Keeping academics out of Cuba
By Wayne S. Smith
Originally published April 30, 2007
The Bush administration's restrictions on academic travel to Cuba are so harsh that they have brought such travel virtually to a halt. Now, about 450 professors and academics from colleges and universities across the nation have banded together to take the federal government to court and challenge their legality.
The stated purpose of these restrictions was to deny hard currency to Cuban government coffers. But visiting professors and students are not exactly known as big spenders. The pittance they might have left behind would have had little impact on a Cuban economy registering strong growth rates.
Most of the restrictions are simply inexplicable. One says that courses in Cuba can be taught only by full-time, permanent members of the faculty. I have taught every semester at the Johns Hopkins University for 24 years and am the director of the Cuba Exchange Program. But because I am an adjunct professor, the new regulations ban me from teaching courses in Cuba - even were it possible to organize such courses.
How does that deny hard currency to Cuba? Did I, and other adjunct professors who may have been involved, have such reputations as high rollers that U.S. officials believed keeping us off the island was a good way to bring down the Cuban economy? Absurd. So what was the purpose?
More:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.cuba30apr30,0,4747509.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines