Pe­ter Bal­roop

Prof Courte­nay Bartholomew has called on the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies to have his name delet­ed from the list of UWI's "emer­i­tus" pro­fes­sors. St Au­gus­tine prin­ci­pal, Prof Clement Sankat said he in­tends to meet again with his col­league.

In a let­ter to Sankat, Bartholomew re­called that in May last year he had met the prin­ci­pal and ex­pressed "ut­ter shock" that a St Au­gus­tine cam­pus dean had vot­ed in sup­port of a mem­ber of the Coun­cil of the Med­ical Board of T&T, whose med­ical cre­den­tials Bartholomew had ques­tioned.

Bartholomew's let­ter stat­ed that he told Sankat, aside from hav­ing ques­tion­able cre­den­tials, the of­fi­cial was en­gaged in politi­cis­ing the ac­tiv­i­ties of the board. On that oc­ca­sion last year, Bartholomew in­di­cat­ed, he had drawn Sankat's at­ten­tion to what was con­clu­sive ev­i­dence, in his view, that an­oth­er doc­tor in the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences boast­ed of spe­cial­ist qual­i­fi­ca­tion to which he was not en­ti­tled.

Bartholomew stressed he had been as­sured at the time Sankat would take ac­tion, but now, 14 months lat­er, the sit­u­a­tion re­mained the same. "As no ac­tion has been tak­en over this long pe­ri­od of time, I now ac­cuse the uni­ver­si­ty, not on­ly of con­don­ing but al­so of be­ing an ac­ces­so­ry to fraud and push­ing un­der the car­pet mat­ters con­cern­ing in­tegri­ty..." Bartholomew de­clared.

He stat­ed sev­er­al years ago he was one of four Med­ical Sci­ences Fac­ul­ty pro­fes­sors who had been cho­sen to be ho­n­oured with the ti­tle "emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor" but had de­lib­er­ate­ly not at­tend­ed the cer­e­mo­ny "in a silent but loud protest" be­cause two of them had "very im­pov­er­ished cur­ricu­lum vi­tae" and aca­d­e­m­ic ca­reers that were noth­ing to shout about. Bear­ing that in mind, some deans and heads of de­part­ment did not mer­it their po­si­tions, stat­ed Bartholomew; he now wished to have his name re­moved from the emer­i­tus list.

He urged that UWI Chan­cel­lor Sir George Al­leyne and Vice Chan­cel­lor Nigel E Har­ris to take heed of his com­plaints and have them in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Sankat told the Sun­day Guardian, "I think what is re­quired is a dis­cus­sion with Prof Bartholomew to treat with some of the is­sues he has raised." He said Bartholomew was an "out­stand­ing" col­league who had done a lot for the Fac­ul­ty of Med­ical Sci­ences.

"So my ap­proach will be to meet with him and talk with him again," added Sankat, who as­sured that he would in­form Bartholomew that his claims against his fel­low pro­fes­sors would be in­ves­ti­gat­ed. "We need to have a dis­cus­sion to find out the un­der­ly­ing is­sues. "He spoke of some in­di­vid­u­als...We need to know a lit­tle more," de­clared Sankat.