THE London School of Economics (LSE) has renamed one of its major buildings after the first Chancellor of the University of Guyana (UG), Sir William Arthur Lewis.
On March 23, LSE finally formally recognised the Nobel Prize-winning Caribbean economist, who was also its first Black student, teacher, faculty member and professor.

Sir Arthur had studied, taught and researched at LSE and Manchester University in the UK before leaving for Africa in 1957 to advise President Kwame Nkrumah after Ghana became independent – and a decade later, he was installed as UG Chancellor on January 25, 1967 at the Queen’s College auditorium in Georgetown, a position he would hold until 1973.

Taught by his Antiguan father and winning an Islands Scholarship (meant for the entire West Indies), Sir Arthur was too young to enter LSE and had to wait to come of age.
But he would go on to score many firsts in the Caribbean, Europe and the USA: The first West Indian Chancellor (and Vice Chancellor) of the University of the West Indies (UWI), first Full Professor at Princeton University and the first President of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB).

The new building renamed after him – formerly 32 Lincoln’s Inn Fields and now the ‘Sir Arthur Lewis Building’ – is home to various LSE departments, including its Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), International Growth Centre (IGC), Department of Economics, Centre for Macroeconomics and the Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD).

At the ceremony, LSE President and Vice Chancellor Minouche Shafik celebrated Sir Arthur’s “ongoing legacy” at LSE and “the enduring contribution he has made to development economics.”
He said: “Sir Arthur Lewis was a pioneer in the field of development economics and an outstanding student, teacher and researcher at LSE” and, “We are delighted to rename one of our buildings after him, in recognition of his exemplary career and enduring legacy, both at LSE and beyond.”

Professor Sir Tim Besley from the Department of Economics added: “Nobody who studies issues in development can fail to appreciate Arthur Lewis’s legacy and his framing of development challenges as a process of structural change.

“We honour that legacy at LSE to this day with a dedicated cadre of economists who study development and growth issues.

“And we have many students from all over the world who come to the LSE study and research in development following in Arthur Lewis’ footsteps.”
Born in Saint Lucia in 1915, Sir Arthur won a government scholarship to study in Britain and in 1933 arrived at LSE, earning a First-Class degree four years later in 1937 and being awarded a scholarship to continue his studies, earning his PhD in Industrial Economics.

He was a member of LSE’s staff from 1938 to 1948, became a School Reader in Colonial Economics in 1947, was knighted in 1963 and was jointly-awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize for Economics with US Economist, Theodore Schultz for “pioneering research into economic development research with particular consideration of the problems of developing countries.”
He died in Barbados in 1991; and in 2015, to mark the centenary of his birth, a special Chair was established in his name at LSE.

Sir Arthur provided a template for Reparations from Britain for Slavery in its West Indian colonies in his seminal first book ‘Labour in the West Indies (1939)’ – written after he took time off at age 23 to tour the British colonies during the 1938 West Indian revolutions against declining conditions as Britain went to war.
The blueprint was, however, formally adopted eight decades later on August 1 (Emancipation Day) 2020 by the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
Three years later, LSE renamed the building after him – all of 75 years after he left LSE and 66 years after he left the UK for Ghana.

The term ‘Better late than never’ is used for belated acknowledgement of genii regarded as having predated their time because their works and/or words were both unprecedented and everlasting.

That adage is also countered by those who hold that individuals don’t predate their time, but it is societies that don’t understand them early enough.
However, much-ado behind it all is Brian Walker, a Jamaica-based former LSE student, who’d earned a Chevening Scholarship in 2018.

His fascination with Sir Arthur led Walker to produce a widely-circulated documentary on the Nobel laureate that was only the start of (bigger) things to come.
Walker wondered and pondered over why the internationally-acclaimed bard didn’t have any clearly-visible pride-of-place at the place he made proud, made his name and built his fame.
He started thinking of how best to permanently inscribe Sir Arthur’s name on LSE’s walls and halls – and soon, with like-minded (Caribbean and British) students, lecturers and others interested in casting Lewis’ name in stone agreed to together propose the building housing the LSE’s Department of Economics be renamed after him.

The London ceremony was attended by Saint Lucia’s High Commissioner in London, Anthony Severin, members of the Lewis family, Walker, LSE top brass and other like-minded stakeholders who worked hard (and quietly) in the background.

The Lewis family was represented by Sir Arthur’s older daughter Elizabeth Lewis-Channon and her husband Steven, as well as by the late knight’s grand-daughter Samantha Virgil and her husband Khari Motayne.

Also present were Professor Besley (an Arthur Lewis Professor of Development Economics), Dr Junius Oliver (a Saint Lucian academic in the LSE’s Department of Economics), Shey Forbes-Talor (who co-produced the documentary on Sir Arthur with Walker), Student Union Officer Martha Ojo (who co-signed the proposal Walker presented to LSE), Christina Ivey, a graduate student who helped lobby the university.

“It was a magical moment,” Walker says of the event, recalling “the joy and gratitude from the patience that made the journey worth the while.”
He says the building’s renaming also marked “a celebration of Sir Arthur’s contribution to LSE, the Caribbean and the whole wide world…”