Posts in academic travel
Scholar Advocates for Increased Academic Partnership Between U.S. and Cuba
I would like to share with the readers of the Havana Note this interview with Douglas Fehlen from Education-Portal.com. The direct link to the interview is at the end of the text:
Scholar Advocates for Increased Academic Partnership Between U.S. and Cuba
Jan 12, 2012
In January, President Obama lifted restrictions on academic travel to Cuba, making it easier for students to partake in educational exchanges with the island country. To get an expert's perspective on that decision, Education-Portal.com spoke with Arturo López-Levy, Ph.D. candidate and research associate at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies. López-Levy is a passionate advocate for increasing shared educational opportunities between the U.S. and Cuba.
Education-Portal.com: In a ForeignPolicy.com article, you praised President Obama's January decision to ease restrictions on academic travel to Cuba. Why do you support this policy change?For decades, the United States has maintained no formal diplomatic relations with Cuba, enforcing severe travel and trade restrictions against the country all the while. Arturo López-Levy, Ph.D. candidate and research associate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, is a longtime critic of American policy toward the Caribbean nation. The University of Denver scholar believes that recent changes in American policy - including relaxed regulations on educational, cultural and religious travel - have the potential to transform the relationship between the two countries.
New Cuba Travel Regulations Published in Federal Register Today
Compared to the nearly six months it took to publish regulations easing family travel and remittance restrictions in 2009, today's publication of the new Cuba travel and remittance rules announced on January 14th was clean and efficient. The administration is to be commended on finally using the rip-the-bandaid-off approach; announcing a policy without implementing it leads to all kinds of meddling and second-guessing by outsiders. Which, actually, is exactly what appeared to happen when the existence of these draft regulations leaked out last August. When the regulations didn't come during the August recess, nor the October recess, nor even the end of year/holiday recess, many believed they'd been nixed. And with the fabled regulations went any hope that the Obama administration was capable of formulating and implementing a more coherent, results-oriented, and more U.S.-interests based Cuba policy than the one it inherited.
By those measures, the administration truly made progress this month on one of the most neglected but promising foreign policy issues on its plate. A the same time, I'd be lying if I didn't insist there's still ample room for improvement. One hopes this wasn't just a "get-this-thing-off-my-plate" move, but rather the unjamming of whatever logjam there was on an issue that offers this administration such outsized gain at so little risk.
On coherence: With the new rules, and the announcement that preceded them, the administration has been at pains to state clearly that it views these new measures as a continuation of the objective that brought us the 2009 family travel and remittance reforms (which candidate Obama promised during his presidential campaign). From today's Federal Register:
"In a statement issued on January 14, 2011, the President announced a series of changes to ease the restrictions on travel to and from Cuba as part of an initiative to support the Cuban people's desire to freely determine their country's future by, among other things, supporting licensed travel and intensifying people-to-people exchanges. This announcement builds on the President's April 13, 2009 initiative to promote greater contact between separated family members in the United States and Cuba."
BREAKING: Obama Administration Announces Expanded Travel to Cuba
Now this is what "Reaching out to the Cuban people" really means.
While we don't have the fine print (regulations) in hand for another couple weeks, today the Obama administration announced it will issue new regulations to expand licensable travel to Cuba. People to people educational and cultural licenses, established under President Clinton and eliminated by President Bush, will be restored, and credit-earning academic and religious travelers, now subject to pre-trip application and approval processes, will be able to travel on general licenses, as do Cuban American travelers today. The regulations will also allow any international U.S. airport with the necessary facilities to host licensed charter services to and from Cuba, and authorize any American to send remittances for humanitarian and economic projects to non-family Cubans (except for high level Cuban government and Communist Party officials, as is the case for currently allowable family remittances).
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Kerry offered high praise, which he said would "open the way for the good will of citizens of both countries to forge deeper ties that are in our national interest today and in the future." He went on to say he will continue to push for a full repeal of all travel restrictions for all Americans. (Kerry's statement, which I received in an email, will be available here shortly)