U.S. Government Restricts Travel to Cuba
By Jonathan Knight
Shortly before the November 2 presidential election, the U.S. Department of State denied visas to all sixty-five Cuban scholars scheduled to participate in an international academic conference in Las Vegas. The State Department gave as its reason for this unprecedented action that "restricting access of Cuban academics to the United States is consistent with the overall tightening of our policy." AAUP general secretary Roger Bowen, in a letter to secretary of state Colin Powell, protested the decision as an infringement on academic freedom. The State Department should not, he stated, bar scholars who wish to enter this country for legitimate academic reasons.
In response, assistant secretary of state Roger Noriega affirmed the administration's commitment to freedom of expression and its support for that freedom throughout the world, but said that the Cuban government "only permits 'trusted' academics to travel."
Bowen was not persuaded. "We believe that the policies of government, no matter how repellent," he wrote to Noriega, "should not weigh in the decision to allow scholars to enter this country for an academic purpose. Moreover, we believe that our government should not bar entry into this country of a foreign academic even if it knows with certainty that the individual has surrendered independence of thought to an outside authority." He urged the administration to defend freedom of expression "in this country as resolutely as it proclaims its intention to defend it abroad."
The State Department's decision was not the first time during 2004 that the Bush administration impeded academic meetings of U.S. scholars with their Cuban counterparts. In February, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the Department of Treasury barred scholars in this country from traveling to Cuba to participate in an international conference on brain injury a week before the conference began. In June, OFAC announced new restrictions on American academic programs in Cuba that seriously curtail academic travel to that country.
The AAUP sharply questioned OFAC's decisions as imperiling the pursuit of scholarship and learning. "All of these actions by the government," Bowen says, "showed no regard for the freedoms which must flourish if we are to best serve scholars, students, and society."
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