A delegation of Alabama faculty traveled to Cuba last week to meet with academic collaborators in the island nation. The trip was part of the celebration of the 10th year anniversary of the Alabama-Cuban Initiative, a program that serves as the cultural exchange vehicle between the University and Cuba. The group spoke to faculty at three Cuban institutions of higher learning, which included the University of Havana, the Institute of Art and the University of San Geronimo. The faculty members also presented new proposals for projects on the island while reflecting on the past.

The start of something unique Robert Olin, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, began organizing the trip last spring and has served as the driving force behind the project for nearly 10 years. “I arrived to UA in the fall of 2000 as dean of Arts and Sciences,” Olin said. “Getting to know the 23 departments, it struck me how many members of the faculty had interactions with Cuba.” Stan Murphy, a Tuscaloosa attorney and the former senior counsel for the University of Alabama System, was also instrumental in getting the program off the ground. “The Cubans recognize the University of Alabama as one of the most premier Cuban relationship schools that they have, including Harvard, North Carolina and American University. We are in a very select group.” Murphy said. “It’s something that distinguishes us from most of the other schools in the United States.” Murphy was tasked with getting the program its first license to travel to Cuba, which required months of working with the Treasury Department. He also organized the first exploratory trip to the nation in 2002, a visit that Olin attended. Since that time, under the umbrella of the College of Arts and Sciences, the program has sent over 150 faculty members who have interacted with some form of scholarship in Cuba. “We’ve sent dancers, theatre people, archeologists, plant biologists, book artists, all kinds of people,” Olin said. The program was originally designed as a faculty-based operation, but Olin explained that the University of Havana kept asking where the Alabama students were.

Government pushback Disaster struck the fledging group in June of 2004. According to a State Department memo from the period, President George W. Bush “restricted family and educational travel, eliminated the category of fully-hosted travel and restricted remittances so that they could only be sent to the remitter’s immediate family.” Olin explains that by the time the group was comfortable enough to do a student exchange, the regulations were so tight that there were only four universities still doing it. Alabama was one of them. “To its great credit, the University of Alabama did not stop their program,” Murphy said. “If anything, we strengthened the program. And the academics down there in Cuba remember that.” Since 2009, the University has had a study abroad program active in Cuba, which is available for students, regardless of major. “The Cuban government, they feel the number one institution that they feel the strongest and most reliable ties in the whole United States is the University of Alabama.” Olin said. “It’s funny, if you’re walking along the street and someone asks you where you’re from, and you say the United States, they say ‘Oh, you must be from Alabama.’”

Learning from the Cubans The program works with many different organizations, but the University of Havana coordinates the majority of its operations. Alabama also works with the ministry of culture and the Cuban health system. Seth Panitch, the associate professor of Acting and the head of the MFA and undergraduate Acting programs at the Capstone, recently took a troupe of student actors to Cuba. His group worked through the initiative and collaborated with the Cuban Ministry of Culture. He has been leading Alabama theatre students to Cuba since 2007. “The experience of seeing another culture work on the same techniques as you is invaluable,” Panitch said. “To be able to see it wholly through their eyes opens up a wide range of possibilities for their own development.” Panitch also said to see the dedication that the Cuban actors have when they are under far more difficulty than American actors reminds Alabama students how fortunate they are and raises their own level of devotion to personal development.

Bringing change through scholarship “The thing that the Cuban government really likes about the University of Alabama is that through thick and thin, and with a lot of red tape, regulations and headaches, we’ve continued to develop our friendship and academic exchange,” Olin said. “If you develop relationships academically, it’s a step in the right direction.” Olin has lived this credo. During his time as a mathematician student, he traveled to a few Eastern block nations during the Cold War and developed a worldview about the democratizing nature of academic exchange. Murphy said he also has a similar view about the power of communication and academic dialogue. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Alabama School of Law where he teaches higher education law. One of the principal parts of his curriculum is about academic freedom. “The U.S. legal policy towards Cuba has greatly restricted faculty members, scholars and researchers from the things that they should be able to do,” Murphy said. “Whether they are botanists or teachers of theatre or books or engineers or mathematicians, I am a great believer in the free and open exchange of views, and travel is critical to that. My personal view is that if you want to affect what goes on in another country, the best way to do that is to expose that country’s people as often as possible to your own values.” Olin recognizes that some critics around the nation don’t believe this program should exist. But he has a simple response to those people as he looks back 10 years. “As a dean, my job is to help people succeed, and this project is doing that.”