U.S. travel restrictions force Pitt to end visits to Cuba

By Bill Schackner, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

A University of Pittsburgh-sponsored study abroad program that has brought American college students face-to-face with figures such as Desmond Tutu and Mikhail Gorbachev is dropping one famous presenter this fall -- Fidel Castro.

Bowing to the Bush administration's toughened restrictions on visits to Cuba, Semester at Sea is scrapping a regular stop in Havana that often included a face-to-face meeting between the Cuban leader and students from campuses across the United States.

When the Semester at Sea cruise ship first sailed there in 1999 with 600-plus students, it was believed to be the largest sanctioned visit by a group of American college students to Cuba since that country's revolution more than four decades ago.

The four-day stop by the floating campus allowed students, professors and other passengers to travel about, engaging in dialogue on subjects from that country's music and architecture to health care. A high point was the encounter with Castro, who on several occasions lectured to them at length and entertained questions.

"It's unfortunate in that Cuba offered a really interesting perspective to students," said Julian Asenjo, an official with the Institute for Shipboard Education, which administers Semester at Sea and is based at Pitt.

He said officials from the University of Havana, a host campus, are heartbroken. "I think that they are really quite distraught that this is an opportunity that has been taken away from their students," he said.

Semester at Sea will substitute a stop in Venezuela as part of the trip running from Aug. 30 to Dec. 8.

Canada, Japan, the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, India, Tanzania, South Africa and Brazil also are on the itinerary.

The Bush administration's new rules for travel to the Communist country have triggered debate and some protest nationally. They are being watched with significant concern by the academic community, said Victor Johnson, associate executive director for public policy with the Washington D.C.-based Association of International Educators.

He said new Treasury Department rules, in force since last month, require that to be licensed, a study abroad program must be from a degree-granting institution and take only students enrolled there in a degree program. Johnson said trips must exceed 10 weeks.

The rules run counter to a trend toward shorter study abroad trips of all kinds, and "schools don't like the idea of the government making curriculum decisions," he said.

Johnson said he suspected that Semester at Sea "ran afoul of most of these new regulations, if not all."

Asenjo said students from some 245 colleges and universities take part in the voyages along with professors and family members. They travel aboard The Explorer, a 590-foot cruise ship that includes a library, student center, classrooms and laboratory space.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, a creator of "2001: A Space Odyssey," lectured on board during a 1979 stop in Sri Lanka that was one of several meetings between the author and students on the cruise over the years. Semester at Sea students also met Indira Gandhi during a 1982 stop in India, former Soviet Leader Gorbachev in 1988; Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and a number of other world figures in other years.

Asenjo, the institute's associate director for enrollment management, said Semester at Sea is hoping to resume the Cuba trips when federal regulations allow it.

"You try to take the good with the bad. Progress is made, you're allowed access to certain things that other programs in the past haven't been,'' Asenjo said. "When the doors are closed, you have to be philosophical and wait for the tides to change."

(Bill Schackner can be reached at bschackner@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1977.)