Ian Boyne driven to take on taboo issues

Below is an excerpt of John Rapley's foreword to Ian Boyne's 'Ideas Matter: Journey into the Mind of a Veteran Journalist', a compilation of Sunday Gleaner In Focus columns, due to be launched November 19.

Nearly 20 years ago, fresh from Oxford and having just joined the University of the West Indies, I met Ian Boyne. I'd been reading his Gleaner columns since my arrival in Jamaica, and it had quickly become apparent to me that he was one of the country's more influential journalists. So I was flattered when I received his unexpected call.

A couple days later, he was sitting on my veranda and discussing some of the recent scholarly trends with me. He asked to see my library, and when I showed him into my study, what I suspect was the real intention of his visit materialised. He cut a rapid swath through my collection, making off with a couple of books, which I suggested were representative of the most important new literature.

He left me that day with a strong and lasting impression. If he wasn't aware of a significant new book or article in politics, economic issues, world affairs, or philosophy, Ian was determined to find out about it ("and this from an autodidact!" one colleague once remarked admiringly to me of Ian after being interviewed by him on one of his television programmes).

Moreover, Ian maintained this degree of exposure to global academic develop-ments all while juggling - as I was soon to discover all of us must do in Jamaica - more than one job and numerous other commitments.

Ian's citics

Ian has his critics, who find his tendency to quote liberally from his impressive pile of new reading something of a volley of intellectual punches - which of course it is. But I have always appreciated his determination to raise the level of public discourse in the country.

We did not always agree. When I led the Jamaican economy research programme at the University of the West Indies (UWI) (what came to be known as the Taking Responsibility project, the precursor to the Caribbean Policy Research Institute), I concluded that Michael Manley's achievements were all in the social realm - albeit no less significant for that. While sharing that opinion, Ian nonetheless had a higher regard for Manley's economic vision than I did, preferring to see Manley's policy failings as largely a product of the UWI crowd who advised him in the 1970s.

Equally, whereas I originally shared his attachment to the use of state policy to spearhead development, my years running CaPRI, which drew me into the policy process, led me to conclude that the Jamaican state was no longer up to the task of spearheading the growth process. Although he agreed that international conditions now militated against state-led development, Ian nonetheless held faith in the State's potentially creative role. I, on the other hand, had decided that anything they could do wrong, some Jamaican politicians would find a way of doing. Reluctantly, I judged that a less interventionist state was Jamaica's best hope, whereas Ian's faith never wavered.

loves a good debate

Still, my friend and colleague loves a good debate. In that, he deserves credit not only for the rhetorical parrying he is happy to take on, but for the level of civility he has maintained in his engagements with those who disagree with him. Almost to a fault, Ian has always gone out of his way to note the achievements and contributions of his intellectual and political foes.

In his determination to help construct a Jamaican tradition of informed and reasoned public debate, he has no doubt determined that the still-young edifice of discourse needs further solidifying before it can withstand the sort of acerbic criticisms, rejections, and demon-isation that have too often passed for commentary in the Jamaican media.

Where others might cling to the safe high ground of disciplinary specialisation, from which they can pontificate even in ignorance, Ian has shown an aggressive willingness to venture into uncharted territory, informing himself with the best road maps he can find - he will read, read, and read. Not only in his breadth of coverage, taking on social issues and intellectual trends and economic policy and contemporary politics, but also in his willingness to broach taboo subjects, whether engaging the new atheism or confronting Jamaican prejudices about homosexuality and the public square, Ian has been driven by his desire to interrogate global trends from within a discourse rooted in his own Jamaican tradition.

In my own work at the university, in the media, and in creating CaPRI, I tried to do what I could to help inject new thinking into policy debates. For as long as I had Ian irritating and nagging the complacent voices among us in his columns, challenging them to reflect intelligently on some of the novel and, yes, at times disturbing currents of thought emanating from the world's academies, I knew there would always be hope for Jamaica.

He deserves credit not only for the rhetorical parrying he is happy to take on, but for the level of civility he has maintained in his engagements with those who disagree with him.