Uni­ver­si­ties all over the world have pro­grammes which recog­nise sig­nif­i­cant con­trib­u­tors in acad­e­mia and re­al-world fields of ac­com­plish­ments. It is there­fore no sur­prise that Howard Uni­ver­si­ty, ar­guably amongst the most dis­tin­guished, black-fo­cused uni­ver­si­ties in the USA, has award­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley with an hon­orary Doc­tor of Let­ters de­gree.

The ci­ta­tion of the Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty sweeps over what it con­ceives to be the Prime Min­is­ter’s achieve­ments in tak­ing his coun­try through eco­nom­ic, health and in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­men­tal ini­tia­tives and chal­lenges and con­cludes that his ef­forts de­serve the uni­ver­si­ty’s award.

All of T&T should feel ho­n­oured by the recog­ni­tion giv­en to the Prime Min­is­ter. It’s al­so worth­while to men­tion that gen­er­a­tions of T&T and Caribbean na­tion­als have re­ceived their aca­d­e­m­ic and pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions and train­ing from Howard.

This coun­try’s first prime min­is­ter, Dr Er­ic Williams, was an as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Howard be­fore he con­test­ed for and won the pre­mier­ship of his home­land. So too an­oth­er dis­tin­guished and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly fa­mous in­tel­lec­tu­al, C.L.R. James, who was a vis­it­ing lec­tur­er in Howard’s Black Stud­ies pro­grammes of the tur­bu­lent 1960s and 1970s.

Amongst Howard grad­u­ates have been for­mer prime min­is­ter of Grena­da, Dr Kei­th Mitchel, T&T goal­keep­er Sha­ka His­lop and not­ed black ac­tivist Kwame Ture’. The award, there­fore, has not fall­en out of the sky.

Of even deep­er sig­nif­i­cance and po­ten­tial ben­e­fit to T&T and the re­gion were a cou­ple chance com­ments made by USA Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, who re­ceived an award from Howard sim­i­lar to that of Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley.

“Thank you for be­ing a se­nior part­ner in the Caribbean and ad­dress­ing cli­mate change and sup­port­ing democ­ra­cies across the West­ern Hemi­sphere,” not­ed the US pres­i­dent to Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley at the awards cer­e­mo­ny.

Most im­por­tant, af­ter his po­lit­i­cal quip of not know­ing the T&T Prime Min­is­ter “was so tal­ent­ed”, was his promise, “We have got to talk.”

We recog­nise that hav­ing found him­self in a space with the leader of an­oth­er coun­try, Pres­i­dent Biden had to en­gage in re­spect­ful diplo­ma­cy with his Caribbean coun­ter­part. As triv­ial as the com­ment may have been though, the onus is now with a T&T and Cari­com diplo­mat­ic over­ture to make use of what­ev­er val­ue which can be squeezed out of it.

Yes, it sure­ly can be cyn­i­cal­ly stat­ed “what else do you ex­pect a Pres­i­dent of the USA to say in such cir­cum­stances?” Sure­ly by to­day, even by the end of the cer­e­mo­ny, Pres­i­dent Biden, with far more press­ing con­sid­er­a­tions on his mind, would have for­got­ten hav­ing giv­en such a “come on” sig­nal to T&T and the re­gion.

All of that and more would sure­ly be true. How­ev­er, it is such open­ings which, when adroit­ly tak­en ad­van­tage of, can be turned in­to vi­brant and fo­cused diplo­ma­cy.

So, in­stead of cyn­i­cism and push­ing the no­tion of the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent sim­ply be­ing diplo­mat­ic, a kind of “ma­m­aguy,” a well thought-out Cari­com diplo­ma­cy can make use of the open­ing. Some­where in the Cari­com Sec­re­tari­at and gen­er­al­ly across the re­gion, there must be ex­pert and ex­pe­ri­enced diplo­mats who must be­gin the search for an ap­proach to the US Pres­i­dent to give greater con­sid­er­a­tion to the re­gion.