Abby Phillip Makes Trinidad and Tobago Proud at 23rd Eric Williams Memorial Lecture

 MIAMI, FL. (April 15, 2025) — To a crowd of about 250 attendees, both in-person and online, the 23rd Eric E. Williams Memorial Lecture at The University of Texas, Austin, hosted CNNs celebrated Abby Phillip, of Trinidad and Tobago heritage. 

“Journalism in Challenging Times” ably displayed Phillip’s masterful navigation of her craft, and emphasized particularly the need to not only have all voices heard, especially those with whom we are at odds, but also to focus on the facts, where too much of social media today traffics in the alternative. 

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Wading into what she deemed as the obligation to “tell our story” with courage and clarity, Phillip drew parallels to Eric Williams’ fearless condemnation of the status quo during his hugely popular “University” of Woodford Square speeches in the 1950s, where Williams endeavored to teach the Trinidad and Tobago populace, most of whom had only had a primary school education, “what one French writer of the 18th century saw as the greatest danger, that they have a mind!” 

Abby talked about partially growing up in Trinidad and Tobago, and of how Williams’ policies with regard to free secondary and tertiary education made both her parents and, by extension, their children believe anything was possible, that there were few constraints on an individual’s desire to achieve.  

With respect to the ofttimes heated discussions on her program in these deeply polarized times, she said she often feels like a school teacher having to admonish unruly children.  Ground rules are imposed before hand and she does not hesitate to intervene with “Stop talking”, when people interrupt and speak over each other.  As a journalist, and in order to navigate the inevitable political partisanship, Phillip affirms her responsibility to be informed on both sides of an argument, and to demonstrate that even parties who disagree vehemently can still participate in dialogue.  In fact, she marveled at how, after a contentious program, guests can leave the studio conversing about their children, grandchildren or other innocuous matters. 

The Lecture was followed by a lively and probing Q&A session that touched on, among other topics, media technology changes and the urgency for legacy media/cable news to keep up with it. She bemoaned the lagging of the news media to adapt rapidly to the way in which the young consume information today.  

She added that she has been mastering TikTok and, at the same time, thinking about how reliable news can reach Gen Z. 

The final question was asked by Eric Williams’ 15-year-old granddaughter who wanted to know how she could use social media to improve her community. Abby stressed that it was vital for her peers to become politically engaged and aware, and encouraged her first to always seek truth, check for relevant information and dependable sources, and to think before posting.  

After 19 consecutive years at Florida International University (FIU), the Eric Williams Memorial Lecture, in its new home at the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies at the University of Texas, Austin (UT), honors the distinguished Caribbean statesman, consummate academic, internationally-celebrated historian, and author of several books.  His 1944 trailblazing study Capitalism and Slavery, popularly referred to as The Williams Thesis, arguably re-framed the historiography of the British Transatlantic Slave Trade and established the contribution of Caribbean slavery to the development of both Britain and America. “Capitalism and Slavery [is] a ‘landmark’…but it would be even more correct to think of it as the progenitor of almost all of the questions, problems, arguments and interpretations that have come to inform the study of slavery, abolition and emancipation in the British Empire.” 

(Christopher L. Brown, London Review of Books, December 2023).  The book has been translated into nine languages, including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish and Korean. The tenth and eleventh, Dutch and German, are in process. In 2022, almost 80 years after it was first published in the US, the book registered at #5 on the UK Sunday Times Bestseller List (non-fiction). Eric Williams was also the first Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago and Head of Government for a quarter of a century until his death in 1981. He led the country to Independence from Britain in 1962 and onto Republican status in 1976.  

Among prior Eric Williams Memorial Lecture speakers have been:  the late John Hope Franklin, one of America’s premier historians of the African-American experience; Kenneth Kaunda, President of the Republic of Zambia; Cynthia Pratt, Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas; Mia Mottley, Attorney General of Barbados; Beverly Anderson-Manley, former First Lady of Jamaica; Portia Simpson Miller, Prime Minister of Jamaica; Hon. Kenny Anthony, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia; Hon. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and The Grenadines; and Dr. Angela Davis, renowned for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression in the U.S. and abroad. 

The Lecture, which seeks to provide an intellectual forum for the examination of pertinent issues in Caribbean and African Diaspora history and politics, is co-sponsored in part by UT’s: LILLAS Caribbean Studies Initiative; School of Journalism and Media; Center for Global Change and Media; Dr. & Mrs. Leroy Lashley; and Jerry Nagee. It is also supported by The Eric Williams Memorial Collection Research Library, Archives & Museum at the University of the West Indies (UWI, Trinidad and Tobago), which was inaugurated by former US Secretary of State, Colin L. Powell in 1998.  It was named to UNESCO’s prestigious Memory of the World Register in 1999. 

Post-Lecture viewing, as well as all prior Lectures, 2021 digital launch videos and an online exhibition of the Eric Williams Memorial Collection Museum at UWI are available at: Eric Williams Memorial Lecture | John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies | Liberal Arts | UT - Austin