CNN's Abby Phillip shines at 23rd Eric Williams Memorial Lecture

AFTER 19 consecutive years at Florida International University (FIU), the Eric Williams Memorial Lecture, has a new home at the John L Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin (UT).

The Eric Williams Memorial Lecture honours the distinguished Caribbean statesman, consummate academic, internationally-celebrated historian and author of several books.

Williams was also the first prime minister of TT 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 Republican status in 1976.

The 23rd Eric Williams Memorial Lecture was held at the UT on March 28 and was delivered by CNNs Abby Phillip, who is of TT heritage.

In a news release on April 15, the Eric Williams Memorial Collection said the lecture was attended by 250 people, both in-person and online.

Phillip spoke on Journalism in Challenging Times, the release said.

“With Phillip ably displaying her masterful navigation of her craft, and emphasised particularly the need to not only have all voices heard, especially those with whom we are at odds, but also to focus on the facts, where too much of social media today traffics in the alternative,” the release said.

Wading into what she deemed as the obligation to “tell our story” with courage and clarity, Phillip drew parallels to Eric Williams’ fearless condemnation of the status quo during his hugely popular University of Woodford Square speeches in the 1950s, where Williams endeavoured to teach the TT populace, most of whom had only had a primary school education, “what one French writer of the 18th century saw as the greatest danger, that they have a mind!”

Phillip talked about partially growing up in TT, and of how Williams’ policies with regard to free secondary and tertiary education made both her parents and, by extension, their children believe anything was possible, that there were few constraints on an individual’s desire to achieve.

With respect to the oft-times heated discussions on her programme in these deeply polarised times, she said she often feels like a school teacher having to admonish unruly children. Ground rules are imposed beforehand and she does not hesitate to intervene with “Stop talking”, when people interrupt and speak overreach other. As a journalist, and in order to navigate the inevitable political partisanship, Phillip affirms her responsibility to be informed on both sides of an argument, and to demonstrate that even parties who disagree vehemently can still participate in dialogue. In fact she marvelled at how, after a contentious programme, guests can leave the studio conversing about their children, grandchildren or other innocuous matters.

The lecture, the release said, was followed by a lively and probing Q&A session that touched on, among other topics, media technology changes and the urgency for legacy media/cable news to keep up with it.

She bemoaned the lagging of the news media to adapt rapidly to the way in which the young consume information today.

She added that she has been mastering TikTok and, at the same time, thinking about how reliable news can reach Gen Z.

The final question was asked by Williams’s 15-year-old granddaughter who wanted to know how she could use social media to improve her community.

Phillip stressed that it was vital for her peers to become politically engaged and aware, and encouraged her first to always seek truth, check for relevant information and dependable sources, and to think before posting.

His 1944 trailblazing study Capitalism and Slavery, popularly referred to as The Williams Thesis, arguably re-framed the historiography of the British Transatlantic Slave Trade and established the contribution of Caribbean slavery to the development of both Britain and America.

The book has been translated into nine languages, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and Korean. The 10th and 11th, Dutch and German, are in process.

In 2022, almost 80 years after it was first published in the US, the book registered at #5 on the UK Sunday Times Bestseller List (non-fiction).

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, 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, former prime minister of Jamaica; Kenny Anthony, prime minister of St Lucia; Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St Vincent and The Grenadines; and Dr Angela Davis, renowned for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression in the US and abroad.

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 UT’s: LILLAS Caribbean Studies Initiative; School of Journalism and Media; Center for Global Change and Media; Dr and Mrs Leroy Lashley; and Jerry Nagee. It is also supported by The Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives and Museum at UWI, TT, which was inaugurated by former US secretary of state Colin L Powell in 1998.

It was named to Unesco’s prestigious Memory of the World Register in 1999.

Post-Lecture viewing, as well as all prior Lectures, 2021 digital launch videos and an online exhibition of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Museum at UWI are available at: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/caaas/events/ewml.php