In the week before Christmas, on the occasion of its 56th Convocation Ceremony, the University of Guyana conferred upon Ameena Gafoor the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters. The petition was ceremonially presented before the Chancellor on behalf of Mrs Gafoor, in absentia, in recognition of her extraordinary contribution to the nation of Guyana and the Caribbean region in the field of culture. The university admitted her into membership of the institution by awarding her the highest degree, honoris causa, for the totality of her work in the advancement of the study of literature, the arts, and the enlargement of cultural understanding.
Ameena Gafoor, D Lett (UG), MPhil, MA, BA (UWI), MS, is a literary critic, editor, publisher, author, curator, businesswoman, philanthropist, social worker and cultural activist, who has devoted a lifetime of tangible and intangible contributions to the arts and humanism. Her very acquisition of a formal education, her personal advancement in academic study, is an emphatic statement of her triumph over personal, cultural, ethnic, family history, gender related, social and political circumstances. The details of her continuous, consistent and unflinching public work, deepens that statement to include the way she transformed that personal triumph into public and national gain.
