Cuba Conference is an educational project of the Radical Philosophy Association. It offers a research trip to Cuba eachJune for scholars and students. Click here forthe call and application for this year. RESEARCH NETWORK IN CUBA is a two-weekprogram of research and study. Each participant will have a research project to pursue. In addition, there will be group educational activities designed to broaden and conceptualize our understanding of Cubansociety. We visit neighborhoods, organizations and institutions and we bringin evening speakers to talk with. Since in order to understand where Cuban thinkers are coming from, we need to know their intellectual traditions, the Institute of Philosophy conducts a day-long Seminar on the History of Cuban Thought forus. Since Cuban culture has been formed not only from the Spanish but also theAfrican origins of its people, we offer an introduction to African Derived Traditions in Cuba. Since Cuba has a very participatory political culture, we will join in a Dialog on Civil Society with Cuban thinkers and activists. Since Cubais much more than the capitol city of Havana, we give you the option of extending your stay by traveling to another part of the island for a few days. Thereis so much to learn about this fascinating country that many who have come onour prior trips, return again and again.
During our stay in Havana you are also invited to participate in the Conference of North American and Cuban Philosophers and Social Scientists, a five-day event held at the University of Havana. An annual event, this conference has brought together as many as 95 persons from theU.S. (as well as a few from other countries) with up to 140 Cubans to dialogon a great variety of topics of mutual interest. This is our way of bridging thegap between thinkers in our two countries created by over 40 years of the U.S.imposed blockade.
During our two weeks in Havana we stay at Hotel Vedado located just a few blocks from the University campus in the heart of “downtown” Havana. It is a comfortable, moderately priced, air-conditioned hotel with a restaurant and a swimming pool. You can eat both breakfast and dinner there (MAP) or breakfast only (CP). There are a number of excellent paladars where you can also go for dinner. These are small private restaurants located in homes where you can get a good meal for U.S. dollars.
People often ask, “How do I get to Cuba?” I usually tell then to go down to Miami and then turn left. Seriously though,there are a number of routes available. Most of our delegation members find thatthe cheapest and quickest route is through Nassau in The Bahamas. There are daily Cubana flights to Havana for $255 round trip and they connect well with incoming and outgoing flights to many parts of the U.S. There are also daily charterflights from Miami for $329, but you usually end up having to stay overnighttherebecause of poor connections. It is also possible to go to Cuba through Mexico and several points in the Caribbean.You are free to travel the route that is most economical for you. But since Nassau is best for most of us, that is the gateway cityfor our trip. You can get detailed travel information and find your best routeby contacting our U.S. based travel agent, Marazul Charters. If you are traveling from Canada, there are frequent flights from Toronto and Montreal. For information on those, contact our Canadian travel agent, Vacation-Culture in Cuba. We encourage you to use one of the above travel agents since the price they give you (which might be a little higher than other agents will quote you) includes the full program of activities for our trip. If you make your travel arrangements with others, you will find extra charges once you get to Havana.
Besides a ticket and a hotel reservation,you will need a license and a visa (and, of course, a current passport).
While it is not illegal under U.S. law to travel to Cuba, it is illegal to spend U. S. dollars for such travel. That is considered “trading with the enemy” [sic.] However, there are several exceptions -- categories of people who can be licensed to spend dollars going to Cuba. These licenses are issued through the U.S. Treasury Department by its Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the agency in charge of enforcing the embargo against Cuba. Licenses are available for journalists, humanitarian workers, religious organizations, educational institutions, and students and professional researchers. Just who is eligible and how easy it is to get a license varies from year to year depending on the political winds in Washington. You can find the current OFAC guidelines here. If you were to phone OFAC for license information, they would probably tell you that you cannot go to Cuba. That’s not because that is true but because their job is to discourage people from going. You’ll find much more helpful the web site of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which has a Right to Travel page . For a summary of current travel restrictions as they affect professional and educational travel, click here.
As the rules now stand, most any academic who wants to go to Cuba for professional research can do so under a general license. That means you don’t need a document from OFAC but only need to affirm that you qualify under a General License. But you do need to have a full program of research activities while in Cuba with the likelihood of non-commercial publication of the results.
Graduate students need a Specific License, i.e. an OFAC document authorizing you to spend money to go to Cuba. Graduate students need to show how the trip is relevant to their graduate study andspecifically related to Cuba as well as a letter from the university saying thatthe research will be accepted toward a graduate degree. While these documents should beaddressed to Office of Foreign Assets Control, Department of the Treasury, theyshould be signed and mailed to
Cliff DuRand
Cuba Conference
1443 Gorsuch Ave.
Baltimore MD 21218
or FAXed to 410-235-5325. We will then submit to Treasury all the student requests together along with an overall program of activities. Do this by March 1 since Treasury can be slow in processing license requests when they want to be. But first, students might want to check to see if your university has an institutional license. If so, they might authorize you to travel under it. That’s the simplest way to do it.
In past years when we have applied for a license for our whole delegation we have usually had little difficulty getting our license. However, in 1998 we had to do battle with OFAC to win a license for our delegation. If you want to see a report on the campaign we launched, click here (link not up yet). Then two years later, OFAC unexpectedly gave us a two-year institutional license that allowed us to take just about anyone we wanted during 2000 and 2001. In 2002 we were given a people-to-people license that was even less restrictive, although it was good for only a limited period of time. Now that type of license has been discontinued as part of the Bush administration’s tightening up on travel to Cuba. At the same time Congress is trying to relax the embargo. So we will have to wait to see what the future holds in store.
American public opinion is strongly opposed to the whole embargo. It is seen as a violation of OUR freedom to travel and a relic of the Cold War, supported mainly by the very vocal Cuban Americanright wing in Miami. That is why an estimated 100,000 U.S. citizens travel toCuba each year without licenses. They go for the sun and sand, for the music, tomeet the friendly Cuban people, to discover its socialism, to see this forbiddenisland. But they do so at risk of severe penalties – a fine of $55,000, although most are able to negotiate a far smaller amount. Currently, enforcement has been increased significantly. OFAC has 21 employees enforcing the embargo on Cuba, but only 4 tracking Osama ben Laden’s money.
Besides the license from the U.S. government, to travel to Cuba you will also need a visa from the Cuban government. This is arranged for by our travel agent for a small fee. There is no difficulty obtaining a visa since Cuba is eager to have us come and see their country.
Research Network in Cuba is primarily intended to facilitate scholarly exchange between persons from the United States and Cuba, educating us about each other’s societies. We go in solidarity with the Cuban people, respectful of their social project as an independent nation. Members of our delegation will have many different political views and are encouraged to discuss them with our Cuban counterparts, but are expected to do so in a friendly and respectful manner. We go to learn, not to proselytize, to understand, not to judge. Anyone who has lived in the U.S. has been exposed to extensive negative propaganda about Cuba. In light of this, we must make an extra effort to keep an open mind.
Our delegation is hosted by three Cuban institutions: the Faculty of Philosophy and History at the University of Havana, the Institute of Philosophy, and the Cuban Society for Philosophical Research.
Research Network in Cuba is sponsored by the RadicalPhilosophy Association.
If you want to join our delegation next June, the first thing to do is complete and return an Application Form. You can do this by e-mail. The deadline for application is May 1, but sometimes we can add members to the delegation after that date. If you have any questions, contact Cliff DuRand, Coordinator of the Research Network in Cuba, at cliff[at]globaljusticecenter[dot]org.
If you want to present a paper at the conference, you will need to submit a one page abstract by April 1. We especially want papers that would be of mutual interest that can open dialog with Cuban participants. While the full paper can be lengthy, what will be presented orally at the conference will be a ten minute synopsis. This will be translated into Spanish and also presented orally. You can also distribute written copies of the full paper for those who are especially interested (many Cuban academics can read English). But the presentation must be brief so there can be ample time for discussion.
The deadline for your ten minute synopsis is May 1. This will enable us to send it to Cuba for translation. That will also enable our Cuban hosts to solicit another paper that addresses the same topic as yours. That will optimize the chances for some real dialog at the conference.
Please see the guidelines for authors.
March 1: student applications for license
April 1: abstracts for papers & proposals for commissions (1-2 pages)
May 1: completed papers
May 1: completed application.
We expect that all will approach this interchange in the spirit of friendship and out of a desire to promote mutual scholarly interests.
Additional information available by contacting Cliff DuRand at cliff[at]globaljusticecenter[dot]org.