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Andrew Holness’ thesis focused on the ways U.S. gun laws and regulations impact the illicit gun trade in Jamaica.
Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness has had a lot on his plate these past few years.
Last year, Hurricane Beryl barreled through the Caribbean, causing devastation across much of the region. Illicit firearms have fueled high crime rates in the island-nation, and relations with Haiti — overrun by gangs — remain a key challenge.
But this week, Holness marked a personal milestone that he hopes will translate up to his leadership role: he received his Doctor of Law and Policy degree from Northeastern University. His thesis focused on the ways U.S. gun laws and regulations impact the illicit gun trade in Jamaica.
Jack McDevitt, a university professor emeritus, who formerly directed the Institute on Race and Justice, and J.D. LaRock, a professor of the practice in the College of Professional Studies, advised Holness throughout his studies.
Northeastern Global News caught up with Holness ahead of this week’s doctoral commencement ceremony for the College of Professional Studies to chat about his experience at Northeastern, and the role of higher education at the highest levels of government.
His comments have been edited for brevity and clarity.
Northeastern offered a program that I found to be very much tailored to my time and my interests. The faculty was very understanding of my unique position and facilitated, without depriving me of the necessary rigor, my participation in a program that would allow me to bring my experience to a problem I am interested in. They gave me the exposure to the necessary expertise, and helped create a community of learners that would enhance my own experience.
The program was very beneficial to me. In my current position, I get to see the problems from a different angle: a real world angle. But sometimes, when you’re in the forest, you don’t really get to see the forest because you’re so busy looking at the trees. Getting into higher education allows you that step back to see the entire forest. You get a different perspective, and you get to look at the problem through different lenses.
My focus was on how U.S. gun laws impact gun violence in Jamaica. I got to see that from an educator’s point of view; from law enforcement’s point of view; because it’s collaborative. But you also get the opportunity to conduct rigorous research, and all of that for me was useful because it would have created a new perspective on how to treat the problem. It was useful to be able to take the learning and experience here and have that weaved into policy in Jamaica.
Policymaking is always a competitive endeavor. But throughout my coursework, I realized that not all problems can be solved through competition. Some problems can be solved through cooperation, by collaborating and bringing people together, by fusing the best ideas together. It all depends on the approaches you take to the problem. That for me was a very profound insight from the program.
The issue is that, from the point of view of supply and in relation to the United States, gun violence has evolved historically. Thirty or 40 years ago, the supply of guns would have come from postwar states in Central and South America, as well Russia and the United States. Those stockpiles eventually found their way into Jamaica.
Now, the flow of guns comes almost exclusively — almost 90% or more — from the United States, from four key areas: Miami, Atlanta, Texas and New York. And those regions correlate highly with the presence of the Caribbean diaspora, specifically to a large number of Jamaicans and Haitians. Research shows that there is a substantial link between the presence of the diaspora and the flow of guns.
The availability of guns in some of these U.S. states is also an issue, and we did not want to go too far in questioning the sovereign right of the United States as it relates to the Second Amendment, and what that means for gun ownership and usage in the United States. We also looked at it from the Jamaican standpoint, specifically the ease of access through some of our ports. So we’ve looked at how the present trade routes and arrangements impact the availability of guns.
The truth is that we have dramatically improved our detection, interdiction and recovery of illegal firearms. But the flow is so substantial that, regardless of what we are able to do, we would still need, on the U.S. side, further measures to stem the flow.
I feel we need to demystify higher education, not to make it seem like an elite endeavor. The truth is the universities in the coming decades will have to reimagine themselves not as institutions of the privileged elite, but as necessary institutions that are part of the mainstream of society. Because many of the basic, rudimentary functions that the workforce is expected to perform — most of those functions will be taken up by artificial intelligence and the emergence of cyber-physical operations, or the merging of artificial intelligence with robots.
You are going to need to have much higher levels of education in your society to be able to utilize these powerful tools — from cyber-physical robotics to the internet of things. Higher education is going to become, in a sense, almost basic education in terms of how widespread it needs to be, and the access required. And certainly for people who are already in industry or in leadership positions, universities will have to open their doors and craft programs to ensure that those leaders are able to take advantage of the vast repository of academic learning. That way there can be a much quicker translation of the academic knowledge into real-world practice.