Scholar Extraordinaire By Dr. Holger Henke New York, October 2001: Few scholars in the still small Caribbean-American academic community in the United States are as respected and cherished as Roy Bryce-Laporte. This son of the Panamanian soil has for four decades lectured, researched, published and taught in American institutions about the flows of migration from and within the Caribbean region. He has educated many in the public sphere and in institutions of higher learning about the issues affecting this recent migrant population. For this he has earned a unique place in the history of Caribbean migration to this country. Dr. Bryce-Laporte recently retired from his position at Colgate University and he now enjoys the status of "elder academic statesman" and can call himself Professor Emeritus. The Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College (CUNY) has moved to recognize Dr. Bryce-Laporte's life work at an upcoming symposium at the college. This event will be held on November 17, 2001. Trained at UCLA, Dr. Bryce-Laportee was employed at many institutions of higher learning, and made significant contributions at Hunter College (CUNY), and at Yale University where he was the first Chair of African American Studies program. Bryce, or Roy, as his peers and friends fondly call him, has mentored and influenced generations of Caribbeanists, and other social scientists whose works now are influential and seminal readings. In his over 40-year long academic career, he has single-handedly achieved to put this field of study on academic map and bring to the special achievements and needs of this growing population to the attention of academics and public policy-makers in this country. For the past eleven years he was John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Professor of Sociology and former Director of the Africana and Latin American Studies Program at Colgate University where he was greatly revered as teacher, mentor and colleague. Commenting on the early waves of Caribbean immigration to the Panama Canal Zone, Dr. Bryce-Laporte poignantly said: "[it shows] how much some of us Caribbean immigrants have been subjected to an officially U.S. administered racial systemthat was not totally unlike the old American South or the former South Africa. It indicateswhy we can identify with African-Americans in their plights and struggles as peers." He hastens to add, however, that migration of Afro-Caribbeans also contributed to the evolution of black politics in the United States: "Naturalization of West Indians was welcomed by the African-American political leadership insofar as it increased the overall number and power of the black vote in New York. But it gave form to the emergence of internal rivalries among blacks as West Indian leaders began to rise to leadership posts in the local political clubs and became pioneer holders of high office in municipal and state government." Apart from his scholarly activities, Professor Bryce-Laporte is also an accomplished administrator and for years established and administered the Research Institute on Migration and Ethnic Studies (RIIES) at the Smithsonian Institution where many important works on refugees, migration and diaspora scholarship were issued. During the bicentennial celebration of our nation he hosted a major conference on the disapora and migration, from which came some theoretical insights and breakthroughs which are still relevant in this area of scholarship. He also administered an Institute on Migration at the College of Staten Island (CUNY), before he joined Colgate University. Dr. Bryce-Laporte should also be cited for his work with many other organizations including: the African Diaspora Research Project at Michigan State University; the Schomburg Center of the New York Public Library, Russell Sage Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Inter-American Affairs program of New York University, and the Caribbean Studies Association. Dr. Bryce-Laporte's influence on scholars he mentored worldwide - especially West Indians ­ is profound and legendary. In addition to his many scholarly publications, he has served as a consultant to the Organization of American States and made several testimonies before the U.S. Congress and other national and international agencies in the District area. More recently he was elected to the newly organized Chairman's Advisory Board of the NAACP and was elected to the Committee on Nominations of the American Sociological Association. At Colgate University his presence will be greatly missed, not just by his colleagues, but perhaps even more so by his former students. As one them wrote recently in a paper published at Colgate: "I know from my personal experience as one of his students that without his friendship, mentorship and caring for my well-being as a person, I would never have gone as far as I have. I have kept in contact with Professor Bryce-Laporte since my graduation in 1995, informing him of my personal and academic growth in graduate school at Columbia. His opinions remain very important to me and that is why I constantly ask him for advice in all aspects of my life. He is my friend as well as my professor and this is a quality that has made him so special to his students. It is very hard to find a professor of his caliber, something that Colgate as well as past, present and future students will miss." Retirement for Dr. Bryce-Laporte will only bring little more relaxation. He still is pursuing a variety of projects and has a number of publications plans. As co-editor of the academic journal Wadabagei: A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diaspora, published by the Caribbean Research Center at Medgar Evers College, he continues to be involved with the research of new generations of scholars. Dr. Bryce-Laporte continues to demonstrate true commitment to his scholarship and the communities of Caribbean-American immigrants he has served for so many years with his knowledge.