Summer course to travel to Cuba

Despite a history of embargo and strict travel restrictions, an IU class may offer students the opportunity to travel to Cuba this summer.

Loosening of strict travel bans under President Barack Obama allows Frank Marshalek, a doctoral candidate in IU’s Department of Geography, to include a two-week trip to Bloomington’s sister city of Santa Clara, Cuba, in his course itinerary.
Marshalek’s course would be the first Bloomington-based course to travel to Cuba.

The course, “Issues in Latin America, the Caribbean and Contemporary Cuba,” will be six weeks long, according to an IU Newsroom release.

Marshelek should know today whether enough students registered for the class for it to be approved, according to the release. He may have to ask for an extension.

He said travelling to Cuba for class is unlike any other study abroad opportunity.
“It’s a Cold War relic, this animosity,” he said in the release.

For more than nine years, IU geography professor Dennis Conway was denied permission to take a class to Cuba.

As part of its embargo of the country, it was decided by the United States government that any stay of fewer than 10 weeks couldn’t be considered an educational exchange and would cause an unwanted boost to Cuba’s economy.

The syllabus for the course at this time lays out three weeks in Bloomington before traveling to Santa Clara and Havana.

Professor Tim Brothers organized trips to Cuba through IU-Purdue University Indianapolis during the early 2000s, but even those long-running excursions were halted by restrictions put in place by the Bush administration. His visits with his class resumed in 2011.

Conway said an IU trip to Cuba is overdue.

“The whole idea of keeping a Cold War ‘state of war’ between two civilized countries is a laughing stock,” Conway said in the release. “It’s sort of wilting away.”