BY JOSH GERSTEIN - Staff Reporter of the Sun
August 1, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/59554
In a ruling that strengthens the American embargo on Cuba, a federal
judge has firmly rejected a lawsuit challenging a ban on American
participation in short-term study programs on the communist-run
Caribbean island.
Judge Ellen Huvelle, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia, found that the Treasury Department did not violate
the rights of students or professors when it tightened the Cuba embargo
in 2004 by requiring that approved educational programs be at least 10
weeks in length.
"Even assuming that plaintiffs possess a First Amendment right to
academic freedom, the law is clear that it is not unconstitutionally
infringed by the regulations at issue here," Judge Huvelle wrote in a
decision issued Monday. "The regulations place no restrictions on what
universities and their professors may teach their students about Cuba —
they merely restrict them in limited circumstances from teaching
students in Cuba. Thus, there can be no question that the [rules] are
content neutral, and only incidentally, if at all, burden plaintiffs'
First Amendment rights."
A Bush administration panel, the Commission for Assistance to a Free
Cuba, concluded in 2004 that some purported educational travel to Cuba
was actually "disguised tourism." The commission's report found that
some participants had no academic ties to the sponsoring school and that
some study-tour programs included "lengthy unscheduled time periods to
permit largely tourist activities to be accomplished."
Judge Huvelle, who was appointed by President Clinton, also dismissed as
"simply wrong" the academics' claims that their constitutional right to
travel was infringed by the embargo rules.
The restriction on short-term study devastated American-run study-abroad
programs in Cuba, a professor at the State University of New York at
Buffalo, Jose Buscaglia-Salgado, said. "Certainly, upwards of 90% of all
existing programs of U.S. universities in Cuba were immediately
eliminated by that," Mr. Buscaglia said. "It was a very, very large impact."
Mr. Buscaglia, who teaches Spanish and comparative literature,
transformed his school's summer Cuba program into a semester-long fall
program. However, most universities, including Duke, Johns Hopkins, and
New York University, pulled out. They cited various issues, including
costs of running a program limited to students from a single school and
student concerns that a longer program could set back their graduation.
The lawsuit against the program was filed last year by a group of
students and professors who banded together as the Emergency Coalition
to Defend Educational Travel. The group is led by an adjunct professor
at Johns Hopkins who once served as chief of the American interests
section in Havana, Wayne Smith. He did not respond to a message seeking
comment for this article.
A spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, Molly Millerwise, said she
could not comment on litigation. However, she said the 10-week minimum
for educational travel to Cuba "was implemented to ensure that students
had enough time on the island to engage in a true academic exchange at a
substantive level."
One of the groups that pushed for the stricter rules said it was
heartened by the judge's ruling.
"There was a lot going on under the guise of academic or cultural
exchange that was actually tourism. There were groups that would go for
two weeks on a salsa dancing tour of the island," a spokeswoman for the
Cuban American National Foundation, Camila Ruiz-Gallardo, said. "This is
just a boondoggle for the regime. …We support restrictions on travel by
Americans to Cuba until there's some significant change in how the
regime treats its own people and it starts respecting the human rights
and civil liberties of its own citizens."
Mr. Buscaglia said the new rules intruded on the ability of academics to
design their own study programs. "It sets a really bad precedent," he
said. "You're basically at the federal level putting actual limitations
on academic freedom and what, when, and where we're allowed to do our jobs."
The SUNY Buffalo professor said abuses in the study-abroad programs came
largely from for-profit firms who had their licenses revoked before the
2004 crackdown. He also said the rules set up a double standard for
academic programs. "Are you going to require that students that other
universities take to Europe are doing their homework instead of hanging
out in Irish pubs?" he asked.
For a time in the late '90s and early in this decade, Jewish cultural
groups such as the 92nd Street Y were authorized to sponsor trips to
visit Jewish sites in Cuba. However, those journeys ceased at about the
same time as the short-term educational tours.
"A lot of people who were conducting such trips did not get their
licenses renewed," a leader of several such trips, Eric Gordon, said.
The former trip coordinator for the Y, Batia Plotch, said the American
government now requires that the travel be entirely religious in nature.
"Heritage tours are not allowed," she said. "You've got to go to a
synagogue every day, volunteer, help the kids say prayers, the rabbi has
to go help the Jews maintain their religion. Nothing else," Ms. Plotch said.
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