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Bush’s restrictions have forced
more than 300 universities to cancel their exchange
programs with Cuba
BY ROSE ANA DUEÑAS —Special for Granma
International—
AS
the U.S. government continues to choke off exchange
between U.S. and Cuban students and educators, it is
cynically proposing to spend $10 million for what it
refers to as “education and exchanges.”
 Those
two elements — repression and money — are part of
the same plan by the Bush government to overthrow
the Cuban Revolution and destroy its achievements,
including in education. To that end, the
administration has approved a budget of $80 million
to pay for the proposals of the so-called Commission
for Assistance to a Free Cuba.
The
$10 million that the “Bush Plan” would include for
“education and exchanges,” according to a brief
paragraph in its second edition, issued in July,
would pay for “on-island university training from
third countries” and “scholarships for economically
disadvantaged students from Cuba, identified by
independent non-governmental entities and civic
organizations, at U.S. and third country
universities.” That is, they want to dictate to the
Cuban people how to educate their students –
preferably in non-Cuban schools and using non-Cuban
teachers and materials – because, according to the
report, Cuban textbooks are “ideologically skewed”
and need to be “withdrawn.” And it says nothing more
about what those $10 million would be spent on.
THE
BLOCKADE AGAINST EXCHANGE CONTINUES
While it presents itself as a champion of democracy
and education with such absurd proposals, the U.S.
government has continued to increase restrictions on
travel to Cuba by students and academics – as well
as travel in general – and has stopped almost all
visits by Cuban academics to the United States.
From
October 2005 to date, the U.S. government has
granted only two entry visas to Cuban scholars to
visit the country, explains Milagros Martínez, of
the vice president’s office for international
relations at the University of Havana. In March of
this year, for example, 65 Cuban academics – the
entire delegation from the island – were denied U.S.
visas to attend the Latin American Studies
Association conference. “You could say categorically
that such exchange has been frozen,” she commented.
And
for young people from the United States to study in
Cuba, they must be enrolled in an academic exchange
program that has a travel “license” from the
Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets
Control (OFAC), and the measures approved by Bush in
June 2004 set strict requirements: the program must
be for a minimum of 10 weeks; a permanent, full-time
employee of the university must accompany the
students; the students must be enrolled full-time in
the same university; and for graduate students, the
class in Cuba has to be toward their degree. There
are also restrictions on how much money universities
can spend in Cuba and how it is spent, among others.
Complying with those requirements was not feasible
for the overwhelming majority of universities, and
more than 300 had to cancel their exchange programs
with Cuba, according to Professor John W. Cotman of
Howard University.
For
the 2003-2004 school year, before the new
restrictions went into place, there were 296 U.S.
students participating in exchange programs,
explains
Mayra Heydrich, a microbiology professor and
coordinator of these semester programs at the
University of Havana. This semester, fall of 2006,
only 41 U.S. young people from the United States –
32 undergraduate and nine graduate students – from
four universities are participating, and in the
spring another 30 from three universities are
expected, Heydrich notes.
“Unquestionably, I do not see any opening in that
direction, or any plan that would bring about
exchange,” she comments. “We have exchange with
Canada, Europe and other countries; we do joint
doctorates and master’s programs and experiments
together, and we share material. Nothing would be
better than a fluid exchange with the country only
90 miles away.”
The
students agree.
“Academic exchange is vital; it is absolutely
necessary,” affirms Laura Fielder, a graduate
student in Hispanic Literature at the University of
North Carolina Chapel Hill who was the advisor for
14 students who came for the spring 2006 semester.
“It’s essential for students to form their own
opinions; they have to be able to see things with
their own eyes. A lot of Americans just don’t know
anything about Cuba.”
Jake
Patoski, 20, is from Austin, Texas and studies
international relations, particularly environmental
issues in developing countries, at the American
University in Washington D.C, one of nine from that
school who came in the spring. “The articles I read
just confused me more – in the United States,
there’s been this veil over Cuba for the last 50
years,” he commented.
LAWSUIT AGAINST THE U.S. GOVERNMENT
In
response to these attacks on academic freedom, more
than 450 professors and scholars in 45 states formed
the Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational
Travel. The group and four individual plaintiffs —
Cotman, Wayne Smith of Johns Hopkins University, and
Jessica Kamen and Adnan Ahmad (both students at
Johns Hopkins) — filed a lawsuit against the U.S.
Treasury Department in June, demanding that the new
restrictions be removed immediately. The coalition’s
lawyer, Robert L. Muse, says that expects a response
from the government early this fall.
The
“2004 restrictions clearly violate well-established
academic freedoms,” the coalition said in a press
release announcing the lawsuit. “The First Amendment
to the Constitution protects academic freedom, which
the courts have defined as the right of educators to
decide, without any interference from the federal
government, which courses will be taught, how they
will be taught, who will teach them, and who can
take them.” |
