposition.
Established in 1999, the lecture series honors the distinguished
Caribbean statesman Eric E. Williams, first Prime Minister of Trinidad
and Tobago and Head of Government for a quarter of a century until his
death in 1981. He
led the country to Independence from Britain in 1962 and onto
Republicanism in 1976. He was the author of several books including his
seminal work,
Capitalism & Slavery, which re-framed the historiography of the British trans-Atlantic slave trade
and, it could be argued, its concomitant European incarnations.
The lecture series, which seeks to provide an intellectual forum for
the examination of pertinent issues affecting history and politics in
the Caribbean and African Diaspora, has featured:
the late
John Hope Franklin, one of America’s premier historians of the
African-American experience; the former President of the Republic of
Zambia; the Prime Ministers of Jamaica, Saint Lucia; and Saint Vincent
and The Grenadines; the former Deputy Prime Minister
of the Bahamas; the former Attorney General and Leader of the
Opposition in Barbados; the former First Lady of Jamaica; celebrated
civil rights activist Angela Davis and prize-winning Haitian author
Edwige Danticat, among others.
The Eric E. Williams Memorial Lecture is co-sponsored by: The Steven
J. Green School of International and Public Affairs; Ruth K. and
Shepard Broad Distinguished Lecture Series; Kimberly Green Latin
American and Caribbean Center.
The Lecture is also supported by The Eric Williams Memorial
Collection Research Library, Archives & Museum (EWMC) at the
University of the West Indies (Trinidad and Tobago campus), which was
inaugurated by former U.S. Secretary
of State, Colin L. Powell in 1998. It was named to UNESCO’s
prestigious
Memory of the World Register in 1999. The Lecture depends solely on the generosity of its patrons so contributions are welcome.
Cheryl Andrews Marketing Communications, a boutique public relations
firm that specializes in travel, tourism and hospitality is proud to
spread the word about all the good work being done at the EWMC. Their
educational programs
serve to inspire students and educate the next generation of talented
youth in the Caribbean about their heritage.