With the death on Wednesday of Norman Girvan, aged 72, Jamaica and the Caribbean have lost a towering intellect who felt that scholarship ought not to be an end in itself. It was to be employed in bringing practical value to people.Prof Girvan practised what he preached. And we, in this region and the rest of the developing world, are better for it.
But Norman Girvan would probably have argued that the effort to which he committed himself remains far from finished and that its logic insists that we continue. He believed that the product of regional integration was greater than the sum of its parts.
It, perhaps, says something of the outlook of Norman Girvan, and his eclectic interests, that, born in Jamaica and living in Trinidad and Tobago, he died while receiving medical treatment in Cuba–whose institutions have, in the past, awarded him high honours–for injuries received while hiking in the Eastern Caribbean island of Dominica.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/digital/new-members