As it wrestles with major economic and social reforms, Cuba presents an almost unprecedented opportunity for American scholars and students to experience a country trying to transform itself, said John H. Coatsworth, dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, at an education meeting here.
With the Obama administration’s recent easing of restrictions on academic travel to the island nation, Mr. Coatsworth and other university leaders encouraged American colleges to develop ties with Cuba.
“Cuba in effect is becoming a laboratory. Students and scholars will find it fascinating for years to come,” he told participants at the annual meeting of Nafsa: Association of International Educators.
Mr. Coatsworth, who is also past president of the Latin American Studies Association, first traveled to the Caribbean nation in 1963, when he “fell in love” with it, and he has returned several times since then. He says today it is undergoing societal shifts that are among the largest it has experienced since the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power more than 50 years ago.
Under the leadership of Raúl Castro, who has been president since 2008, Cuba is experimenting with capitalism, allowing Cubans to open small businesses and to own cellphones, cars, and houses, and the country is reducing its public work force by some 500,000 people. Even such cultural policies as requiring state-run bakeries to provide free cakes to Cuban girls on their quinceañera—their 15th birthday—are being eliminated, he said.
The country is also dabbling with expanded civil liberties and revising its political system, though those changes are happening slower than the economic ones, Mr. Coatsworth noted.
“All of this amounts to a vast transformation of the Cuban economy and Cuban society,” he said, and American higher education can play a role in it.
In January President Obama revised rules governing cultural, educational, and religious trips to Cuba. The move overturned tough regulations put in place by President George W. Bush in 2004 that effectively blocked many American college students and academics from going to Cuba.
The number of American students spending a semester at the University of Havana dropped precipitously after the Bush rules were imposed, said Mayra Heydrich, a biology professor at the university who coordinates projects with American institutions. The number of students has steadily grown since then, but it is still off its high mark from eight years ago, when 273 American students studied at the Havana institution.
Ms. Heydrich encouraged colleges and universities to develop summer programs, research partnerships, or student and faculty exchanges with her university, saying they would help build an “academic friendship bridge” between the two countries that have long been at odds.
Despite the rule changes made by the Obama administration, some educators at the conference said substantial challenges remain. The U.S. government has been slow to put into effect its new policies, said some. Nafsa itself had trouble getting permission from federal officials to pay for the expenses of Cuban academics to attend the conference, even though it was in Canada.
Karey Fuhs, study-abroad coordinator at Northwestern University, said her institution is starting an eight-week, undergraduate summer program in public health this year in Cuba. While the program has been in development for several years, she said, the new U.S. regulations will help. However, she said universities must still navigate the “inefficacies” of the Cuban government and its various rules, which are quite challenging.
Other educators raised concerns about spending time and money pursuing a Cuba program when the United States is facing another presidential election next year; a new occupant in the White House could order new travel constraints to the country.
Mr. Coatsworth dismissed these worries. With public-opinion polls of Cuban Americans showing greater support for détente with Cuba and the Communist nation making moves to embrace free-market ideas, he expected the current policy to stay in place for the long term.
The possibility of a return to the Bush-era constraints, he said, is “practically nil.”