For the first time ever, a member of the U law school faculty will travel to Cuba to teach and conduct research.
Erik Luna, an associate professor specializing in criminal justice, will teach a three-week course at the University of Havana?the country’s oldest and most prestigious institution.
“This is something new. There have been research scholars, but this may be one of the few occasions where American academics have taught university students in Cuba,” Luna said.
However, securing the opportunity was not easy. Only certain groups are allowed into Cuba, including humanitarian aid organizations and those in academia. And even these opportunities are few and far between, making Luna’s presence in the country a rare occurrence.
“The embargo prevents any ongoing interaction between Cuba and the United States. I attended a conference in Cuba and met with law professors at the university. We hit it off pretty well, and they invited me to teach a mini-course on the American justice system,” Luna said.
In mid-May, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter traveled to Cuba to discuss the trade embargo and human rights. However, there are generations of Americans who don’t remember or understand the historic tension between the two countries involving the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis.
The Cuban government, which Luna calls “frozen in amber since 1959,” maintains a very different role in the lives of the country’s people.
“Even though Cuba is just 100 miles off our coast, Castro’s regime is one of the last remaining communist systems.
“This will be like archeology or political anthropology, where I can look at a dying political system that is operating today,” Luna said.
In addition to teaching the summer course, Luna will be gathering information on the Cuban criminal justice systems? examining what rights are accorded and how criminal justice is used as a means of social control. Luna anticipates compiling the information to publish in a scholarly journal and, further down the road, possibly in a book.
However, Luna’s aims go beyond research and extend to securing positive?and more frequent?future interactions between citizens of Cuba and the United States.
According to Luna, both Americans and Cubans have created inaccurate caricatures of their coastal counterparts.
“For those in Cuba, they think about the Bay of Pigs and the Cold War. Those in the United States are driven by images of Castro and various Cuban boat people seeking political asylum.
“Neither caricatures reflects how people view or could view other groups. It’s just that lack of interaction,” Luna said.
By beginning an open dialogue?and encouraging a renewed exchange between those in the world of academia in Cuba and the United States?Luna hopes to overcome the barriers that have existed between citizens in the two countries.
“These are the future leaders of our nation and of Cuba. This may be a way, slowly but surely, to allow for interaction and allow students in both nations to travel and break down false images of other nations,” he said.