Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Scholars Sue the Government Over Policy That Has Virtually Ended Academic Travel to Cuba

By BURTON BOLLAG

Washington

A group of scholars and students sued the U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday in an effort to force the Bush administration to rescind rules changes made in 2004 that have choked off most academic travel to Cuba. The department is in charge of enforcing the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba.

The suit, filed in a federal district court here, asserts that the restrictions violate academic freedom and go beyond what is authorized by law. "The government doesn't have the right to tell you how long a course should be, who can take it, and who can teach it," said Wayne S. Smith, an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University and one of the lead plaintiffs.

Academic institutions wanting to send students or scholars to Cuba must obtain a license from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. Under the tightening of regulations that took place in June 2004, licenses for study in Cuba are now issued only for programs lasting a minimum of 10 weeks. To participate, students must be enrolled in a full-time degree program at the institution holding the license, and only full-time tenured faculty members from the same institution may teach in such programs.

"I can no longer accompany the student groups since I am an adjunct professor," said Mr. Smith, who is head of the Cuba Exchange Program at Johns Hopkins and a former diplomat who led the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from 1979 to 1982.

In any case, Johns Hopkins has stopped sending students to the island since its programs lasted less than 10 weeks. Scholars active in Cuban studies say many of the programs at American institutions were held between semesters, or as intensive summer programs, with less than a semester's duration.

Mr. Smith estimates that before the tightening of the regulations, there were close to 200 U.S. academic programs sending students to Cuba. "Now there are only a handful," he said.

The other plaintiffs are John W. Cotman, an associate professor of political science at Howard University; Jessica Kamen and Adnan Ahmad, both undergraduate students at Johns Hopkins; and the Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel, a group of over 450 faculty members and other higher-education professionals.

The suit asks simply that the restrictions imposed in 2004 be withdrawn. It names as defendants the secretary of the treasury, John W. Snow, and Barbara C. Hammerle, acting director of the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The plaintiffs allege that the restrictions are unconstitutional since they go beyond what is authorized by the Trading With the Enemy Act, the legal basis of the embargo against Cuba. The restrictions "are not rationally related to that statute's purely economic purpose of denying trade and hard currency to Cuba," the plaintiffs said in a written statement.

"The new restrictions are therefore arbitrary, capricious, and not in accordance with the law," they said.

The Bush administration says it tightened the restrictions in 2004 to do more to keep Cuba from earning hard currency and because of concerns that students in some shorter programs were engaging more in tourism than in academic activities.

In an e-mail message, Molly B. Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, defended the ban on shorter study programs in Cuba. "One of the objectives of the license for academic travel," she wrote, "is to provide a real opportunity for U.S. persons to become true scholars or experts on Cuba. ... Obviously, most people would have a much better chance of obtaining this level of knowledge and expertise during a 10-week academic trip to Cuba rather than a weeklong stay, for instance."

John H. Coatsworth, director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, says that the center can no longer send students to study in Cuba and that since April 2005, none of the 16 Cubans it has invited as visiting scholars have been granted a U.S. visa.

In addition, Harvard's license to conduct academic programs in Cuba expired at the end of last year, and the Treasury Department has not renewed it. The government has not provided the institution with an explanation.

The administration's policy on Cuba "is harmful to academics and students," said Mr. Coatsworth. "It is corrupt," he added, "and only makes sense in terms of domestic politics."

Higher-education officials say they fear that an awaited administration report on Cuba may announce further tightening of restrictions on academic exchanges with Cuba. The expected report is a follow-up to one issued by the State Department in 2004, on the basis of recommendations by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. The earlier report called for the restrictions now in place.

Also on Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, challenging the constitutionality of the recently signed state law banning Florida's public universities from using private, state, or federal funds for travel to Cuba and certain other countries.

Copyright © 2006 by The Chronicle of Higher Education