This generation’s leading voice on Haiti – Haitian Scholar, Dr. Jemima Pierre. Sunday June 9th UWI, LRC, 4pm
We welcome Dr. Jemima Pierre – A young, brilliant Haitian-American scholar and University Professor to open our 2024 Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series, trained as a sociocultural anthropologist in the African Diaspora Program at the University of Texas, Austin, Dr. Pierre belongs to UBC’s Institute of Race, Gender, Sexuality and Social Justice. Her research and teaching engages with Africa and the African diaspora across the relationship of political economy to race, as articulated through capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism.
Over the past months, news emanating from Haiti highlighting the continuing struggle for political and economic sovereignty and stability, has been grim. Haiti continues to be in a state of war. The country is the world’s first African-ruled republic in the Western hemisphere and the first independent Caribbean state. To gain that independence they had first to defeat the French militarily and subsequently to maintain that freedom they had to battle continuously against other powerful armies of Europe at the time. The European vendetta against Haiti has never ceased but too many of our people, even in the Caribbean where we owe our freedom to Haiti, are neither aware of the debt we owe to that country, nor do they understand the importance of Haiti.
It is only fitting that the launch of the 25th Anniversary of the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series, in collaboration with the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies, takes an in-depth look at Haiti through the eyes of Dr. Pierre, Professor of Global Race at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. Considered this generation’s leading voice on Haiti, Dr. Pierre spoke on “Haiti and the Crisis of Imperialism in the Caribbean” on Sunday June 9 at the Learning Resource Centre (LRC), at The UWI, St Augustine Campus.
The lecture series, championed by the ESCTT’s late Director of Education and Research, Tracy Wilson, aims to perpetuate Ture’s legacy by increasing knowledge, building awareness, consciousness and intellect of African people and all peoples of Trinidad and Tobago, to enable better control of our destiny and social and economic well-being.
“We continue to explore the struggle in Haiti, not only from a humanitarian perspective, but in order to expose the political and economic actions that have resulted in the present-day situation. As we mark the 25th anniversary of the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series, we thought it fitting to have an opening that focuses on the struggle of our brothers and sisters in Haiti. In that way, we continue the legacy of Brother Kwame Ture by expanding our understanding of the Pan African condition.”
Dr. Asha Kambon,
Director of the Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago.
