Controversial Former Guyana President To Address Donald Trump Ascendancy

Former Guyana President, Bharrat Jagdeo.

By NAN Contributor

News Americas, MIAMI, FL., Fri. Sept. 16, 2016: Controversial former Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo is set to speak on “The Caribbean and American Presidential Power: A Donald Trump Ascendancy” in Florida later this month.

Jagdeo, 52, who served as Guyana’s President between1999-2011, will address the 18th Annual Eric E. Williams Memorial Lecture at the Wertheim Performing Arts Center at Florida International University’s Modesto Maidique Campus, 11200 SW 8th Street, Miami, Florida on Friday, September 30, 2016 at 6:30 p.m.

The African & African Diaspora Studies Lecture by Jagdeo, who now serves as the country’s opposition leader, will explore the future relationship between the US and the Caribbean in a Donald Trump presidency.

Jagdeo was in July 2016 condemned by the present Guyana government for “race baiting,” after he claimed that there is “an assault on people of Indian origin” during a speech at an event in New York recently. His tenure as President and head of the Peoples Progressive Party/Civic in Guyana was marred by widespread allegations of corruption.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Established in 1999, FIU’s annual Eric Williams Lecture honors the distinguished Caribbean statesman, consummate academic, internationally renowned historian, and author of several other books. His 1944 groundbreaking study Capitalism and Slavery, popularly referred to as The Williams Thesis, arguably re-framed the historiography of the British trans-Atlantic slave trade (and its concomitant European incarnations) and established the contribution of Caribbean slavery to the development of both Britain and America. The book has been translated into eight languages, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and soon-to-be, Korean. It continues to inform today’s ongoing debate and remains “years ahead of its time…this profound critique is still the foundation for studies of imperialism and economic development,” according to the New York Times. Eric E. Williams was also the 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.

Among prior Eric Williams Memorial Lecture speakers have been: the late John Hope Franklin, one of America’s premier historians of the African-American experience; Kenneth Kaunda, former President of the Republic of Zambia; Cynthia Pratt, Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas; Mia Mottley, Attorney General of Barbados; Beverly Anderson-Manley, former First Lady of Jamaica; Portia Simpson Miller, Prime Minister of Jamaica; Hon. Kenny Anthony, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia; Hon. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and The Grenadines; the celebrated civil rights activist Angela Davis and prize-winning Haitian author Edwige Danticat.

The Lecture, which seeks to provide an intellectual forum for the examination of pertinent issues in Caribbean and African Diaspora history and politics, is co-sponsored in part by FIU’s: Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, Ruth K. and Shepard Broad Distinguished Lecture Series, Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center; Bilmor With Advertising Specialties, Inc.; Earl Christian; Mr. & Mrs. Frank Collins; Carole Cumberbatch; Mr. & Mrs. Michael Edwards; Hometrust Mortgage Corporation; Joy’s Roti Shop; Dr. & Mrs. Leroy Lashley; Lentropic Properties Inc.; Miami Dade College; Mr. & Mrs. Nesbitt; Mavis Perez; Mervyn Solomon; Linda Spears Bunton; Yvonne St. Louis; Marilyn Taylor Duncan and Welch, Morris & Associates.

The Lecture is also supported by The Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives and Museum 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.

Books by Eric Williams will be available for purchase at the Lecture. For more information, please contact 305-348-4156/271-7246 or africana@fiu.edu.