Suing for Access to Cuba

May 26
Suing for Access to Cuba

A group of students and professors announced plans Thursday to sue
federal officials to make it easier for scholars to teach and learn in
Cuba. The suit, to be filed next week in federal court, contends that
travel regulations implemented by the Bush administration in 2004 have
impeded academic freedom. It will name U.S. Treasury Department
Secretary John W. Snow as a defendant, since his department is in charge
of enforcing embargo rules set forth by the administration.

Co-plaintiffs include a group of about 450 academics in 45 states, known
as the Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel, along with
Wayne W. Smith, an adjunct professor of Latin American studies at Johns
Hopkins University; John W. Cotman, a professor of political science at
Howard University; and two undergraduates at Hopkins, Jessica Kamen and
Adnan Ahmad.

“Academic exchanges and the research they embody have been virtually cut
off,” Smith said Thursday at a National Press Club briefing, during
which the lawsuit was announced. “Really, there’s been a devastating
effect on the freedom of American scholars to go to Cuba and do research.”

While some notable past lawsuits challenging U.S. travel embargo rules
have failed, Robert L. Muse, the attorney representing the parties, is
confident that focusing on academic freedom adds a unique strength to
the argument. He said that several regulation changes made in 2004 by
officials with the Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets
Control, or OFAC, violate what Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter
called the “four freedoms” of a university — the freedom to determine
who may teach; what may be taught; how it should be taught and who may
study.

Muse also cited a May 19 Miami Herald article, which indicated that the
Bush administration may be considering tighter restrictions on trips
made to Cuba by U.S. academic and religious groups. Some policymakers
have argued that such restrictions are necessary to limit American
spending in the Communist nation.

Regulations have already dramatically hampered student academic
freedoms, according to the plaintiffs. For instance, the office required
that educational programs in Cuba could in “no instance include fewer
than 10 weeks of study in Cuba.” Many travel abroad intersessional
programs are much shorter, often lasting less than three weeks.

Kamen, who expects to graduate in 2007 from Johns Hopkins with degrees
in political science and Spanish, is currently taking a class taught by
Smith, called “Cuba and U.S. Decision-Making.” She had planned to take a
for-credit course in Cuba before the 2004 rules, but now, if she is to
graduate on schedule, she will not be able to do so.

The Treasury Department also placed restrictions on the types of
professors who could teach Cuban programs, with only “full-time
permanent employee[s]” of OFAC licensed academic institutions being able
to legally do so. OFAC issues long-term licenses to U.S. institutions on
a case-by-case basis. Some academics have questioned this process and
have requested more information on how the office makes its decisions.
The regulation also bars a professor at one university from teaching a
course in Cuba offered by a different university.

“Howard University has been negatively impacted,” Cotman said Thursday.
“We used to have at least four strong programs on Cuba that can’t
operate anymore.” Cotman has conducted extensive research on Cuba’s
foreign relations as they involve regional integration efforts in the
Caribbean.

Cotman added that educators at the Howard University School of Law had
been developing a partnership with the University of Havana that was
quashed by the new regulations.

Although Smith had worked for decades in a number of capacities with
governmental programs pertaining to Cuba, he can no longer teach Cuban
exchange courses at Johns Hopkins because he’s an adjunct. He continues
to direct the exchange program.

“It’s a blatant violation of my academic freedom,” said Smith, who also
chairs Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel. “I want to get
back there and teach.”

An official with the Department of Treasury said not to expect comment
on the lawsuit until it is officially filed. He said that it is unknown
at this point whether OFAC regulations will be further tightened.

— Rob Capriccioso

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/26/cuba