Dr. Basil Wilson

Nakumbuka, Resistance to Slavery and

the Elusiveness of the Just Society.

Themes:

1. An analysis of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
2. The Marked Resistance in Jamaica to an unjust system
3. The legacy of slavery and the search for a democratically just society

Bio

Basil Wilson spent his formative years in the class-variegated community of Eastern Kingston. He attended Vaz Preparatory School and later on Kingston College, where he represented the school in cricket and football. He graduated from Kingston College in 1961 and migrated to the United States in 1962. In that year, he enrolled at Queens College where he completed a B.A. and an M.A. in Political Science.

In 1972, Basil Wilson was accepted into the Political Science doctoral program at the City University Graduate Center. He completed his doctoral studies in 1979 and his dissertation was titled, Surplus Labor and Political Violence in Jamaica: The Dialectics of Political Corruption.

Basil Wilson began his academic career at John Jay College of Criminal Justice where he taught from 1974 to 1990. In 1990, he was appointed Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, a position he held from 1990 to 2006. He was appointed Professor in Residence at The City University Graduate Center from 2006 to 2008, where he taught in the Department of Sociology. After retiring from the City University in 2008, he was appointed Dean of the Graduate Program in Criminal Justice at Monroe College. The M.S. in Criminal Justice was initiated in Fall 2009 and is offered on the Bronx and New Rochelle campuses, Monroe College.

In 1989, he co-authored with Prof. Charles Green, Hunter College, the study, The Struggle for Black Empowerment in New York City: Beyond the Politics of Pigmentation. Other publications include “Changing Demographics and the Unchanging Nature of Power in New York”, “The Rise of the Caribbean Middle Class in South-east Queens”, “Marches on Washington and the Black Protest Movement” and “Jamaican Posses and Organized Crime”.

For the last 15 years, Basil Wilson has written a weekly column for Carib News. He presently writes a blog on international soccer that is posted on Futbolr.com. He appears occasionally as a commentator on radio programs in Jamaica and in the New York metropolitan area.

He is married to Phyllis Wilson, formerly of Air Jamaica, and they are the parents of three children, Natasha, Makonnen and Mabricio. They presently reside in Baldwin, New York.