Vol. 72/No. 47      December 1, 2008

The restrictions, issued in 2004 as part of a tightening of the U.S. embargo of Cuba, make it illegal to study in Cuba unless the class program is at least 10 weeks long.

The federal regulations also limit licenses for study programs in Cuba to institutions issuing graduate or undergraduate degrees. Students must be enrolled full-time and only in programs offered by the school they attend in the United States. The rules require that those teaching the courses be full-time professors.

Prior to 2004, hundreds of U.S. universities organized short courses between semesters, making it possible for students to study in Cuba without adjusting their regular course programs. Today, because of the rules, only a handful of schools offer study-abroad programs in Cuba. They include the University of North Carolina, Harvard University, American University, and Sarah Lawrence College.

The Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel, which represents some 400 professors, filed a lawsuit in 2006 challenging the guidelines as a violation of academic freedom.

In its ruling the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit stated that the U.S. government has the right to pursue a goal of “nudging Cuba toward a peaceful transition from the oppressive policies of the Castro regime to a free and democratic society.” It insisted the federal restrictions were “content neutral” and that preventing students from choosing to study in Cuba did not violate academic freedom.

The court noted that no university joined the lawsuit against the rules.

In a November 7 telephone interview, Wayne Smith, a professor of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University and one of the plaintiffs in the suit, said, “The case is quite simple. They changed the rules. Until 2004 we could take people down for intersession courses and it worked very well.

“The government claimed there had been ‘flagrant’ abuse, that people were going down to Cuba to spend money and that had nothing to do with academic freedom,” Smith said.

“The federal court did not look at the fact that there had been no abuses. It said: if the government thinks these rules are important then that’s all there is to it.”

Félix Masud-Piloto, history professor at DePaul University in Chicago, said in a November 10 phone interview that “some members of the DePaul faculty had lectured at the University of Havana. We had a group of about 30 students ready to go to Cuba again when the new rules were implemented. The course had to be called off.”  
 
 
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