Carolina to get head start on positive relations with Cuba

By L.J. TOLER
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- A new Cuba program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill aims to make connections between the state and a neighbor likely to change in the near future.

Next month, the program will send eight undergraduates to the University of Havana for a semester, marking the start of a new type of study abroad that is rare for American universities. They will experience life in a country on the brink of transition, given the age of leader Fidel Castro, 77.

Professors also envision exhibits, increased collaboration on research, speakers and conferences designed to foster future interactions benefiting the United States and Cuba. For example, they aim to host a meeting of North Carolina and Cuban leaders to explore relations between the Tar Heel state and Cuba, markets for Carolina farm products in the island nation and other potential ways of doing business with each other.

"Cuba is right next door to us," said Dr. Evelyne Huber, Morehead Alumni professor of political science and director of UNC’s Institute of Latin American Studies. "Whether there is going to be a peaceful transition or a violent transition there is of great importance to us."

Carolina students aiming to work in international affairs, and the citizens they would represent, can benefit from the Cuba program, she said: "We badly need people who understand other countries in our government."

Several recent developments cleared the way for the new program, administered by the institute and the study abroad office. First, Dr. Robert Miles, study abroad executive director, negotiated an agreement with the University of Havana for the study abroad program; faculty and administrators at both institutions approved its curriculum.

Miles estimated roughly that only seven or eight American universities have such agreements with Havana. He knows that the Cuban university receives many more requests than it can grant, and that to succeed, applicants usually contribute something academic to the University of Havana in return.

"That's why the overall Cuba program is important," Miles said. "It's a program of activities that includes the study abroad program alongside a number of other academic collaborations."

None of it would have been possible had the Department of the Treasury not just renewed UNC’s site license governing travel to Cuba. Under the license, Carolina faculty and students can apply to the institute to go to Cuba. The institute may award them individual licenses to do so if their reasons meet federal criteria. Undergraduates may go only to study for academic credit; graduate students and faculty, only for research or conferences.

Most major research universities have such licenses, Huber said, and Carolina’s is several years old. But it was awarded before the federal government placed new limitations on eligibility criteria and stepped up supervision of the travel licenses. When the renewal came early this fall, Cuba program advocates breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Final clearance for the Cuba program came when Dr. Richard Soloway, interim dean of the UNC College of Arts and Sciences, recently approved private funding for the program from the Arts and Sciences Foundation.

Cuban programs exist at a few other universities, "but given the scope of our ambition, I think what we’re trying to do is unique in the United States," said Dr. Louis Perez, Carlyle Sitterson professor of history and an expert on Cuba. He will stay in touch with other centers about opportunities for them to pool resources – to bring a guest speaker to all of them, for example.

Huber called Perez "one of the foremost experts in this field." With his knowledge and that of others on the faculty, she said, "we see a real opportunity to establish UNC as one of the key centers on Cuba in this country."

Perez recently assumed editorship of Cuban Studies/Estudios Cubanos, a prominent journal on scholarship in Cuba. The new Cuba program also will support continued development of an "Envisioning Cuba" book series from the UNC Press, also covering Cuban studies.

Other UNC strengths include what Perez called "a very strong Cuban collection" in Davis Library, of Cuban newspapers, magazines and rare books. "The UNC Library has targeted Cuba since the 1930s and ‘40s," he said. "We have probably the best collection of any public university."

Exporting U.S. products to Cuba on a cash basis has been legal only in the last few years. Since 2001, North Carolina agriculture department officials have visited Cuba three times to encourage trade deals for Tar Heel companies. Four N.C. businesses now sell their goods, including apples and turkeys, in Cuba. And there’s room for growth.

"Understanding the people with whom you want to have expanded economic and cultural ties is very important," said Perez. "We want to be in a position to have already established collaborative relationships on many different fronts, so that when (government) relations improve, our students, the academic community and the larger public of North Carolina will have a sort of head start."

The eight Carolina students studying in Cuba next semester will take UNC courses taught in English, just for them, by Havana faculty. They’ll study Cuban history, culture and international relations, as well as Spanish language and grammar.

Previously, UNC has sent a few students to study in Cuba through two other American institutions that have agreements with the University of Havana, Miles said. Now, Carolina has its own. Another difference is that students participating as before, through the intermediaries, must be fluent in Spanish and enroll in University of Havana courses. That option still will be available to UNC students. The new program differs by offering UNC courses about Cuba taught at Havana -- in English.

"Part of our mission here is to provide study abroad opportunities in which students’ linguistic abilities do not constitute a barrier," Miles said. "However, we almost always require students studying in a country where English is not the language of everyday communication to take a course in the language of that country while they’re there."

A UNC graduate student fluent in Spanish, who has been to Cuba twice, will live in the same facility as the UNC students and be responsible for their welfare. The graduate student will work closely with a University of Havana colleague to administer the program on a day-to-day basis, Miles said. He will stay in regular contact with both throughout the program.

Current restrictions on travel between the two countries, by both governments, preclude a parallel study abroad program for University of Havana students at Carolina. But sometimes, when countries have been at odds, students and teachers can break the ice.

"Cubans can be somewhat wary of North Americans," Huber said. "That’s why it’s important for us to establish a relationship, and for them to understand that we’re scholars, not spies.

"It is precisely because Cuba has been so deliberately isolated from the United States that it takes an effort by universities to open up academic communications to understand what’s going on there, and try to teach Cubans what is going on here – socially, culturally and politically."

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Contacts: Dr. Evelyne Huber, (919) 962-6880, (919) 962-3381, ehuber@unc.edu; Dr. Louis Perez, (919) 962-3943, perez@email.unc.edu; Dr. Robert Miles, (919) 962-7002, Bob.Miles@unc.edu

News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu