Dr. Keith Lowe

Born in Jamaica, Dr. Keith Lowe is a Hakka researcher and educator. In the year 2000, he co-founded the quadrennial Toronto Hakka Conference at York University. He then co-founded the biennial New York Hakka Conference in 2013 at New York University. He also founded the annual forum on Chinese Immigration into the Caribbean Basin at Miami-Dade College in 2011.A graduate of Harvard, magna cum laude, he won the Ames Award for leadership and the Boylston Prize for elocution. He gained the PhD from Stanford in modern British and American literature, and then taught at Howard University and the University of California in San Diego. He gained the Higher Diploma in Education from the University of the West Indies, and then specialized in curriculum development at the London University Institute of Education. He worked as a high school teacher for two years in Ghana, where he became interested in Pan-Africanism.

After heading the curriculum and research departments of the Ministry of Education in Jamaica, Dr. Lowe migrated to Canada, teaching English Literature at Ryerson University and multicultural education at the University of Toronto. He founded the consulting firm, Inter Cultural Associates Inc. After completing a situation report on Race Relations in Toronto for the federal government of Canada, he was hired as a consultant to the House of Commons Special Committee on the Participation of Visible Minorities in Canadian Society. Later, he headed a team that studied the availability of multicultural education across the country. He was also hired by the Toronto Board of Education to review and revise the after-school Black Studies curriculum.

Employed by the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture, Dr. Lowe trained voluntary organizations in providing appropriate services to new immigrants. He later worked with public service managers to develop programs in employment equity. As a volunteer, he was president of the Ontario Multicultural Association, and was active in promoting interfaith programs. He was awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for community service. He helped to start Asian Heritage Month in Ontario, served as an advisor to the Canadian Multicultural Council – Asians in Ontario and served two terms on the board of the Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Toronto.

On retiring, Dr. Lowe made several visits to his father’s 200-year-old village. Reputed to be the largest and most ornate Hakka walled village in China, Luo Rui He or Crane Lake Residence is located in the Fuiyung district to the north of present-day Shenzhen city. He later visited his family’s prior village in the Meixien region, and then he toured the tulou or earthen castles in Fujian province. He wrote a paper on Hakka architecture for a conference at Xiamen University and it was published in a journal devoted to sustainable architecture. A member of the Institute for the Study of Chinese Overseas, he now takes every opportunity to educate both himself and others on the value of Hakka culture.