The Multiversity Universities of the Caribbean

George A. O. Alleyne

Vice Chancellor’s Fourth Renaissance Lecture

September 7th, 2017

By George A. O. Alleyne, Director Emeritus Pan American Health Organization September 7, 2017

 

First, I wish to thank Dr. Griffith and Dr. Reynolds for the invitation to give the Vice Chancellor’s Fourth Renaissance lecture.  I was very pleased to accept.  Even although my first of many visits to Guyana was in 1968, and over the years have had close ties with many of your faculty and students, this is actually my first lecture in the University of Guyana. My academic contacts with Guyana and Guyanese stretch back through many decades. As an undergraduate, I was always impressed by the brilliance of the students who came to the University College of the West Indies from then British Guiana. Not only were they exceptional academically, but they expressed themselves with a clarity and a precision that were to be envied and emulated.  The late Robert Moore was one of the finest orators I have ever heard……….. and I have heard many. The term Renaissance has always conjured up for me an image of Europe in the 15th and16th centuries.  This was a period that marked the end of the middle ages with its feudal system and opened an era of rebirth of interest in classical forms and literature. But most importantly, it marked the growth of humanism.