In Cuba Academic Freedom Does Not Exist

In Cuba Academic Freedom Does Not Exist

I have heard hundreds of times that the university - like a cemetery -
could not be invaded by the demons of repression. I imagined them
milling around the steps, without the power to enter this zone of
letters and mathematical formulas where the students are sheltered. But
this supposed immunity lived only in my fantasies, as Cuban history
shows successive transgressions suffered by the universities in my
country. Before the gaze of the statue of Pallas Athena, the ideological
castigation has broken into these precincts dedicated to knowledge and
scholarship countless times.

During the first half of the Twentieth Century, several student protests
went so far as to demand the resignation of the president, bearing
witness to the social force that emanated from the student desks.
Painted on the walls around La Colina, where the University is located,
you can still see the youthful nonconformity that later revolutionary
purges reduced to apathy. The University Student Federation (FEU) has
ceased to be a hotbed of ideas and actions that more than once shook the
city, and become, to the students, a representation of power. Thus, the
organization lost all its rebel character and its leaders are no longer
elected for their charisma or popularity, but rather for their political
reliability. The slogan, "The University is for Revolutionaries," has
contributed to imposing the mask as the safest way to achieve a diploma.

In these two years since Raul Castro came to power, expulsions for
ideological reasons have continued - and are on an upward course - in
the centers of higher education. When Sahily Navarro, daughter of a
prisoner of the Black Spring, was prevented from returning to her
classroom, I learned that the battered student league had gone from
agony to necrosis. A few days after the headstone of sectarianism was
placed over the remains of the FEU, Marta Bravo was expelled from her
teacher training program for demanding reforms in the country. The notes
of a requiem was composed by those who fired the teacher Dario Alejandro
Paulino, after he opened a Facebook group to discuss issues with regards
to the faculty of Social Communication. With these sad events, the
federation - once led by Julio Antonio Mella - has confirmed its death
at the hands of the dragons of dogmatism and intolerance, who now freely
roam the university campus.

A group -- "Stop the Expulsions in Cuban Universities" -- has been
created on Facebook to protest, at least virtually, against these outrages.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=279647500945

Yoani Sanchez: In Cuba Academic Freedom Does Not Exist (18 February 2010)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/in-cuba-academic-freedom_b_467508.html