To the Editor:
Having done the bulk of my dissertation research in Cuba between 1997 and 2001 (though not through an affiliation with any official Cuban government or academic organization), my experience is that it is indeed possible to do “real” research in Cuba (“Push for Student Exchanges With Cuba Hits Obstacles, Both Political and Academic,” The Chronicle, March 9). However, as with any research, it is the scholar’s responsibility to remain clear-sighted about the particular constraints and opportunities of any research context.
The key word in understanding the Cuban research and academic context is indeed government control. The Cuban government has a long record of controlling access to the island in order to keep unflattering data and analysis, especially from social scientists, to a minimum. It also arrogantly and unjustifiably gives itself the right to determine which of its own scholars can travel abroad to do research or participate in international conferences. However, these condemnable practices should not be used as a justification for our own failed policy of isolation. Nor do they make fruitful research, collaboration with Cuban scholars, or student learning impossible. On the contrary, Cuba’s closed, insular environment often makes the island a richer and more vital learning environment for younger students and scholars coming from abroad.
In fact, from my experience doing research in Cuba (both in my past research on Cuba’s underground economy and in my current research on its emergent blogosphere) and from helping to operate past academic (at Tulane University’s Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute) and cultural-exchange programs (with the CubaNola Arts Collective) in Cuba, I would argue that academic travel to Cuba by U.S. undergraduates and graduate students is among the very best and most intellectually challenging and stimulating experiences students can have.
It is also a quiet but very effective way to achieve one of President Obama’s chief foreign-policy goals vis-à-vis Cuba: to increase people-to-people contacts between the citizens of each country and contribute to breaking the Cuban government’s own “blockade,” its monopoly on information and careful screening of outside contacts.
Finally, I reject Jorge Sanguinetty’s insinuation, quoted in the article, that scholars or students aim to go to Cuba simply to lie on the beach “under the guise of research.” And I am frankly insulted by his categorical dismissal that you “cannot do real research in Cuba.”
In fact, the organization of which he is the current president, the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, awarded me its highest student prize in 2002, when I was a graduate student, for research I did entirely in Cuba (“A Taste of Capitalism: The Rise and Fall of Havana’s Private Paladar Restaurants”). Indeed, after earning my Ph.D., I was elected to two terms on ASCE’s Board of Directors and have been a past member of the ASCE committee that seeks to recruit graduate and undergraduate students to submit their own papers (the vast majority of which are based on research done in Cuba) for that same annual prize, awarded at the organization’s annual conference in Miami.
While Mr. Sanguinetty believes that there is a “tremendous amount of hypocrisy by the educational system in the United States” regarding the potential for authentic academic research and exchange with Cuba, I respectfully offer that it is perhaps he who is the one being hypocritical when his own organization encourages and awards prizes to young scholars like me who do just that.
Ted Henken
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Black and Hispanic Studies
Baruch College of the City University of New York
New York