Convocation address
51st Annual Graduation Ceremony of the University of Guyana
Saturday, 11 November 2017, Sophia National Exhibition Centre
Georgetown, Guyana
Let me first of all thank the distinguished Registrar, Dr. Nigel Gravesande, for his generous introduction, even though I confess that I did not recognize the person he described.
Honourable Ministers of Government, members of the diplomatic corps, distinguished Chancellor of the University, Professor Nigel Harris, distinguished Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ivelaw Griffith, distinguished Pro-Chancellor, Ms. Bibi Shadick, Deputy Vice-Chancellors, Faculty and Staff of the University, invited guests, and last but certainly not least, proud graduates of the Class of 2017. We have gathered here this afternoon for one purpose, and that is to salute the achievement of the Class of 2017 and to say, “Well done!”
Will you join me in giving them a rousing round of applause!
A few miles east of where we are (and where we would have been but for the weather), on your campus at Turkeyen, is a monument to the victims of the 1976 Cubana air disaster. I want us to pause for a moment to honor their memory. I think it is fitting that the monument should grace the grounds of our National University. Five (5) of the eleven (11) Guyanese who perished on that fateful day of 6 October 1976 were students on their way to Cuba to embark on their university studies. I knew many of them personally. Some were my friends, others schoolmates. I hope that throughout the time you spent on campus that monument to their memory would have served as a constant reminder of how privileged you are to be here and to have been given the chance to complete your university education. The knowledge and experience you have gained will serve as the foundation for what I hope and pray will be a long and successful life and career ahead for each and every one of you, members of the Class of 2017.
It seems like yesterday, but it was 42 years ago that I was part of the graduating Class of 1975. And I waited like you are doing right now to receive my Bachelor of Arts degree from the then Chancellor of the University, the late Mr. William Demas, one of the giants of Caribbean integration and also at the time President of the Caribbean Development Bank.
And now 42 years later, I have been given the honour by your distinguished Vice-Chancellor to deliver the keynote address at the 51st Commencement Exercise of the University. I’d like to use this opportunity to share with you some things that I hope would stay with you throughout the years ahead. And so I’ll share with you three of the life lessons I learnt since I left Turkeyen in 1975.
The first lesson is that the world, and Guyana in particular, is full of both challenges and opportunities and that you must be discerning enough to recognize the challenges as opportunities. The second is about the power of the imagination to bring about change. And the third is the need for you to have a set of personal values to guide you through your life.
Let’s take the first one – challenges and opportunities. You are coming of age at an exciting time in the history of the world. Yes, there are problems or, as we like to say in UN-Speak - challenges. The challenges of underdevelopment, climate change, intolerance and the growing inequality both within and among countries. Guyana is not immune to any of these challenges. But no other generation before you has had the opportunities and tools that are available to your generation today. Technology and artificial intelligence have transformed the way we live. You have more computing power in the cellphone that you have in your pocket or your purse than the American astronauts had on their spaceship, Apollo 11, that took them to the moon and back. Knowledge is freely available with the click of a mouse, and the marketplace for jobs, goods and services is a global one spanning all seven continents. The future is bright for young people like yourselves who have made the smart choice to acquire the skills and training you will need to compete in today’s knowledge economy.
But what sets your world apart from any other time in history is the speed of change. The sheer pace at which the world around us is changing. In what I consider one of their most beautiful ballads, “The Boxer”, Simon and Garfunkel sang “After changes upon changes we are more or less the same”. I love Simon and Garfunkel, but don’t believe that line. The world of 1968 when Paul Simon composed those lyrics does not exist anymore. Yes, there have been changes upon changes, but those who have succeeded have been the ones who were best able to adapt to the changes. Your ability to adapt to our fast-changing world will be an important indicator of how successful you will be. There is a quotation that is attributed to Charles Darwin, some say incorrectly, but I like it: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”
But it is not enough to merely adapt to change. I want to encourage you to go a step further. You must be the agents of the change taking place around you. Your generation must shape change to your needs and not have change imposed on you by others. The University of Guyana with the intellectual capital of both its faculty and students is well placed to play a key role as a driver of change in Guyana. Not only in conceptualizing change but in equipping Guyana with the human capacity to implement and manage change. And so I’m glad to see the increasing collaboration between the University, our Government and the private sector and industry in prioritizing the needs of our society and economy and in making sure that our premier institution of higher education is geared toward meeting the real needs of Guyana.
And so I want to leave with you that first reflection, that there are both grave challenges and exciting opportunities in the world you’re about to inherit. By choosing the path of higher education, you’re giving yourselves the tools you need to rise to those challenges. While Guyana may still be experiencing the growing pains of a young country, you should never have any doubt about our destiny as a people.
The second lesson I want to share with you is about the power of imagination. In his investiture address a few months ago, your Vice-Chancellor referred to it as dreaming. Dreamers and doers, he said. We’re saying the same thing. Nothing can be achieved unless you first imagine it. Imagination is often more important than resources. Look at Singapore, a tiny, underdeveloped tropical backwater when it became independent in 1965 – less than a year before Guyana. Half the population illiterate, no resources, not even drinking water. Today Singapore is a developed country and an economic powerhouse with a per capita GDP of $55,000 from just over $500 at independence. How did they do it? By coming up with imaginative solutions to the challenges of underdevelopment. It’s all here. Development begins here, in the imagination.
So look around you, see things as they are, and imagine how they could be. This power of the imagination. I remember as a young student at Queens College becoming interested in foreign languages because an inspirational Latin teacher, Mr. Yansen (we called him Yango), made Latin, a dead language, come alive. He did what the best teachers do – feed the imagination of children.
I remember too listening at night to French programs on Radio Bonaire broadcasting on shortwave from the Netherlands Antilles. The images that those broadcasts conjured up in my mind of another world beyond the Kitty foreshore sparked a love of foreign languages as a window onto different cultures and peoples – a love of languages that led me along the path to what has turned out to be a very fulfilling career.
I have other memories of events that sparked my imagination and my career. One of them dates back to when I was six or seven years old and my elder sister, who had just started high school in New Amsterdam - Berbice High School - came home one day from school very excited because she had had her first Spanish lesson. To test her, my mother asked her to say “Good morning” in Spanish and she replied excitedly, “Buenass dieass”. (I know my elder sister will forgive me for recounting this story).
Here at UG, I see imagination at work at many different levels. I can see the pace of change beginning to accelerate under the inspirational and high-energy leadership of your Vice-Chancellor.
As a graduate of the Department of Modern Languages, I dare to imagine a renaissance in the teaching of modern languages at the University and throughout the school system that feeds into the University so that we can prepare our young people to take their place in a globalized world and equip our country to give meaning to its aspiration to become the gateway to South America.
I dare to imagine foreign languages being taught to kids at the primary level, because it’s been proven that language acquisition is easier at an early age. I imagine class trips by our high school language students of French, Spanish and Portuguese to host schools in Cayenne, Santiago and Boa Vista becoming routine and even mandatory. And I dare to imagine the University of Guyana taking advantage of the accident of history that has left us as the only English-speaking country in South America so that it becomes the continental hub for the teaching of English as a second language.
Use your imagination. If you don’t use it you lose it. But you also have to feed it – feed the brain. You may have heard of the analogy of the light from a candle in a dark room. The more candles you add to increase the light the greater the circumference of the area of darkness surrounding the light. The more you learn, the more there is to learn. So you must commit yourselves to lifelong learning. Keep pushing your boundaries and feeding your imagination. Remember, if you can’t imagine it, you can’t do it.
The third and final life lesson that I’d like to share with you is the importance of personal values. People define success in different ways, but I encourage you to include in your definition of success being true to yourself and to your values. Now, I can’t say to you what your personal values should be. That would be presumptuous. But I would highly recommend that they should include the three core values that staff of the United Nations are expected to uphold. These are (i) Integrity; (ii) Professionalism; and (iii) Respect for diversity.
You hear about integrity a lot, but what does it mean? I like this definition. Integrity is what you do when no one is watching. When the life you live on the outside matches who you are on the inside. When you act in accordance with your principles and convictions. And hopefully the principles that you choose to guide your conduct will include such qualities as trustworthiness, consideration for others, and just basic human decency.
The second value, professionalism, will be crucial to your career development. It means first of all mastering your subject area, developing professional expertise in your field. Remember, you may have your degree, but do not for a moment think you are already an expert or a master of your field. That will take many years of practical experience and in some cases further academic study. The truth is that you came here as novices and you’re leaving not as masters but as apprentices. In time you will become masters in your field.
But, in addition to professional competence – the hard skills, you will soon find that you also need a range of soft skills – the ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing, leadership skills where you inspire and bring out the best in others, the ability to manage a team but also to be part of a team, conflict resolution skills and the ability to bring others around to your point of view. Learn to be professional by working on both your hard and soft skills.
And so we come to the third value – respect for diversity. This is the value that allows you to open up your mind rather than closing it off to opinions, situations, or people who are different from you in any number of ways: race, religion, colour, political affiliation, sexual orientation. The day you close your mind is the day you stop learning. Respect for diversity is particularly important for a country like Guyana where we still have work to do to bridge the trust deficit between our two major racial groups. Let me share with you two stories about diversity from my own experience.
The first is about a panel discussion I attended at the United Nations late last year. One of the panelists was Mr. Tom Friedman, the political commentator and New York Times columnist. Tom Friedman gave an upbeat presentation on how the forces of globalization and technology are reshaping the world. During the Q & A, I asked a question from the floor. Did he have any advice for a small country like Guyana on how to succeed in the new world he had just described. He replied that he did have some advice to offer Guyana. Guyana, he said, should embrace its diversity and view it as a source of strength not weakness. I shouldn’t have been surprised because we have the example of our neighbor to the North, the mightiest nation on the face of the earth which for generations welcomed immigrants of different cultures, languages, and races, from the farthest corners of the earth, the best and the brightest, but also the poor and the huddled masses. And there are those who argue, correctly in my view, that the multiculturalism of American society is an important source of its dynamism and its ability to constantly renew itself.
On a lighter note, I’d like to share with you a story about diversity from my own experience at the United Nations. I was very impressed when your Valedictorian said at this morning’s graduation ceremony that she had studied Mandarin as part of her coursework. Back in the 1990s, when I worked as a translator at the United Nations, I too had set out to learn Mandarin Chinese in a beginners class. The composition of the class itself was a lesson in diversity. Spanish speakers from South America, French speakers from West Africa, Europeans and Asians speaking a variety of languages, and assorted other Africans. The two most enthusiastic students were yours truly and a young Zulu from South Africa by the name of Dele. Dele had scars on his cheeks that marked him out as a member of the Zulu tribe. Dele and I would practice the Mandarin phrases we learnt every place we could both inside and outside the classroom. If I met him in the cafeteria, waiting in line to pay, we would greet each other: “Ni hao Dele. Wo hen hao, ni ne? Ni mang bu mang? Zai jian Dele” [By the way, if they’re any Mandarin speakers in the audience, please forgive me for mangling your beautiful language].
Dele and I carried on like this throughout the semester until one day we found ourselves in the elevator jabbering away as usual in Mandarin, or in what we thought was Mandarin. “Ni hao, Michael. Wo hen hao. Henduo gongzuo? Mamahuhu”. The people in the elevator stared at us. Maybe they were impressed or maybe they were just amused, who knows? But we certainly had their attention. A Zulu with tribal scars on his cheeks and this other guy, yours truly, that they didn’t quite know where to place. And then the elevator stops. On the fifth floor, I remember it so well. And a real Chinese man got in. Silence. What to do now? So yours truly decides to break the silence and to try his Chinese on a real Chinese. I turned to face him, “Ni hao ma?” Nothing, no response. I thought it might be my pronunciation, so I tried again, “Ni hao ma?” Same blank look. I decided to ask him in English. “Don’t you speak Mandarin?” He replied, “Mandarin? Naw suh! I come from Jamaica, mohn”.
I’ve told you that story so you’d remember the underlying lesson about diversity. That diversity is a source of strength, not weakness.
And so on that light note, Class of 2017, I will conclude my remarks. I hope you’ll take to heart the lessons I’ve shared with you from my own life at this important juncture of your lives. That you are not yet masters in your field, just apprentices. The hard work lies ahead of you not behind you. Remember that the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. Remember that your country is blessed with nature’s bounty and that that bounty is your birthright – yours to exploit. Remember the power of your imagination. You cannot create anything without first imagining it. So always look for opportunities to feed your imagination. And lastly, be principled in your life, have values and integrity, and try always to live on the outside as you are on the inside.
Congratulations on taking this important step in your lives, Class of 2017. You have your life ahead of you to live. Go out and live it. You also have a country to build. Go out and build it.
I thank you.