Dookeran: Assault on intellectual freedom

Dookeran expressed this view in response to Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s remarks about “certain UWI lecturers and academics” during his address at the PNM’s 50th anniversary function last Saturday.

Dookeran replied, “It is ominous that the Prime Minister has responded to the public expression of opinions by members of the faculty at UWI in the terms and with the actions that have been reported.

“Rather than initiating action to suppress expression by UWI lecturers, the PM should be calling on the university community to break its routine silence on social and political developments in the society; a silence punctuated over the years only by half a dozen or so UWI voices.”

Dookeran said Manning has raised his concern over what he sees as voices of dissent at the St Augustine campus with other Caricom leaders and this has implications that are serious and possibly sinister.