Stewart was a professor of Black Studies and politics at Mount Holyoke and served as the first head of the Black Studies department. Born and raised in British Guyana, he came to Mount Holyoke in 1971 and retired in 2010, having captured the faculty record for the most earned degrees. He had a BA from University of Illinois, MA from New York University, LLB and LLM from University of London, a PhD from Columbia University, a JD from University of Connecticut, and he studied at Oxford University and L’Académie de Droit International de La Haye.
At Mount Holyoke, he taught International Law, International Organization, and Black Studies. He was also the driving force behind awarding an honorary degree in 1986 to Edgar Daniel Nixon, a civil rights leader and union organizer in Alabama who played a crucial role in organizing the Montgomery bus boycott. Stewart died in 2015.