Photo Credit: Ted Henken

In this first guest post, El Yuma would like to thank The Havana Note for mentioning my letter to the editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education last month. Readers of THN might be interested to learn that The Chronicle did print and post my letter defending the possibility of doing "real" research in Cuba in its April 11 edition just out this week.

Now if we can just get President Obama and Secretary Clinton to read that letter and change the Bush administration rule that prohibits most kinds of student academic exchange and continue moving toward more and deeper people-to-people contacts as Obama has stated is the basis of his Cuba policy. While they're at it, maybe they'll act on the idea Clinton expressed recently that Hnos. Castro actually rely on the embargo to deflect blame from themselves to el imperio and stay in power (I actually agree with her there) and lift it!

They have turned the corner on allowing Cuban academics, artists, and musicians into the U.S. on a normal basis once again. Indeed, I'm looking forward to this coming Friday afternoon when the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York, will host the University of Havana economist Omar Everleny Perez Villanueva for a presentation on "La Situacion Actual de la Economia Cubana."

The discussion about the perils and promise of doing academic work in Cuba has been a common topic for the folks at the excellent year-old blog Et(h)noCuba. My old colleague from Tulane, Ariana Hernandez-Reguant, has led the charge with this response to my letter.

EthnoCuba has also put up some fascinating recent posts on the practice of Vodou and Haitian heritage in Cuba (here, here, and here) and the always vibrant music (here, here, and here) and youth scenes.

Ariana also recently put up an instructive post listing the 22 Ph.D. dissertations focused on Cuba done by graduate students at U.S. universities during 2009. While you can check out her post for more detailed information on each dissertation, the following excerpts from the abstracts of the first three indicate that the boom of "real" research only continues despite the many bureaucratic and political obstacles on both sides. The abstracts also shine a light on the fact that you can't study, understand, or "know" Cuba unless you actually go there.

1. The nocturnal negotiations of youth spaces in Havana by Matthew J. Reilly, Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009, 300 p. "Based upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Havana, this dissertation explores the linkages between youth and public space. This project focused on a thirteen-block area of Calle G, Cuba is clearly reflected in the discourse of these young people and the identity politics they engage in..."

2. Becoming Santeria: A transnational study of cultural politics, media and religion in Cuba and the United States by Aisha Mahina Beliso-De Jesus, Ph.D., Stanford University, 2009, 289 p. "This ethnography is based on 24 months of participant observation, interviews, and archival research–carried out from 2004 to 2007 – with Cuban and U.S. Santeria practitioners, Cuban government officials, religious tourists, Cuban and U.S. religious associations and churches in Havana and Matanzas, Cuba and New York, Miami and the San Francisco Bay Area."

3. “Donde nace lo cubano”: Aesthetics, nationalist sentiment, and Cuban music making by William M. Hope, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009, 317 p. "This dissertation provides ethnographic specificity on the racialized, gendered, and classed dynamics of contemporary expressive cultural practices of Cuban Son and Punto Guajiro through the examination of a group of Guantanamero musicians, their familial and community contexts, and the manners in which they are positioned within national and transnational discursive fields of artistic production."

Finally, one more piece of (good) news related to academic exchange. While the exchange of scholars and researchers with Cuba has often been a two-way street, in my experience student "exchange" has almost always been one-way (U.S. students going to Cuba). Even the small trickle of U.S. students who have studied in Cuba since the Bush-era restrictions were put in place dwarfs the number Cuban students who manage to negotiate the financial, political, bureaucratic, and legal obstacles put in place by both governments and come to study in the U.S. (and then return to Cuba).

However, earlier this year I was reminded by another old Tulane colleague, Nick Robins (president of Meridian Exchanges), of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation’s 2010 Summer Institute on the Constitution, which specifically recruits and sets aside (private) scholarship monies for young scholars of Cuban heritage (regardless of where they reside).

Government funded scholarships are given to U.S. citizens from all 50 states (who make up the vast majority of the Institute's participants and who are mostly future or current high school civics teachers), but private funds are used for qualified Cuban fellows covering round-trip international or domestic transportation to Washington, D.C., room, board, and a stipend of $2,500.

After hearing about the Institute from Nick back in January, I notified two young Cuban scholars I know and they both applied. I just found out that one has been accepted and am crossing my fingers for the other one (who will have more of a challenge negotiating the visa hurdles if he is accepted).

In any case, this episode reminds me once again of the very real benefit of promoting these kinds of open, transparent academic exchanges (as opposed to the kind once again favored and funded by USAID).
Read these two excerpts from the description of the Institute and the qualifications for acceptance and you'll see just how much of a blame-America-first, hippie, pinko I am!

The Summer Institute on the Constitution:
"The core of the Summer Institute is a graduate-level course entitled 'The Foundations of American Constitutionalism.' Taught by constitutional scholars, it examines the principles, framing, ratification, and implementation of constitutional government in the United States.

The James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation:
"The James Madison Fellowships were created to honor Madison's legacy and Madisonian principles by providing support for graduate study that focuses on the Constitution - its history and contemporary relevance to the practices and policies of democratic government."

Qualifications for Nomination:
"Nominations and applications for the will be accepted from individuals who are in a position to disseminate and otherwise promote the diffusion of the knowledge and competencies gained from the Summer Institute to a wider community of individuals. The candidate should indicate his or her abilities and plans in this regard in the application."