Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

The trans­for­ma­tion of Dr Shane Mo­hammed from an ac­tive mem­ber of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst has irked both the par­ty and the aca­d­e­m­ic fra­ter­ni­ty at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI).

Mo­hammed, whose pro­file as a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst has grown na­tion­al­ly in the past year, was fea­tured on lo­cal tele­vi­sion sta­tions CNC3 and TV6 pro­vid­ing com­men­tary dur­ing the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions. How­ev­er, the UNC took is­sue with his pres­ence, with its pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Kirk Meighoo, writ­ing both tele­vi­sion sta­tions to ques­tion his le­git­i­ma­cy and cre­den­tials, giv­en that he was “used to frame na­tion­al po­lit­i­cal dis­cus­sion.”

Mean­while, the aca­d­e­m­ic fra­ter­ni­ty at UWI ques­tioned the pedi­gree of his doc­tor­ate, with one lec­tur­er ex­press­ing his pref­er­ence for Mo­hammed to dis­tance him­self from the in­sti­tu­tion.

For his part, Mo­hammed, 39, is dis­ap­point­ed by the ire di­rect­ed at him. In his view, he’s been ad­vo­cat­ing for younger voic­es in both spheres—po­lit­i­cal and aca­d­e­m­ic—and the back­lash af­fects his job. His cur­ren­cy as a com­men­ta­tor, af­ter all, is in his rep­u­ta­tion.

Mo­hammed has had a sto­ried ca­reer with the UNC. He got in­to pol­i­tics at the age of 17, worked in var­i­ous ca­pac­i­ties in the par­ty, from a youth of­fi­cer on its na­tion­al ex­ec­u­tive to serv­ing as a tem­po­rary sen­a­tor for the par­ty while in pow­er, to work­ing with it while in op­po­si­tion.

How does be­ing in the bel­ly of one po­lit­i­cal par­ty for a pe­ri­od of time make him an ob­jec­tive an­a­lyst now? Mo­hammed doesn’t see any con­flict but said it is part of his evo­lu­tion as an in­di­vid­ual and pro­fes­sion­al, with his ex­pe­ri­ence in­form­ing his com­men­tary on the par­ty. In his view, po­lit­i­cal par­ties should be able to stand up to scruti­ny.

“I have crit­i­cised both the UNC and the PNM and I’ve prob­a­bly giv­en Dr Row­ley a re­al­ly hard time be­cause of his ap­proach, even on the night of the elec­tions. I had my fair share to say,” he said.

“I did say that the UNC can­not con­tin­ue the way it is go­ing with the same nar­ra­tive. I did not agree with the lan­guage that was used by the po­lit­i­cal leader. Why? Be­cause I think Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is more as­tute than that. She has the ca­pa­bil­i­ty to reignite her­self and re­ju­ve­nate her­self, as she did in 2010. I was ex­pect­ing it in 2020, it did not hap­pen.

“When lead­ers have got­ten so com­fort­able and have sur­round­ed them­selves with per­sons who pro­vide them with the an­swers that they want to hear, they jeop­ar­dise the fu­ture and the suc­cess and sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion and that is what has hap­pened with the UNC.”

He added, “The PNM, they are not the best in gov­er­nance as it per­tains to com­mu­ni­ca­tion. They have a very huge dis­con­nect with the pop­u­la­tion. They have not reached out in a way that gives peo­ple hope that bet­ter days are ahead. And even though the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has said that the econ­o­my is grow­ing, that has not trick­led down to the man on the ground. On the oth­er hand, they are mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment that are try­ing their very best to per­form at their very best and have made strides.”

Mo­hammed said he is not sur­prised at the UNC’s ac­tions, but in­sists he has no axe to grind with the par­ty and is not the first per­son to chal­lenge the UNC and be crit­i­cised.

“What the UNC is fail­ing to re­alise is they are the al­ter­na­tive, in a two-par­ty sys­tem, to the gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ob­vi­ous­ly, all eyes are go­ing to be on them and their per­for­mance and their strate­gies and their nar­ra­tive and the com­ple­ment and cal­i­bre of peo­ple that they have on their team,” he said.

“Be­cause at the end of the day, you have to beat the gi­ant, the po­lit­i­cal gi­ant, that is the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. I don’t care what any­body says, the PNM may be bad at good gov­er­nance, but they are ex­cel­lent as it per­tains to po­lit­i­cal struc­ture, strat­e­gy and con­ti­nu­ity and that is where the UNC has fal­tered and con­tin­ues to fal­ter.”

In his com­plaint, Meighoo ques­tioned the le­git­i­ma­cy of Mo­hammed’s doc­tor­ate.

How­ev­er, Mo­hammed said com­ing from a UWI back­ground—he pur­sued both his Bach­e­lors and Mas­ters in St Au­gus­tine—he was aware of the risk of pur­su­ing his Doc­tor­ate out­side of the in­sti­tu­tion.

Mo­hammed had worked as a re­search as­sis­tant for Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath from 2016-2020, dur­ing the lat­ter’s tenure as head of the Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence De­part­ment at UWI.

Ra­goonath told the Sun­day Guardian that Mo­hammed was en­rolled in­to an MPhil pro­gramme while he was em­ployed at the UWI, which was a pre-req­ui­site for him be­ing giv­en the job but his reg­is­tra­tion sub­se­quent­ly lapsed in 2020.

“He was not asked to leave, he vol­un­tar­i­ly left,” Ra­goonath said.

For his part, Mo­hammed ex­plained that in­ter­nal pol­i­tics at the UWI led him to pur­sue his PhD out­side of the coun­try and was clear that at no point in time was he do­ing two PhD’s at the same time, which would be in con­tra­ven­tion to UWI rules.

He said he al­lowed his UWI reg­is­tra­tion to lapse and then went ahead with Hawaii-based At­lantic In­ter­na­tion­al Uni­ver­si­ty (AIU), a dis­tance learn­ing op­tion which was cost ef­fec­tive. He said he be­gan his pro­gramme in 2019 and com­plet­ed it 15 months lat­er with a Doc­tor of Phi­los­o­phy, PhD, with a ma­jor in Lead­er­ship and Gov­er­nance.

Ques­tioned about the time over­lap of the two pro­grammes—one start­ing in 2019 while he was still work­ing at UWI—he said it was a valid crit­i­cism, but he had no choice but to do it to get his doc­tor­ate.

Mo­hammed said his doc­tor­ate was award­ed on De­cem­ber 11, 2020, af­ter a three-hour de­fence of his the­sis, which fo­cused on a cor­re­la­tion of ef­fec­tive lead­er­ship and good gov­er­nance in T&T.

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to AIU twice and in turn, they con­tact­ed Mo­hammed on whether he was com­fort­able with them talk­ing to the me­dia.

In re­sponse, Dr Jose Mer­ca­do, chair­man of the Board of Trustees, wrote to Mo­hammed to au­tho­rise his re­lease of its de­fence of their pro­gramme.

AIU, it said, was es­tab­lished in 1998 in ac­cor­dance with all state and fed­er­al laws as a de­gree-grant­i­ng in­sti­tu­tion in the Unit­ed States and is in good stand­ing.

“As any oth­er uni­ver­si­ty in the US, we must be reg­is­tered in the state, and this we have done. Every year the State of Hawaii con­fers to AIU the CER­TIFI­CATE OF GOOD STAND­ING. So, the uni­ver­si­ty is in good stand­ing with all rel­e­vant state and fed­er­al bench­marks, which gov­ern its ex­is­tence and abil­i­ty to op­er­ate in the Unit­ed States.

“As you may know, ac­cred­i­ta­tion in the US is per­formed by pri­vate ac­cred­it­ing agen­cies, not by the US gov­ern­ment. AIU is not ac­cred­it­ed by a recog­nised body by the US De­part­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion. AIU is ac­cred­it­ed by the Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Ser­vice for In­ter­na­tion­al Schools, Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties (ASIC), a pri­vate ac­cred­it­ing agency based in the Unit­ed King­dom. Uni­ver­si­ties in the US are not re­quired to ob­tain ac­cred­i­ta­tion, as this is vol­un­tary.

“How­ev­er, com­pli­ance with laws that gov­ern uni­ver­si­ties and grant­i­ng in­sti­tu­tions is manda­to­ry. AIU con­forms and ad­heres to all state and fed­er­al laws that reg­u­late the fac­ul­ty to op­er­ate as a uni­ver­si­ty and to grant de­grees to stu­dents who meet the grad­u­a­tion re­quire­ments of the cor­re­spond­ing pro­grammes,” it said.

De­spite the AIU doc­tor­ate, Mo­hammed said he is try­ing to fin­ish his UWI doc­tor­ate but has not been let back in­to the pro­gramme.

“At present, all I need to do is write my the­sis and sub­mit it and de­fend it. I’ve writ­ten to the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in a let­ter dat­ed the fifth of Au­gust 2022 and I have been wait­ing for the uni­ver­si­ty to grant me re-en­try to com­plete the de­gree. It is not with­in my char­ac­ter, it is not with­in my per­sona, to just leave some­thing un­fin­ished, and there­fore I am wait­ing as we speak,” he said.

Mo­hammed cred­its Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for his ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­suits.

“I am a go-get­ter. I don’t shy away from the fact that I am am­bi­tious and peo­ple may say over­ly am­bi­tious, but acad­e­mia is some­thing that I have al­ways gone af­ter. And one of the rea­sons, and I will say this pub­licly, one of the per­sons that drove home that whole need to get ed­u­cat­ed to be ed­u­cat­ed was Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, be­cause she said the tick­et out of pover­ty is ed­u­ca­tion,” he said.