Judge strikes down Cuba travel ban for professors

[Judi Lynn]

Source: WFTV

Judge strikes down Cuba travel ban for professors
Posted on Fri, Aug. 29, 2008
BY OSCAR CORRAL
[e-mail]

A federal judge has struck down a controversial state law that essentially banned professors at state universities in Florida from traveling to Cuba for research purposes, declaring it unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Seitz ruled that the 2006 law, pushed aggressively by state Rep. David Rivera, ``is an impermissible sanction and serves as an obstacle to the objectives of the federal government.''

The law prohibited the use of state and nonstate funds by state universities for traveling to Cuba, and the judge struck down the part of the law that banned nonstate funds from being used. That would allow most travel to Cuba from state universities to resume because most of those trips are paid using private funds, said Florida International University Professor Lisandro Perez.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the law in 2006 on behalf of the faculty senate at Florida International University.

''It was a mean-spirited bill,'' said FIU Faculty Senate President Tom Breslin. ``It was made to turn back the clock. I'm glad it's gone for the sake of academic freedom.''



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/664738.html

[SpiralHawk]

1. "Take that, you republicon homelander totalitarians, you." - The American People

[Acadia Blue]

2. wish they would do the same for medical

[happyslug]

8. This is a STATE ban, the Medical one is FEDERAL

The Judge ruled the State of Florida can NOT interfere with how the Federal Government does Foreign Policy. i.e. the State of Florida can NOT prohibit its professors, using non-states funds, to go to Florida if such a visit is approved by the Federal Government. Please note the Judge did rule that the FEDERAL Government could pass such a rule AND the state Government has the power to make sure no State Money is used on such a visit.

Just a case of Florida trying to do Foreign policy and that is reserved to the exclusive power of the Federal Government.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Judge Overturns Florida's Ban on Academic Travel to Cuba

August 29, 2008
Judge Overturns Florida's Ban on Academic Travel to Cuba

A federal judge has struck down a Florida law that restricts students, faculty members, and researchers at the state’s public colleges and universities from traveling to Cuba and four other countries that the U.S. government considers terrorist states.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida had challenged the law in court on behalf of the Faculty Senate at Florida International University, arguing that the statute violated faculty members’ First Amendment rights and impinged on the federal government’s ability to regulate foreign commerce.

The two-year-old law prevents students, professors, and researchers at public universities and community colleges in Florida from using state or federal funds, or private foundation grants administered by their institutions, to travel to Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Those at private colleges in Florida are forbidden to use state funds for that purpose.

The decision, issued Thursday by the U.S. District Court in Miami, reversed an earlier ruling upholding the ban. In her order, Judge Patricia Seitz upheld one aspect of the law: State funds may not be used for travel to those countries. But nearly all such trips rely on private funds.

More:
http://chronicle.com/news/article/5071/judge-overturns-floridas-ban-on-academic-travel-to-cuba

[Judi Lynn]

4. Recent short article on a N. Carolina student who spent a semester there:

UNC student gets rare glimpse of life in Cuba
Caitlin Ross spends semester abroad in Castro's nation
BY ANDREW DAVISON Staff Writer

Alist of the most publicized events in the relationship between Cuba and the United States — communism, Castro, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the deportation of Elian Gonzalez and a current embargo against the island nation — reads like a history book outline or a verse from Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire." But as a local student recently discovered, there is much more to Cuba.

Caitlin Ross, 21, of Freehold Township, spent the spring college semester living, studying and traveling in what is to many people a forbidden country.

Ross, a graduate of the Freehold Regional High School District's International Studies program at Freehold Township High School, is a Spanish and international relations major at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Earlier this year she had the rare opportunity to live and study in Cuba.

UNC's study abroad program to Cuba is highly selective with a strict cap of 14 students. This is only the fifth year the university has run the program.

"As soon as I found out about the Cuba program, I made it my goal to get accepted," Caitlin said. "This was a oncein a-lifetime opportunity."

The American government's ongoing sanctions against Cuba make it very difficult, and often impossible, for personal travel to the island, as Caitlin's parents discovered.

"My mom's birthday was in March and she was really excited about the prospect of spending it in Cuba visiting me," Ross explained.

However, her parents were unable to secure permission to travel to Cuba.

Ross said one of the most interesting aspects of her experience was the way the Cubans differentiate between the American people and the American government.

More:
http://newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2008/0806/front_page/029.html

[Seeking Serenity]

5. So, all you profs, make sure you don't criticize the Cuban government

while you're down there, lest you be arrested for "pre-crime social dangerousness."

[Peace Patriot]

6. Or here. No habeas corpus; indefinite detention without trial; "no fly" lists;

massive government/Corpo spying. Homeland Seucrity, can, literally, pick you up in the middle of the night and 'disappear' you. We have no more "Bill of Rights" protections. They are gone--along with a whole lot of other rights, including the right to PUBLICLY counted votes.

And if you are in the military, the National Guard, or the reserves, you are quite literally slave labor, at Exxon Mobil's beck and call. Relentless, repeated, grinding, horrible tours in Occupied Iraq, to secure the oil contracts for the obscene profit of the rich.

Not to mention crippling credit card debt for essentials, no medical insurance, no job, home lost to loan sharks, pension lost to savings and loan looters or other Corpo theft, infrastructure crumbling, gas gouging, doubled price of food, no hope of a college education--too costly--and all the other ways that we are looted, plundered and oppressed.

So, sniff at Cuba, if you like--but, really, hadn't we better re-establish democracy here before we criticize others?

[Seeking Serenity]

9. Or not here, thank you very much. (n/t)

[Billy Burnett]

10. If the corporate media and US paid "dissidents" say so, then it must be true.

:crazy:

[llmart]

7. It's time for the US to stop this nonsense.....

of making Cuba out to be some evil place to visit.

[Vogon_Glory]

11. Good For Her Honor!

Good for Her Honor! Whatever my disagreements with Cuba's current economic and political structures, I strongly believe that Cuban and American academicians could and should be allowed to share knowledge and conduct research together as much as possible. David Rivera's ban was an assault on American intellectual inquiry that would have been funded and enforced through Florida taxpayer money, and I'm glad that at least somebody in authority not only saw the legislation for what it was, but shot it down.

I hope to see a Barrack Obama administration and a Democratic-controlled Congress send the Cuban travel restrictions to a similar oblivion.


:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Vogon_Glory]

12. Duplicate. Delete.

[jimjones2474]

13. .

interesting

[KillCapitalism]

14. How about for the rest of us.

Someday I'd really like to be able to take a stroll down the Malecon and see the pristine countryside.