Joe Pereira
Greetings and Tributes from the 1st Annual Symposium of The Walter Rodney Foundation
Walter Rodney’s legacy remains, not only for shaping consciousness but also for taking action. He bears out the call that Marcus Garvey sounded for combining thought and action, the one futile without the other. It is no easy task, since it sets in the path the most formidable opposition and the most seductive venialities. But he remains an inspiration for those in any of our societies, who, still insufficient in number, would seek to genuinely change conditions of inequality and injustice.
Joseph Pereira served as Head, Department of Spanish at the University of the West Indies, and then Dean of the Faculty of Arts and General Studies (1985-90) and Dean of the merged Faculty of Arts and Education 1996 until his appointment as Deputy Principal in 2002, which he held until 2010. Although his primary research field has been Cuban Literature since the Revolution, Mr. Pereira has also published on other Caribbean Literatures and Jamaican Popular Music and led the introduction and coordination of a postgraduate programme in Cultural Studies through the Institute of Caribbean Studies of which he served as Director for approximately 10 years (1995 - 2005).