Guest Columns

As The UWI settles into its second semester for the current academic year, the public may be anxious to hear from the St Augustine Campus administration what name it has chosen for the university’s oldest hall of residence, having already repudiated Viscount Milner after whom that hall has been identified …

My heart is breaking for that young woman. You don’t know how it breaks my heart to know that the Ph.D student whose car was stolen some days ago recovered the vehicle but without her marine samples and research. It truly hurts. Although I don’t have a doctorate—yet!— I can …

It takes a lot of balls to wade into this issue all willy-nilly. But I miss Carnival and I feel for a challenge. Hopefully I won’t offend and the feminists won’t skin me alive. But if I do unintentionally lapse into ‘mansplaining’ when offering my perspective, I apologize in advance. …

The description of “African countries” and their diaspora in Haiti as “shitholes” goes way beyond the racist vulgarity of a decadent American President. It is merely a kind of sordid culmination of centuries of disparagement of Africans and Africa in the interest of western capitalism and white supremacy. But how …

Trinidad and Tobago has always been dreadful at organising anything but Carnival. Nowadays, we can’t even organise that properly. And it is killing us, in some ways, literally. The example of Desperadoes and the Laventille Hill is instructive. Laventille has been problematic but it has produced some of the most …

“The law is not there to support a noisy culture; in fact, culture isn’t just out there, it’s man-made, in constant flux. The law is designed to help to shape the culture in ways that ensure harmony between legality and morality. And when that relationship is perverted what you have …

It is a new year but what does that mean? Well, my resolution for the new year is 1366 x 768, for which I would like to thank Nigel, the IT tech who has repaired my laptop. In trying to answer the meaning of the new year question in a …

“Police burned millions of dollars worth of marijuana plants,” announced a newspaper headline last week, not for the first time. Not for the first time, we dismissed the story simply as the drug rings at it again and went on with our business and our lives. But what if we …

In November 2017, the Spiritual Baptists of T&T solemnly commemorated the centenary of “The Shouters’ Prohibition Ordinance,” the second wave of legislation designed to eradicate Afro-Caribbean Christianity. In 1927, Grenada was hit by the third wave, the “Public Meetings (Shakerism) Prohibition Ordinance.” The tidal wave of state persecution of Spiritual …

Sometimes she just can’t help herself. She looks at him and her mind just drifts back to the first time, the very beginning of everything that would eventually become them. She would laugh to herself and at herself because, honestly, if someone had told her years ago that he would …

If, as Americans do, Haitians counted the birth of their nation from the launch of the revolutionary war, August 2017 would have marked the 226th anniversary of Independence. Instead, they chose the end of the Revolution, 1 January, 1804. On New Year’s Day 214 years ago, after his decisive defeat …

Mazlow, one of my Facebook friends and occasional adversary, loves to use that phrase by Nietzsche about staring into the abyss with eventually the abyss staring back. Our abyss is in the form of not so much failing institutions but institutions that were never set up to succeed and are …