I AM writing to register my utter disappointment with the Guyana Institute for Historical Research for allowing a panel in which Mr. Frederick Kissoon was allowed to present a half page statement at their conference on Saturday. All of the other panelists presented real papers or presentations based on actual research. Kissoon, on the other hand, engaged in an embarrassing ten-minute rant against President Jagdeo, some of its contents bordering on libel.
Kissoon’s presentation strayed so far away from what is minimally acceptable for a conference paper that many in the audience were shocked that the organizers could have possibly agreed to accept his proposal. I may tell you that the abstracts of some of the papers were longer, and had greater academic content when compared to the effort by the U.G. lecturer who is yet to write a scholarly article after some two or three decades at an institution of higher learning.
The only person who applauded Kissoon after his inflammatory exercise was Mark Benschop. Mr. Benschop knows that to be true. I must also emphatically state that the conference was running quite smoothly until it was Kissoon’s turn.
Immediately before I exited the conference, I told Mr. Benschop that while everyone has a right to speak, an academic conference should not be used as a platform for political aggression.
I want to take this opportunity to ask the GIHR never to allow its future conferences to be captured by those who simply want a platform to spout hate, strife, and more broadly, to sow the seeds of discord.
The Guyana Institute for Historical Research owes the panelists an apology for having them sit through an exercise that was nothing short of a political farce.