[NYTr] Colleges Fight Ban on Cuba Travel

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Palm Beach Post - Jan 3, 2008
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/state/epaper/2008/01/03/s1b_univcuba_0103.html


Colleges fight ban on trips to Cuba

By KIMBERLY MILLER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Florida universities could again make academic field trips to Cuba if a
federal judge agrees with a motion filed last month to partly overturn
a state law banning school travel to "terrorist states."

The Dec. 17 motion, made by the Florida Board of Governors, says
schools should be free to use money obtained through federal grants or
private donations for study in countries deemed sponsors of terrorism
by the U.S. Department of State.

A 2006 state law bans the use of taxpayer dollars and non-state money
for travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

Rep. David Rivera, R-Miami, who sponsored the legislation said it is
impossible to separate state dollars and federal or private money once
it is in the university system and that there is little need for
professors or students to go to countries such as Cuba.

"Anyone who understands the totalitarian nature of the Castro regime
and its absolute control over information would conclude that research
trips to Cuba are completely void of credibility," Rivera said.

The Board of Governors, which oversees the 11 state universities,
disagrees, and what is unique about the board's December motion is that
it separated it from the state's position under an American Civil
Liberties Union lawsuit. The ACLU sued the board and the state in
October 2006 in an effort to overturn the law. The board, which is
still a defendant in the case, had been represented by Florida Attorney
General Bill McCollum.

In September it hired Holland & Knight to represent its belief that
lawmakers can't control what happens to private money donated to
schools.

Voters made the board its own constitutional body when they created it
by amendment in 2002.

Since then, lawmakers and the board have struggled over which group
controls the university system.

"The board is exercising its independence," said Howard Simon,
executive director of the ACLU in Florida.

The federal government has a complex web of laws and regulations
governing foreign policy and commercial relations with the listed
countries, but it encourages and funds certain types of travel to Cuba.

The University of Florida, Florida International University and the
University of South Florida all hold institutional licenses issued by
the federal government that specifically authorize travel to Cuba for
educational and research purposes.

The ACLU's lawsuit, which could see a final order within six weeks, was
filed on behalf of professors from four schools including FIU.

It may be most affected by the travel ban because of its Cuban Research
Institute, which has a special federal license for travel in Cuba.

Uva de Aragon, the institute's associate director, last took a group of
students to Cuba in 2004 with private money to study the country's
history, art, music and architecture.

They met with a group of Cuban students who, de Aragon said, criticized
capitalism and wanted only to talk about politics and how Cuba had no
drug problems.

But what her students saw on the streets was very different.

"The reality of Cuba cannot be hidden," said de Aragon, who also had a
student who met her grandmother for the first time during the trip and
recorded the woman singing and telling stories. "No matter how many
slides I could show them in a Power Point presentation, there was
nothing like being there."

Still, Rivera is concerned about such travel. He wrote the law partly
in response to the 2006 indictments of former FIU employees Carlos
Alvarez and his wife, Elsa Alvarez, on charges of spying for the Cuban
government.

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