ipdgc.gwu.edu Bridges... · Web viewstudents, educators, actors, athletes; [00:03:00] all sort of types, more than a million people that this program has touched over the years as

Building Bridges Transcript

Opening Remarks

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

Frank: [00:00:09] I’m Frank Sesno I’m the Director of the School of Media and Public Affairs here. I work closely with Sean Aday, Prof. Sean Aday who’s the Director of the Institute, Public Diplomacy and Global Communication which together with the State Department and Sister Cities International is sponsoring this morning’s and today’s discussion. So welcome to you all and let’s get the blood flowing; can you just give one another a great round of applause.

[00:00:37] I always like to frontload the enthusiasm just to get, to make sure everybody is on the same page. These are incredibly exciting times. And we are really thrilled to be hosting the conversation as we are at the threshold of a new era between United States and Cuba and the relationship between them; building bridges through exchanges which is critical, which is what you do. And it is really what this morning is all [00:01:00] about. It would be nice if we could build more bridges in the world and destroy fewer bridges.

[00:01:07] At GW we’re really excited about this event. And through our students and our faculty its one way that we work to help strengthen ties between the US and the rest of the world; we look forward to working to strengthen the ties and exchanges between the United States and Cuba. We have students who are already working on research and other projects related to Cuba as the two countries enter this new era.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

Frank: [00:01:49] I’d like to chat out a couple of people before I introduce our first speaker and our guiding force for the day. First I mentioned [00:02:00] Prof. Sean Aday who has been an incredible leader of the Institute of Public Diplomacy and Global Communication and has been instrumental in putting this day together. So Sean, thank you very much. I’d also to… I’d also like to call out a special friend who I just had an opportunity and pleasure to chat with a little bit; and that’s Ambassador Mark Caplan. Mark, where are you?

[OFF MIC CONVERSATION]

[00:02:31] Mark, Mark is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy now. He was the Public Diplomacy fellow who was visiting with us for a couple of years 2008-2010, is that right? Time flies. And we’re delighted to have you back. Evan Ryan is Assistant Secretary of State for Educations and Cultural Affairs and is responsible for programs that engage youth,

1


students, educators, actors, athletes; [00:03:00] all sort of types, more than a million people that this program has touched over the years as it promotes exchanges and understanding and builds bridges. As a journalist and someone who’s been in too many areas of conflict, also covered stories about development, humanitarian assistance, diplomacy and politics; there is always a difference, always a difference when you’re dealing with someone who has had experience in an exchange like this as opposed to someone who’s just doing their job and knows only their culture or does not know our culture.

[00:03:32] So the time of virtual everything it seems to me in ECA is real and it makes a difference. It’s about people running and understanding other people in other cultures. And at this time as we try to build these bridges with Cuba, there is nothing that’s going to make a bigger difference than these bridges at this time. And everyone I have spoken to is anxious to go to Cuba and start building. How many in the room are interested in going [00:04:00] to Cuba? Okay I thought every hand was supposed to go up but it did.

[00:04:07] Let me introduce Evan Ryan. She served at the White House with the Clinton Global Initiative on presidential and senatorial campaigns; she is committed to public service, learning, engagement, and building bridges. Evan.

Evan: [00:04:26] Thank you Frank for that kind introduction. Good morning everyone! Thank you for joining us here today. The government officials and leaders really like to step up to a podium and say with great solemnity, “This is an historic moment” Well that phrase is entirely justified where Cuba is concerned. This is not only an historic moment; it is the kind of historic moment that comes along once in a life time. [00:05:00] For half a century, relations between the United States and Cuba have been caught in the paradigm of the Cold War; frozen and [amber] as Secretary Kerry said in Havana last month at the reopening of our embassy.

[00:05:19] But that is changing. The re-establishment of diplomatic relations announced by President Obama on December 17th 2014 and the easing of some restrictions on trade and travel, open a door to exploring a new relationship and creating a new paradigm to define relations between the United States and Cuba, and between the American people and Cuban people. As President Obama said back in December, “Neither the American nor Cuban people are well-served by a rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were even born”

[00:06:00] And there are already signs of positive change: we are encouraged that travel from the United States to Cuba has increased, we are encouraged that more and more US companies are exploring

2


opportunities in Cuba. We are encouraged because Americans and Cubans need to engage. We need to learn about each other, rebuild trust and develop a new relationship between our peoples. We need to help Cubans connect to the world where they can obtain the knowledge, skills and networks that they can use to improve their lives.

[00:06:39] I believe that people to people exchanges have a unique and critical role to play in this effort. We want to have a more normal relationship with Cuba not just diplomatically but across the board. What could be more normal than having more Americans and Cubans, neighbors long separated by far more [00:07:00] than the 90 miles of water, finally come together on a regular basis in every walk of life. Exchanges allow us to engage other people face to face, appreciate the valuable contributions that each individual can make, learn about each other’s differences and find ways to build bridges where gaps exists, just as Frank mentioned.

[00:07:25] Exchanges break down barriers that separate people of goodwill. Exchanges build connections that engage and empower people and that motivate people to become leaders and thinkers, to use their skills or develop new ones and to find connections that can improve their communities. We are confronted with serious challenges in the modern world. Challenges like fiscal security, resource scarcity, food security, environmental change, and growing populations. We’re not going to be able to meet these challenges alone. We need to bring [00:08:00] people together, their knowledge, their experience; to build partnerships through which we can all work together.

[00:08:11] I also believe that government isn’t the primary mortar of this change. Because the truth is there is more than government to governments; it’s about scientist to scientist, entrepreneur to entrepreneur, artist to artist, and student to student. These are the relationships that will drive us forward into an era of greater mutual understanding. ECA’s exchange programs are famous, it is true. But they represent a fraction of cultural, academic and professional exchanges in the world. The organizations that you all represent are by far the greater engine of this effort to build networks of people who can find ways to live constructively and cooperatively together. [00:09:00]

[00:09:01] I want to underline that I see this as just the beginning of a long and rich dialogue. I would actually say several long and rich dialogues between our governments, between our peoples and between everyone in this room. This should be only the beginning of the dialogue on our relations with Cuba among the US community of academic and cultural organizations and government agencies. As we go forward, I hope that the contacts established here today form the basis of a network of experience

3


that will help all of your organizations understand the programmatic and operational environment in Cuba.

[00:09:43] So I want to thank you all for coming. I want to thank you for the great work that you do and for your commitment to working with us on this relationship. I want to again thank our wonderful partners in putting on this event, George Washington University, and I want to thank Sean as well. I want to thank Sister Cities International. [00:10:00] Those of you here who have worked with Sister Cities International, know how deeply committed they are to building bridges across borders. I’m always struck by their energy and enthusiasm, so it’s no surprise they were eager to be a part of this event today. And it is now my great pleasure to introduce to you President and CEO of Sister Cities International Mary Kane.

Mary: [00:10:34] Thank you very much Assistant Secretary Ryan. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate our relationship with the State Department. It has been going on for many, many years, and it has been a resource that we completely depend upon. And after five decades of closed doors between our two countries, the US and Cuba, it is no surprise the following, the thaw in these relations and recent opening of embassies, [00:11:00] that Sister Cities International has received an influx of enquiries from US cities seeking Cuban sister cities angling to be the first with the Cuban city its sister city. And I have to tell you one poor town in Illinois actually published and sent a press release that they were going to have the very first Cuban sister city. So when the paper called us we were -- we had to tell them they were actually nine other ones already in place.

[00:11:29] However what surprises many is that they are already nine partnerships in place some of which have spanned decades have been implementing cooperative exchanges ranging from music and culture, to humanitarian relief, to educational exchanges, through the persistence and creativity of their residents. Although US-Cuba diplomacy is just getting restarted at the national level, over the past five decades sub-national citizen diplomacy has cultivated many ties between communities in both countries. The concept of citizen [00:12:00] diplomacy that citizens have the right if not the responsibility to help shape form relations is a helpful reminder that diplomacy does not begin and end at the federal level. People-to-people exchange has always been an essential first step to building mutual understanding and respect between nations and their citizens.

[00:12:22] As we have seen time and time again in the years since sister cities was founded, governments and even countries come and go, but cities and their people remain. Only the continuity of relationships at the community level will ensure stability in the long term international

4


relations. Starting with Germany and Japan after World War II, Sister Cities International began facilitating relationships between cities in the US and cities abroad in order to perform cultural, educational, technical, humanitarian, and business exchanges. Launched as a major presidential initiative by President [00:13:00] Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 actually on the steps of the American Red Cross on September 11th 1956. Sister Cities International’s mission is premised on the idea that by forming these community-led relationships, people from different countries and cultures would learn from one another and develop mutually beneficial ties that lessen the chance of new international conflicts.

[00:13:25] Today there are 545 cities in the United States with over 2100 Sister City partnerships in 145 countries spanning six continents. And since President Eisenhower inaugurated this program, every president of the United States has been the Honorary Chairman of Sister Cities International, including President Barrack Obama, who stated in his letter of acceptance of this position that, “The increasing interconnectivity of nations in today’s global economy, underscores the need for robust partnerships between communities around the world.” [00:14:00] Organizations like Sister Cities International foster such relationships, increase mutual knowledge and understanding between cities and cultures. These collaborations promote trust among citizens and nations, create opportunities for technological and economic innovation and development, and lay the foundations for continued peace and prosperity.

[00:14:23] Now the very first US-Cuban Sister City partnership was initiated between Mobile Alabama and Havana Cuba in 1998. Since then, exchanges some of which took place outside of the US and Cuba, have been conducted between these two communities, and their programs have ranged from medical supply donations and disaster relief, to cultural awareness and university exchanges. One particularly active program is Boulder Colorado, and their sister city in Cuba whose activities have included sponsoring the delivery of medical supplies and equipment, [00:15:00] renovating community libraries and protecting endangered species in Eastern Cuba.

[00:15:07] And after the normalization of ties in late 2014, the Boulder Cuba Sister City Organization President Spenser Havlick remarked “Our visits over the years are not tourism per se, but rather people-to-people interactions. It’s kind of like the Berlin Wall coming down at Latin America” And now the barriers to interaction and travel have began to break down further, US citizens are looking forward to expanding exchanges and cooperation, and their commitment to maintaining contact even during the battle days of US-Cuba relations has helped build trust and respect that will pay dividends in the future. We’ve already seen the benefits of citizen diplomacy in our relationships with Japan and

5


Germany. And sister city relationships they really work. And since 1959, 199 communities in the US have established sister cities with Japan. [00:16:00]

[00:16:01] Less than one month ago, the City of [Nagoya] Japan brought the famous fireworks to Palm Harbor to commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the end of World War II in the Pacific. Just think about that. That was only 70 years ago; and yet here they are coming together and through these relationships putting aside those, that, those hard feelings. [Nagoya] and their sister city Honolulu along with the US Navy in Hawaii jointly hosted the historic 70 years of peace commemorative event on historic Ford Island at joint base Palm Harbor. And 119 US cities have partnered with their counterparts in Germany. Wishing to set an example to symbolize peace and the ending of a horrific war, the City of Hagerstown Maryland and Wesel Germany, formerly joined hands as sister cities by public proclamation on March 10 1952; [00:17:00] actually four years before we were started and that was one of the impetuses that Eisenhower saw that this actually worked.

[00:17:08] These cities have continued to share the affiliation for the past 63 years. And somehow as they celebrate August – October Fest in Maryland and October Fest in Germany, many children and adults would not believe that 70s ago we were engaged in a World War. The closeness of our nations has no doubt been helped by official diplomatic channels, numerous trade deals, and treaties, but the slow and steady cultivation of these allies was most aided by the millions of interactions by every day citizens representing their own views and their own communities. This is why opportunities to work, study, travel and interact with citizens in countries that are [nominal] adversaries are so critical, whether it’s Cuba, Iran, Russia or another country with whom we’re, our ties are strained.

[00:17:59] As Eisenhower said, [00:18:00] “We need to work out not one method but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other” How do we dispel ignorance? How do we present our own case? How do we strengthen friendships? And how do we learn of others? These are the problems that we have, and once we start handling those, we can move forward. And once we’ve realize that we all have families we love and children that we want to have a better life and that we love our own countries and heritage, we don’t seem so divided after all. We are delighted that the political leaders have finally reinitiated official contact between Cuba and the US. And we are looking forward to building more people to people relationships with our neighbors in Cuba.

[AUDIO SILENCE]

[00:19:03] [RECORDING STOPPED]

6


Panel 1

Mary: [00:00:00] And now, it is my honor to introduce our moderator for the US government panel discussion, P. J. Crowley is professor of practice and a distinguished fellow at the Institute for Public Diplomacy in Global Communications here at George Washington University. P. J. appears frequently as a National Security Commentator on National and Global Television Networks. His opinion pieces have been published in a wide range of print and online outlets including the Washington Post, The Guardian and BBC. P. J. served as the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs and Spokesman for the US Department of State between 2009 and 2011 Undersecretary of State Hilary Clinton and was the primary US Government Interlocutor with major media regarding the impact of the release of classified diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks.

[00:00:52] He resigned from that position after making public comments critical of the government’s free child treatment of private first-class Bradley Chelsea Manning, [00:01:00] and Atlantic Magazine named him as one of the 21 brave thinkers in 2011. After leaving the State Department, P. J. held the 2011-2012 Omar Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law and School of Public Affairs, Dickinson College, and the Army War College.

[00:01:22] While there he authored the rise of transparency and decline of secrecy in the age of global and social media for the Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs. And before joining the Obama administration, PJ. was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress with a particular focus on Homeland Security in the aftermath of 9/11 attacks. He authored a number of detailed analyses on security issues including Safe at Home, a national security strategy to protect the American homeland, improve national preparedness and rebuilding the US standing on the world.

[00:01:56] He remained engaged on these issues as a member of the Aspen Institute Homeland Security Group. [00:02:00] His most recent analysis in this area is Homeland Security in the post 9/11 era published by the American constitution society for law and policy. P. J. is a retired Air Force Cornell and is a veteran of Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm in 1991. He served on the National Security Council staff that White House as Special Assistant to President Clinton and Deputy Press Secretary. He deployed to NATO headquarters in Brussels during the 1999 Kosovo crisis to support then NATO General, Secretary General Javier Solana, helping him to develop a strategic communication capability in support of the NATO campaign. And P. J., I’d like to thank

7


you very much for your service to our country and we look forward to your moderating this panel today.

P. J.: [00:02:51] Thanks very, very much.

Mary: [00:02:52] Yeah.

P. J.: [00:02:58] Sitting in the right place. Good start. Well, thank you all for coming. As Mary reminds us, the Berlin Wall went down 20… almost 26 years ago. My wife and I were stationed in Europe at the time, and yet we know that the Cold War in this hemisphere just ended in the past few months. And as a practitioner of public diplomacy, as United States seeks to build bridges around the world, the world pays attention to what we say, but the world in particular pays attention to what we do. And probably there is no more powerful statement that the United States has made in this hemisphere in recent decades than the one that President Obama made when he fundamentally changed US-Cuba policy a few months ago.

[00:03:59] And this [00:04:00] would still be a subject of significant debate in this country were it not for the transformative moment we also find ourselves in with respect to Iran. But most of the practitioners here within government probably think this is a very good thing. Yeah, you’ll let Iran take all the headlines and these individuals will quietly try to build the new relationship between the United States and Cuba. Now that’s the focus of our discussion today. And leading us off is going to be Joan Perkins, one of the point people of the State Department in terms of constructing a new relationship from a policy standpoint between the United States and Cuba.

[00:04:44] She’s the Deputy Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere under Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson. She has a very rich background in the region, and I think John is in a great [00:05:00] position to really tell us what this means in terms of bilateral relations but what this means in terms of the benefits United States will accrue throughout the region now that this obstacle, this big deal has been transformed. So Joan, kick us off.

Joan: [00:05:21] Great. Good morning! It’s a pleasure to here. And I want to first start by thanking all of you for your attendance, and your interesting, your enthusiasm for working on cultural, educational and [IB] exchanges with Cuba. You’ve heard a lot about the December 17th announcement by the president. It really did change the course of our relationship with Cuba. For more than five decades, we had held on to a policy of isolation. And thanks to the courage and vision of President Obama and President Castro, we’re in a very new and different path. We’re really on unchartered territories.

8


[00:05:58] Our new policy of engagement allowed us [00:06:00] to reestablish diplomatic relations and to reopen embassies in both of our countries. And I can tell you that a lot of hard work and dedication and patience went into those events behind the scenes. And there is some folks who are in the audience from my team who can attest to that personally, I know. After the December 17th announcements, our negotiating teams for the United States and for Cuba met on three separate occasions rotating between Havana and Washington, to try to hammer out the details of reestablishment, and what would the relationship look like, and how will we go about this.

[00:06:39] While those negotiations were happening to reestablish relations, we also continued with our separate work substance and issues that are of mutual concern to both countries. So issues like human rights and counternarcotics, civil aviation, trafficking in persons, migration; all of those sort of substantive [00:07:00] dialogues continued on their own separate tracks as well.

[00:07:05] The next thing that we came to as July 1 st the announcement of that the president made that we intended to formerly establish relations and reopen embassies and that the effective date of both things will be July 20th. So on July 20th we did a presidential exchange of letters. President Castro delivered a letter to Deputy Secretary Blinken here in Washington. And President Obama’s letter was delivered by our Chief of Mission Jeffrey DeLaurentis in Havana. There, and by that exchange we officially reestablished relations. On the same day you might have seen that the, the Cuban Embassy here in Washington officially reopened, did their ceremonial reopening here at their embassy and raised their flag. We waited a few weeks to do that in Havana. But this was all really a significant step in our relationship to this [00:08:00] point.

[00:08:02] We see it as an opportunity for the Cuban people to have new opportunities, increased resources available to them, to really improve their own lives and move Cuba along this path to a greater openness and prosperity. Getting back for a second to the August 14 th flag raise that we did on securities, how many of you watched that on TV? Raise your hands. A good number of you! You can imagine in my office I’m really glued to the TV those of us who didn’t get to travel to Havana. And for those of you who didn’t see it live, Secretary Kerry travelled to Havana, it was the first time in many, many years a Secretary of State had set foot on the ground in Cuba. And he raised the flag with the help of the retired marines who had actually taken down the flag so many years before. That was a particular poignant thing for many of us to watch.

9


[00:08:50] While he was on the ground, he met with the Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez. He talked and interacted with prominent Cuban-Americans, Cuban artists and cultural [00:09:00] leaders, civil society, the diplomatic core, a wide range of actors in civil society. And now that we’re on the other side of this big milestone and we actually have diplomatic relations, really our goal is the same. Our goal remains to empower the Cuban people and support the emergence of a democratic prosperous and stable Cuba. That’s been the goal of this administration all along. We think the new approach though and with relations we have better access and we’ll be able to further that policy in terms of our access not just to the Cuban government but also the Cuban people.

[00:09:38] In a nutshell, the new policy is very forward-looking. It recognizes the struggles and sacrifices of the past which are significant for Cuban-Americans. We definitely want to pay respects to that. But the new policy looks forward and emphasis the value of people-to-people relations and increased ties through communication, trade [00:10:00] and respectful dialogue; and that’s sort of the building block for the new relationship. In terms of what comes next and we get a lot of questions about this, everybody says, what’s next to... are we normalized now, do we have relations with Cuba, are we back like on a regular track?

[00:10:16] The answer is, “Not exactly.” We have diplomatic relations, but normalization is a very long and complicated process. We don’t expect changes to happen overnight. So we can’t wave a magic wand and sort of start over with the Cuban government. Reestablishment of diplomatic relations is just an early step in this process. And normalization is going to be a longer term process that involves a lot of dialogue and engagement between our two governments and our peoples.

[00:10:46] Secretary Kerry said in Havana on the 14th that both he and the Cuban Foreign Minister Rodríguez are determined to look forward and to look ahead. We’re approaching the process of normalization with the same resolve and dedication that we approached [00:11:00] reestablishment with. But it’s going to take some effort; it’s going to take some work. I’m sorry to those of you in my office like we’re going to still be rolling up our sleeves and working really hard for the next years at least.

[00:11:13] In Havana the next like sort of big step is that we’re going to hold a meeting of the bilateral joint committee. Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Rodríguez decided when they sat down in Havana that, we needed to have a committee that could sort of look at the range of issues and decide how to attack those issues and when to schedule certain dialogues on different topics. Everything from human rights, to civil aviation, to counternarcotics, that we needed to be sort of strategic and to sit down together to socialize those priorities and kind of plan them out.

10


And the first one of those meetings, the first bilateral joint committees is actually going to happen this Friday in Havana. Deputy Assistant Secretary Alex Lee from my bureau is going to go down and lead [00:12:00] those talks for us along with our Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis in Havana.

[00:12:05] And we’re hoping that this is going to move us forward, these discussions are going to move us forward, they’re going to help enhance the mutual understanding that we have with the Cuban government and identify a clear way forward for how we’ll tackle especially some of the tougher issues in the relationship.

[00:12:20] Promoting the free flow of information has been a big part of this. And my colleagues from Commerce and Treasury are going to talk in more detail about how we’ve done that in terms of regulations changes. But people-to-people exchanges and information flow have been a key component of this administration’s policy, not just recently, but for many, many years. A number of US universities had independently and successfully forced academic partnerships in Cuba. And we’ve seen the scholars and students going back and forth between our two countries for of course work, study abroad, programs, international conferences; and we’re hoping that easing of the travel restrictions [00:13:00] that we saw in January 16th will continue to facilitate those exchanges and make it easier for you to do that.

[00:13:09] We’re happy to see... even though this has been happening for some time now, we really happy to see since we’ve established relations, a real uptake and interest for folks who want to participate in academic exchanges, for people who want to participate in people-to-people travel. And we want to encourage those kinds of partnerships and exchanges going forward. The amendments to our regulations that my colleagues will talk about in more detail really support the interaction between our two peoples. And as the president said and I believe this firmly, “Our citizens are our best ambassadors” So we hope to continue to facilitate that. I think I’ll stop there. But I want to thank you for your time and attention and I look forward to answering your questions as we get to look further along.

P. J.: [00:13:52] Very good. I should say for those of you in the audience, you should have received a piece of paper that allows you [00:14:00] to pose a question. So as the panel is giving its introductory remarks if there’s anything you want to ask them, by all means jot that down pass it to a member of the GW staff that’s lurking here. And then they will, will take the greatest of the questions and pose them to our esteemed panel.

[00:14:23] I was asking Jeff Braunger our next speaker; he’s the Chief Licensing Division of the Office of Foreign Assets Control Department of

11


Treasury, I said, “Are you still in business?” He says, “Oh yeah” But I think in terms of how complicated this is and how long this is going to take Jeff has been at OFAC for 20 years and he has gone through previous transitions as well including Vietnam, Cambodia, Serbia. So he only, he has a great sense of [00:15:00] how long this is going to take, how difficult this is going to be, but in terms of helping us understand what now will be permitted, what now may still be some central licenses; you know Jeff, you can share your perspective.

Jeff: [00:15:15] First I wanted to mention also as a product of educational exchanges on the US side I participated in three of them between high school and graduate school. So I always found that area very interesting. And then for the, actually the 25 years at OFAC and 20 years of that time has been spent on Cuba, and within that 20 years I’ve either been reviewing or assigning license and determinations related to travel to Cuba related to educational activities. So on January 16th as a result of the president’s announcement in December, we amended our regulations. And if you looked at our federal register notice that came out, it has a summary of the 12 areas that we amended those regulations. And which included the area of telecommunications, redefining [00:16:00] cash in advance for exporters, transactions related to banking institutions, and also related to air carrier and travel agencies; they don’t need to get permission from us anymore to go ahead and make travel arrangements for people, which should help facilitate an easier flow of travel to Cuba.

[00:16:23] But the primary area that I wanted to focus on with a limited time if you could bring the slide up now; I want to see if that works. Yeah! You’d have lots of slides and lots of technical information, so I just have to... and none are very flashy; there is no pictures of old American cars or anything, so, these are the 12 categories of travel. And as you know many of you may know that these are by statute the 12 that we’re permitted to authorize travel to Cuba within these areas.

[00:16:57] And so, the big change in the travel area which is [00:17:00] a big facilitator of educational exchange and exchanges with Cuba is that, these categories are now authorized under a general license provision. So if you know many of you I’ve worked with over the years a definition of general license versus specific license is if for general license you read the regulation and if you meet the requirements of that regulation you know what it states in the regulation, you are authorized; you can go forward without any permission from us. If it says it’s a specific license requirement, and that’s a case-by-case review by our office and we issue you a document on treasury letterhead.

[00:17:35] So now the vast majority of travel falls under a general license provision, so there’s no more waiting in line to hear from us. And you just,

12


you need to go to these regulations and review the details of it, and if you determine you’re qualified then you can go to one of these travel agencies or air carriers are now permitted to go forward without any permission from us and have your, book your travel. [00:18:00] But you still have to certify that you fall within the scope of one of these categories of travel before they can make the arrangements for you. But looking at these categories, I think the ones that may have the most influence in the area of exchanges would be item four professional research and professional meetings, and number five educational activities, and number seven public performances, clinics, workshops, competitions, and exhibitions.

[00:18:26] In the professional research area, that was already, there already existed a general license for full time professionals or people doing research in their professional area to go to Cuba. Now the expenditure in there is that there’s no more reference to that the research be non-commercial and academic in nature, so it’s now expanded to that it can be of commercial research. And also graduate level full-time study related research falls within the professional research area which is also a sub-category in educational activities but it’s, it’s more [00:19:00] restricted in educational activities. And then in the professional meetings area, you may recall if you’ve to meetings in Cuba that you had to apply for a specific license from our office to attend to a Cuba meeting. The general license in the past covered international organizations meetings in Cuba, but you had to come in to our office to get a license to attend to Cuba-sponsored meeting. And so now, again you can go forward and attend meetings in Cuba. The only exception is; meetings that are for the purpose of promoting tourism in Cuba; that remains prohibited.

[00:19:35]The educational activities category that back in 2011 was already amended through the president’s statement regarding purposeful travel. And so a lot of that category had already been under general license provision before the change. So sending a class down to Cuba or graduate and undergraduate students doing academic [00:20:00] research related to doing a thesis or dissertation students attending a Cuban university, or a US professor teaching in Cuba, a Cuban scholar coming to the United States, those are all in there. And also the preparation of those activities that those were all a part of the existing general license prior to the change.

[00:20:21] What was added was high school educational exchanges are brought back; those were eliminated in June in 2004. So now that has come back. And also what we used to call academic service providers, those who assisted universities, organizations, and provided assistance to universities to make academic setting arrangements in Cuba, they no longer need a license from us; that falls under the current general license. And also the area of universities putting on professional or putting an

13


academic conferences workshops and seminars, they required a specific license [00:21:00] prior to the change and now that also falls under the general license provision for educational activities.

[00:21:06] But educational activities has two sub-categories, so the... what I just mentioned was the first sub-category, the general license A, and that that covered academic-oriented activities, university level. The second part under B, the B general license for that category, is people-to-people travel. And so that had originated back during the Clinton administration from 1999 to 2003, we were issuing licenses for people-to-people travel and that was eliminated. And then that was brought back during the president’s [IB] at a purposeful travel in 2011, pretty required a specific license. So many of you who applied may recall you know we’d got... there was quite an interesting obtain these licenses, very high volume of applications, and also required lengthy reports. So that provision is now under a general license authorization, [00:22:00] so you no longer need to apply for a license from us. And that, the main component of that is that you have a fulltime schedule of meaning interaction between the US travelers and the Cuban people.

[00:22:13] So just maybe going to the museum, or going to the cemetery, going to a farm, you know you would... to qualify into the regulation there has to be this interaction with the Cuban people, meaningful interaction, fulltime schedule.

[00:22:28] And then moving on to the item seven, public performances, clinics, workshops, competitions, and exhibitions; here organizations can put on clinics and workshops, so they can put on these exhibitions, athletic groups or universities team sports, sport teams can go down and participate in activities with the Cuban people. There are some requirements in this like donating policies or profits after course and that it would be open to the public and in relevant situations that there be interaction with our [00:23:00] participation with the Cubans and the event.

[00:23:04] So anyways, when you go to a regulations you can get all the details. Usually I have like a 15-20 page slide show with all kinds of very exciting detail. And so I’m kind of sparing you that. And then the last slide which I guess I got to do myself, this is our contact information. So if you want to see these regulations where we have frequently asked questions, it summarizes a lot of even the travel area very specific to types of travel, that’s our website. If you drop the OFAC and replace it with Cuba, that will take you right to our Cuba information web page. And then you can call us or write us. And another more popular way to get some information from us if you have a specific scenario but you’re not really looking for

14


interpretive guidance or applying for license, you can send us an email at the [email protected] [00:24:00]

[00:24:01] And then two main points which I guess is pretty apparent but these regulations, with these regulations, we have now looked at the embargo and tourist travel is still not authorized.

P. J.: [00:24:14] Okay. Alan W Christian is the Senior Export Policy Analyst in the Bureau of Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce, most notable in his biography is that he’s one of our own. And we welcome a graduate of the George Washington University back to campus. I suppose I’ll... you know a lot of people want to do business with now a new emerging market in Cuba. Alan, how is that going to work?

Alan: [00:24:44] All right! Well first of all I want to thank GW and Sister Cities International as well as the State Department for having us here this morning. It’s wonderful to be here and talk to you about Cuba and exciting changes that have happened. So just a little background, the Bureau of Industry and Security at the [00:25:00] Commerce Department administers what are called the Expert Administration Regulations. And we are an export control agency, and historically we have administered what are considered dual-use export controls; controls of items being exported that could be used for both military as well as civil users. With the president’s current export control reform, we’ve actually been receiving some less sensitive military items from the State Department to control under a more flexible regulatory regime.

[00:25:34] So within that context also on January 16 th the Bureau of Industry and Security published regulations or a rule revising our regulations, that affected multiple parts regarding Cuba. The most significant was the creation of what’s called license exception support for the Cuban people and within the export administration regulations or license exception is similar to [00:26:00] OFAC general license in that it’s a general authorization that provides you with authorization in this case to export items as long as you meet the terms in conditions. That license exception support for the Cuban people has multiple parts; it allows certain exports to the private sector in Cuba to support independent economic activity as well as to improve living conditions in Cuba.

[00:26:25] It also has an element that authorizes certain exports to support civil society in Cuba and then the last part is to improve the free flow of communications in Cuba by allowing certain telecommunications items that would be used to improve or create the telecommunications infrastructure. Another part of the January rule was to remove a requirement for what are called the Gift-Parcel Consolidators; companies primarily in the United States that collect gifts that people want to sent

15


primarily to their families in Cuba, [00:27:00] those gift-parcel consolidators used to have to have to obtain a license from us to be able to provide that service. Since January, we removed that requirement so that is easier for people to send gifts to the Cuban people.

[00:27:15] Final part... two actually, one was to allow sales of certain what we call consumer communications devices to Cuba. In 2009 we created the license exception called the Consumer Communications Devices that was limited to donations of certain authorized items to eligible end users in January. We said that those sales could be made of those items as well. And then we created a licensing policy regarding environmental protection. So people would still have to come to us requesting license but we have a federal licensing policy for the export of items that will be used for environmental protection in Cuba to help with Cuban [00:28:00] environmental as well as in international environment.

[00:28:05] In July, on July 22nd we published a second rule to implement the recession of Cuba’s State-Sponsored Terrorism Destination. That rule was administrative. It removed references to Cuba as a state-sponsored terrorism in our regulations. And as a result of that recession, certain things became more eligible for Cuba, certain license exceptions were expanded because of it coming off the list. As well as, we no longer have jurisdiction over certain phone made items that are what we call exported from abroad to Cuba. So we not only have jurisdiction over items in the United States being exported to Cuba, we have jurisdiction over certain phone made items located abroad as well as US-origin items located abroad. And now since Cuba is no longer state-sponsored [00:29:00] terrorism, fewer phone made items located abroad are subject to our regulations and therefore those items wouldn’t require our authorization to be exported to Cuba. So that’s just a broad overview and I’m happy to answer your questions.

P. J.: [00:29:20] Very good. Well thank you. Robin Lerner is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Private Sector Exchange the Bureau of Educational Cultural Affairs under Evan Ryan. And this is your second tour of the, at the State Department, served in the State Department then went up on the hill. I might ask you whether serving in post-conflict societies like Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, is harder than working hill. But Robin runs Exchange Visitor Program and obviously will be overseeing that flow [00:30:00] of people-to-people exchanges that we hope will help to transform the relationship between the United States and Cuba.

Lerner: [00:30:08] Thank you P. J., and thank you all of you for coming today. I’m also lawyer assigner better than get sectored to your question. So it’s you know, Evan put, she put these in a really wonderful framework for everybody, that the people-to-people ties that we can create and that have

16


already been happening for so many years thanks to sister cities is so vital at this historic time. I mean it’s really a historic time. So let’s not forget the gravity or the meaningfulness of this moment. So I’m very happy to be here to be able to talk about the J-1 Exchange Visitor Program. So just quickly who in the audience is a sponsor, a J-1 visitor sponsor, a J-1 program sponsor? Great! It’s hard to see with these lights. Okay great! That’s fantastic!

[00:31:00] So a lot of you are not. So I’m going to explain a little bit of what the exchange visitor program is. So just coming back to the reason for having this session in the first place, when the announcement came out that we were going to be normalizing relations, we started getting phone calls from sponsors with interest in what can we do with Cuba. And we want to bring Cubans here. Now the J-1 exchange visitor program is an inbound into the United States program; it’s not an outbound program. It is in bound. And it’s... we call it private sector exchange because it’s a system where the State Department raise regulations for programs were authorized to do so, and then we try to step out of the way and let American organizations spill those people-to-people relations. Under our authorization through regulations that we draft and we monitor the programs, by utilizing these private sector system something like 280,000 people globally came into the United States [00:32:00] last year and one of the 13 different categories of exchanges that are authorized. That’s a really big number. And that’s just new in the last year. Some of our programs are multi-year, so at any given time we may have something like 500,000 people here on a different kind of J-1 program.

[00:32:17] We like to think of it in this year is diversification so we have a number of really amazing programs that we fund, the State Department funds were very involved in their grants and the whole conceptualization and running of those programs. And those are a bit smaller in number because they’re quite costly and there aren’t always places where we can do that in big numbers. So having those private sector system, allows us to let bigger flaws happen privately funded. So there are no US dollars that are being put into these programs. There are some exceptions to that, but for the large part they’re not.

[00:32:55] So with this system, and last year, we had a total of 49 [00:33:00] exchange visitors in Cuba came under J-1. Now that is not really big for you know as an objective terms but it’s pretty big in relative terms for Cuba. So we know that there are a lot of organizations that want to increase that, and I’ll tell you. In, among that 49, the largest program were short-term scholars. So in the J-1, you have a number of programs that are academic, right? So our university, we have about 1400 sponsors we call the implementer sponsors, we designate entities to these sponsors of exchange, of J-1 exchanges so that it all goes through a state department

17


system to become a sponsor. There’s of course thousands and thousands more entities that are hosts, right? So sister cities maybe a sponsor but they may place, they’re going to do the administration of the individual to common on and exchange, and they may host them as sister cities or they may host, they may work with another entity that will host them day-to-day in [00:34:00] another kind of program.

[00:34:02] So a lot of our, a lot of universities are both hosts and sponsors of exchanges. And, but we have other organizations that use the short term scholar designation to bring Cubans over, and usually those are people with specific professional skills and expertise and they’re being, they’re coming over to do joint research, to further a project. It might be part of already long standing relationship that’s been going on between these two organizations in Cuba and in the United States. So they might work at a research institution, a museum, a library, an academic setting, and that is exactly what our scholars were doing. And we had seven research scholars that were working in academic institutions and building the linkages between their home institution and the Cuban institution.

[00:34:51] And I bet that’s what we’re going to see in the next near term when I think about what private sector entities and we say private sector not because they’re you know they have a board of [00:35:00] directors in their you know in the [DOW] but they’re just not USG, right, they’re not federal government. It’s probably a term that needs changing as I think about it.

[00:35:13] But, I think that that is probably where we’re going to see the greatest interest because we’re going to see these academic institutions that have not already been doing these throughout the years, are they starting relationships or trying to increase the relationships that they already have? We had 19 Cuban college and university students who studied at an accredited US college or university.

[00:35:36] So 49 is a number that we can build upon, and we know that a lot of you out there will want to build upon that. So I really appreciate this panel being able to discuss how to do that because that’s complicated for all of us. As you can see, it’s a whole government approach to how we face the next term. And while they will be a lot of interest and excitement the question is, [00:36:00] how… these things will take time, right, and how long will they take and what are going to the steps that organizations are going to take to build the kind of ladder across to bringing people into the United States on these programs.

[00:36:13] So we would love to know what organizations out there are interested in increasing or starting new J-1 exchanges. We are here as a resource. As you can see there’s some good information; it’s complicated,

18


perhaps it less complicated. I did not bring a slide. And so if you want to find us, we are j1visa.state.gov and there’s a lot of helpful information there. And I think we have some papers that are outside, we have someone pages out there. So find us. Can I ask anybody in my shop to raise your hand so people can find you if you have a question about J-1visas? Okay so just ask. Anyway, I’m really happy to be here and I’m very happy to questions. Thank you.

P. J.: [00:37:00] Let me ask the moderator of the program the first question. Joan you started with this point, Robin you finished with this point in terms of time. You know, there’s give or take one more year available in the Obama administration, then you know the first years of an ex-administration, what should we expect to see in the next year and what would we like see say five years from now in terms of the beginnings of a long term transformation?

Joan: [00:37:34] That’s a tricky question. It’s hard to define really like how this will go before, as I said before, we really are on enchanted waters. We are hoping to build bridges and especially with the telecommunications openings and the information exchanges. We hope that some of those things will bring our countries closer together on sort of a more rapid and accelerated timeline. But many of the things that we are [00:38:00] communicating with the Cuban government about really depends on the Cuban government and on how much they want to move the relationship forward and how quickly they want certain themes to advance. There are topics in the bilateral relationships that I think will see some movement on in the next year to two years like civil aviation and some of those things. But I think there will be other topics that will take many years to grapple with like the claims that American citizens have for property that was ceased by the Cuban government back in the 50s; and so and the claims that the Cubans have against the United States related to the embargo which remains in effect.

[00:38:45] And so there are a number of these issues that are really going to be longer term issues that will be a challenge for us to be work through over time. And of course the big piece of this P. J. is Congress and the role that Congress plays which the executive branch can only influence to [00:39:00] a certain point, only Congress can lift the embargo. And so, in terms of the progress that we can make, we’ll have to kind of keep a close eye on that issue as well.

P. J.: [00:39:11] You worked on the hill?

Lerner: [00:39:13] Oh I… that water. No, no, no. But I will say it’s from where I sit now. You know as Mary Kane said there have already been exchanges going on and it’s the robustfulness, the energy, the resourcefulness of the

19


American people to already build those relationships; they can do so outside the government context that is the private sector side of this; is the private sector exchange. Bringing people into the United States does require Visa, it requires a Visa and that means they’re here to do one of these programs that we have through a designated sponsor. So it’s going, there’s going to be eligibility that needs to be looked at just like any Visa applicant will have to meet eligibility requirements. But as we’ve already had 49 successfully doing programs, [00:40:00] let’s take the low hanging fruit that’s the programs that have already successfully seen candidates build upon those. And I think as you get a little bit more in what’s familiar territory, you can start to expand a bit more into either new institutions, new types of programs within the same types of eligibility or more hosts in the United States that are willing to bring, to have a program for people from Cuba.

P. J.: [00:40:27] From the audience Dr. [IB] asked and if I could probably slightly expand her question; she asked about the 2016 election and the potential impact of a new administration perhaps to expand or roll back some of the restrictions that are in place. I suppose you know for Jeff and for Alan, how much of this is reliant upon executive [00:41:00] authority, and how much of this will be reliant on cooperation or a shared vision between the executive branch and the legislative branch going forward. And I suppose how much of this will be you know the private sector putting political pressure on the politicians to move perhaps faster than their political comfort level?

Jeff: [00:41:28] Okay I don’t think I can really answer that question because of… although we… the policy, we coordinate with the State Department on policy, and so if there’s any changes into our policy then our office goes forward and amends our regulations to reflect on the regulatory side, what the policy is. So I don’t think I could really answer that.

Alan: [00:41:51] Similar to what Jeff said, I don’t really want to speculate on what could happen in the next administration. But, the changes that we made this year have been based on the [00:42:00] president’s authority. And so, changes could be made in the future either way depending upon who the president is.

P. J.: [00:42:08] But how much, how much will the private sector, how fast this goes to what extent is this controlled by government you know to Joan’s point we’ll move as fast arguably as we… yeah as fast as the Cuban government would. But within our own system, you know will the private sector perhaps be able to mount some pressure that enables government to move forward you know where opportunities present themselves.

Lerner: [00:42:42] I would just say like definitely the American government…

20


P. J.: [00:42:43] I’ve got all kinds lawyers here that don’t want to…

Lerner: [00:42:47] Like the thing, the thing that’s…

[CROSSTALK]

Lerner: [00:42:49] I’m a lawyer too. The thing that P. J. is really clear is that the American people support the reestablishment of relations between the United States and Cuba, and are excited about this change [00:43:00] and the polling number are very clear on that front. And so, what our government does with those numbers and those indictors I think is anyone’s guess. But, but clearly there is a strong movement in favor of relations, closer relations and breaking down barriers and strengthening the communications.

Female Speaker: [00:43:19] And it’s always important. We always say to those, to hosts of exchange that they, that there are… they serve the exchange well by showing what they’re doing to their members of Congress and to their district officers. I mean, when you see and going in local media, when you see the power, when you see your constituents really invested in building relationships and they see the benefit of exchange for their community then they don’t want to stop it, right, the economic impact that it has on the local community is very big. The more exchanges... I mean there’s spending power there. They see diversification in their communities through these exchanges. So I think , [00:44:00] they will build upon themselves and you will definitely hear a rally from people who are invested in these exchanges if there were a change in the current easing of restrictions, I think you will definitely hear that.

P. J.: [00:44:14] We have a question from [IB] from the Vietnam Education Foundation. You may have already answered this, but you know to what extent is the pace of the exchange programs dependent upon government funding versus private initiative?

Lerner: [00:44:28] Well today’s theme is about private initiatives for a reason which is this… I mean that we want to get those off the ground now. And as Joan mentioned, I mean, I think we’re all sort of talking about what’s going on with this in Cuba is well reestablishment of our diplomatic relationships, and an easing of the ability of people to have purposeful travel with one another. We haven’t exactly changed or solved all of the issues that have been on the table between our two governments but that continue to happen. This is all about the ingenuity [00:45:00] of these private organizations. So, and within the J-1 program we have 13 categories that people can come into United States on, there’s a number of things that can happen outbound.

21


[00:45:10] So it’s really… I think the pace is going to be set by what people come up with. Again, remember that there is this eligibility requirement, and so as I sort of said, the low hanging fruit is those that are, are those exchanges that are already happening with that, those types of exchanges.

P. J.: [00:45:27] And Jorge from partners of the Americans is kind of asking specifically about educational exchanges, could those be to our your phrase, low hanging fruit that can move more rapidly to develop or would there be other initiatives that we see much more prevalent early on in the effort?

Female Speaker: [00:45:55] I mean I think educational exchanges are primed for expansion. [00:46:00] I mean they are within the 12 exceptions. We’ve already seen that movement; we’ve seen about a 35% increase in travel I think this year compared to last year in general. I know the breakdown is there for educational exchanges, but we’re definitely seeing an increased tendency and we hope that that will continue.

Female Speaker: [00:46:21] I would say that... and I would say that is, that are highly skilled and professional. Those are, those are you know that kind of scholar-to-scholar level, I would say those are probably right for expansion, if I can keep out the exchange, the J-1 program.

P. J.: [00:46:39] Mark from Florida State University and I think, you know Jeff you mentioned the impact of external events. You know there was an initiative during the Clinton administration in the late 1990s and the brothers to the rescue tragedy took [00:47:00] a lot of that impetus and it ground a hole. But now what do you do with provisions under health’s patent? You know are there residual elements that are still, that still shape the relationship? Are there things that will have to change within Congress that allows us to accelerate, as you said once the country has come to an understanding about what we want to do together and how rapidly we want to move down that path.

Jeff: [00:47:32] Yeah, I don’t have much to offer related to the views on the connection with Congress and how it’s building in our regulations. I guess that would be more for policy shop or regulatory people. So for me, as long as the regulations are in place the way they are, then you know my team would respond accordingly to the request that we give related to those activities that are permissible.

Female Speaker: [00:47:58] Again the president... President Obama [00:48:00] has called for Congress to lift the embargo and only Congress can lift the embargo. And so you know homes burden and other legislative provisions

22


that are in place will have to be re-appealed kind of one by one in order for us to really make the kind of breakthrough that people I think are looking for in terms of trade. The regulatory changes have opened up a lot of potential and a lot of places for increased commerce, and trade, and exchanges, and all these kinds of things, but they can only go so far. I mean Congress has to take those last steps.

John: [00:48:37] I’m John McCoff. I think and perhaps Jeff you’ve already answered this question, the question of organized group travel and whether general licenses will be extended to individual, individuals, families, groups, to organize their own independent people-to-people trips. What are [00:49:00] the parameters now and you know what might need to change to expand that opportunity?

Jeff: [00:49:08] You know, I mean the way the regulations are written now that the travel has to be undertaken under the offices of an organization that sponsors people-to-people travel. So individuals don’t fall within the scope of that general license as far as saying, “I and some friends would like to go down to Cuba and have our own educational exchange” That the regulations require that it be, that the travel take place under the offices of an organization. And I never speculate on the future.

P. J.: [00:49:42] To kind of wrap up, for each of you, what... this is a historic transformative moment, what does it mean for the United States in terms of its bilateral relationships with Cuba? [00:50:00] what does it mean in terms of the kind of change that we’d actually like to see in Cuba and perhaps how has this reset the relationship between the United States and the rest of the western hemisphere? Any thoughts on that as we wrap up.

Female Speaker: [00:50:23] Well I would say that any time we expand or we see a vigorous number of participants for a particular country you just know that means the Americans people are being educated about that country in depth. So we cannot really know what is going on in Cuba unless we go there or we spend time with people who live there. And we need to create those mechanisms for the American people to actually have real information about what’s going on for people there. So, the easier the restrictions, really... I mean there… I almost feel like we should put the least back up, because there is a lot of purposeful travel that is [00:51:00] now authorized. And that those people being interested in each other and the Americans that come back and explain that to their members, their lawmakers that will make an impact in the position that maybe the perspective of those people who are writing the laws or have the chance to change laws.

[00:51:19] But it also is just going to naturally bring our countries closer together and let’s just face it, when Mary gave her examples of Japan, I

23


mean it’s amazing to be, to think that there’s this sister city between Japan and Hawaii. And this isn't, hasn’t been that long. And we are sort of trailing behind in some ways, right? So it’s what you all want to do, and I think for other state from, at the bureau of education on cultural affairs side, knowing kind of where these exchanges are happening and what’s happening in them will really help us greatly. We will just want to know what’s going out there so that we can kind of keep raising, so cheerleading basically. And then knowing what the obstacles are that remain [00:52:00] and see what efforts we can make toward helping with those.

Male Speaker: [00:52:05] Well the regulatory changes that we’ve made at the Commerce Department have really been aimed at supporting the Cuban people. And I think they have already and I think they continue, will continue to do so. And we certainly welcome new ideas on things that we might be able to do in the future. But I want to highlight a couple of things that we did in January that supports your sort of exchanges for example in the license acceptance support for the Cuban people that I mentioned before, it now allows certain donations for educational activities and scientific activities. It also allows certain temporary exports of items by persons departing the United States for Cuba for using educational activities, scientific activities, professional research.

[00:52:53] So those elements of the licensing exception are really intended to support these exchanges with the Cuban people [00:53:00] in Cuba. We also, although we have jurisdiction over the release of what we call technology or certain types of information to foreign nationals in the United States including Cuba, we have certain exemptions for what we consider to fundamental research and published information. So what we’ve done again is really aimed at supporting the Cuban people supporting the sorts of activities exchanges that you have with the Cuban people. And we think they’ll continue to make a big difference.

Jeff: [00:53:35] You know just say with respect to travel, the conversion from specific license requirements to a general license requirement I think will go a long way in facilitating increased travel and then there’s more review as to think of what the outcome would be but it would seem that that would be the case.

Female Speaker: [00:53:53] For us it’s so significant to have formal established diplomatic relations with Cuba. That’s such a big change after 50 years of not [00:54:00] having that kind of relationship in the channels available to us. Now we do and we have the means to interact not just more with the Cuban government but with the Cuban people on the ground. The exchanges, the people-to-people, the cultural academic exchanges, are such a big part of this. The more information, the more technology, the more people interface with each other, the more progress we make on all

24


fronts. And so you can’t underestimate I think the significance of that. And the establishment of relations has also helped us P. J. as you alluded to in the region.

[00:54:32] There was definitely air turn in our relationship in the region because of the Cuba issue. And we saw an overwhelmingly positive response to reestablishment of relations with Cuba from all of our regional partners. And I think everyone wants us to succeed in that bilateral relationship. And we just hope that the efforts that we’re making into zero policy will result in a democratic prosperous and stable Cuba.

P. J.: [00:54:56] Please join me in thanking Robin Lerner, Alan Christian, Jeff Braunger [00:55:00] [IB].


Panel 2

Lydia: [00:00:00] Welcome back to our second panel of the morning. This is the exciting time where we get to discuss how to actually do all these things that we’re talking about. And I think that we’re going to have a very lively discussion about what’s worked, maybe what hasn’t worked, and more than anything about the opportunities for engaging Cuba. My name is Lydia Barraza and I’m the Deputy Public Affairs officer at the US Embassy, it’s lovely to say that, in Havana.

[00:00:30] We... I oversee many of the educational programs that we have at the MSE distance learning programs, the internet centers, and many of the academic and cultural exchanges that you all are interested in. So I’ve met many of you and I’m delighted to see you again in a totally different environment, in Washington DC. And I received emails from even more of you in my biz that is my email inbox. And we are delighted from the State Department and from the US Embassy in Havana, to see [00:01:00] the interest in furthering cultural and academic exchanges in Cuba.

[00:01:07] So before we get started, I want for all of our panelists to be aware of who is in the audience and the types of experience that each of you have. So let’s go through a little bit and talk about with a show of hands where you’re all coming from. So how many of you are affiliated with a university? Okay. This is good for networking also, for our networking hour after we finish. How many of you are affiliated with an NGO or a Non-Profit Organization? Okay. How many of you come from a think tank? Okay. And Department of State my colleagues who worked so hard to make all of this happen.


25


Lydia: [00:01:52] Great! Welcome. I’m curious also about your experience in Cuba. How many have travelled to Cuba? Whoa! Wonderful, [00:02:00] taking advantage of the new [bags] and less paperwork! How many of you have been working in Cuba for over five years? Okay. Over 10 years? Way back when, in the over 15 years? Great! Great, wonderful, excellent to see you! Those of you how haven’t yet had experience, I’m curious just shout it out, what kind of exchanges are you thinking about; student exchanges?

Speakers: [00:02:32] Yes.

Lydia: [00:02:33] Yes?

Male Speaker: [00:02:33] Yes.

Female Speaker: [00:02:33] Yes.

Lydia: [00:02:34] Faculty exchanges?

Speakers: [00:02:35] Yes.

Female Speaker: [00:02:36] Practical and the cultural…

Lydia: [00:02:38] Okay, culture. Okay great.

Female Speaker: [00:02:40] Like this is the visual artist.

Lydia: [00:02:42] Oh artist, oh how many artist type of exchanges do we have in here? Okay. All right, great! Great! We really have a diversity of participants and I think that this all leans itself to the discussion and the diversity of the panelist that we have here. So this morning we talked [00:03:00] about the policy, the new regulations that are in place that allow for greater opportunities of exchange between American citizens and Cuban citizens. How do we move forward on a practical level, the president, President Obama’s policy on Cuba and further engagement, and moving to a Cuba where Cubans will decide their own future? And a big part of that is exposure to the outside world and exposure to the United States and American values. And you all are the people that will provide that exposure and that kind of activity.

[00:03:36] There are challenges making two-way exchanges rather than just one way. And we’ll talk about, our panelists will be addressing those. I want to go ahead and introduce our first panelist Jennifer Attal Allen and she’s been working in the field of education abroad for 25 years. She founded Academic Programs International in 1997 with three other

26


women and has served as the President of [00:04:00] API since then. They currently send over 3,800 individuals to over 20 countries. And I have personally hosted in my residence her students who served... who came to Cuba last semester to study at the University of Havana. So I’ve seen on the ground the impact that study abroad, study in Cuba particularly has on college students. So I will go ahead and hand it over to her to start.

Jennifer: [00:04:28] Hallo everyone. I’ve been asked to talk basically about the hows and whys and the best practices in standards of studying a program and operating a program in Cuba. And I am very, very pleased to say that the student exchange in the program study abroad is amazingly active and we have more and more interest every day. I’d like to give you a little bit of history though about the education system in Cuba. We…


Jennifer: [00:05:07] I’d like to give a quick overview on the education in Cuba. 97.5% of children attend school until the age of 14. There are 3.2 million students enrolled in different levels of school. There are 220 institutions of science and technology that employ more than 30,000 workers. There are 1.8 scientists and engineers per 1000 inhabitants and more than 7000 PhD holders. There are 69 universities in country and 17 of are accredited by the ministry of higher education. There are over 21,000 professors employed in these institutions. And six percent of the Cuban population has completed an undergraduate program. Only graduates are granted jobs, they receive their university diploma together with notices of employment, and one out of seven workers in Cuba is a university graduate. [00:06:00]

[00:06:02] API’s longest relationship has been with the Universidad de La Habana and I will focus on that particular university for my talk. But there are several other institutions in which API holds agreements and runs programs through in Havana. And these along with several others in which you can establish your future programs. The Universidad de La Habana is the oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning in Cuba. As part of the university, there are 14 centers offering studies in specialized areas as well as 18 different departments. The University of Havana’s personnel totals 3,792, undergraduate students total 14,645, and graduate students total 5,300.

[00:06:45] There are 23 PhD programs in 21 areas of study. And it’s not surprising to be the stature of the amount and the amount of programs available, but the university was a pioneer institution in developing, in the development of academic exchange between Cuba and the US. [00:07:00]

27


[00:07:01] Today, the university has signed 444 international agreements with the universities throughout the world. It participates in more than 50 international organizations and is part of 35 academic and science networks. There are several areas in which you can establish a relationship and some options include semester programs, customized programs, short and long research, academic training, president's provost and trustee visits, teaching staff mobility and exchange, joint research projects, and joint articles, joint workshops on special topics, and participation in conferences seminars and workshops.

[00:07:46] I’d like to provide more information regarding how to operate a successful program in Cuba. Before moving forward with any plans to operate a program in Cuba it is extremely important to consider how much you’re willing to invest in training, staffing, and long-term [00:08:00] infrastructure. You need people who can dedicate their time to becoming specialists in managing accounting, logistics, legal, and policy issues both states sides and in Cuba. And as an important side it is not possible for US programs to contract Cuban nationals to work for them as resident directors. As such, you have to identify staff who are willing to be able to live outside of their home country for an extended period of time, and who possess the skills necessary to acclimate to the new culture.

[00:08:30] Once you have identified who will be your Cuban specialists or specialist, you can start to identify potential partners for collaboration in Cuba. It’s very important to respect the system and the hierarchy of who must be approached first and who you must work through to establish programs in Cuba. Some people have expressed having issues with establishing relationships, but we have never had that experience but have always gone through the proper channels when setting up our programs. I also believe that we do not, that we have not had some of the same difficulties as some of the individual universities because we represent so many different [00:09:00] university groups and have so many opportunities to continue to interact with our Cuban partners. They see us as a sustainable partner.

[00:09:10] Most partners in Cuba, like in the US, prefer to enter into formal agreements and sign traditional MOUs before receiving students. These MOUs are often signed in person, in Cuba. Until very recently, educational programs are concentrated within Havana. And just recently, the Ministry of Higher Education in Cuba has initiated a process to facilitate short-term and semester programs for North American students outside of Havana. The process is just getting underway and some details are yet to be determined. If you wish to ultimately set up a program outside of Havana at the university level, the Ministry of Higher Education must first approve such requests. API has started the process through the

28


ministry and it's hopeful that we’ll be able to launch a program outside of Havana in the near future.

[00:09:54] Potentially, the opening of other sites within Cuba outside of Havana, will allow for great capacity and increased student exchange. [00:10:00] To give you an example of the high level demand for programs in Cuba, API has had 58 requests this year alone for short-term faculty-led programs in Cuba. Thus far, we’ve had to only turn away eight of those because of timetable or the specific nature of the request, and are looking at operating approximately 50 programs over the course of the 2016-2017 academic year for affiliate universities.

[00:10:26] The type of academic tracts that you can offer in partnership with Cuban institutions are extensive. The trends that we are seeing include anything from the science to social entrepreneurship, from the scientist to social entrepreneurship and business practices, cultural studies, history, language as well as architecture in the arts to name a few. We recently focused on the designer program in Marine Biology which allows US and Cuban faculty to collaborate on areas of mutual research interest. We have been informed that this is a particularly engaging area of study for our Cuban partners along with business and social entrepreneurship programs. There is room to grow in [00:11:00] both of these areas due to shared interest and the needs on the ground. And I’d like to shift gears a little bit to discuss how to obtain the Visas necessary for students to attend these educational programs. API has obtained our Visas in two distinct ways for our students. The first is through the former Cuban Interests Section and now Cuban Embassy. The process is a bit complicated but works very well.

[00:11:24] First we send the copies of the student passports to our counterparts at the Universidad de La Habana with the students program applications. They in turn get a radio number from the Cuban Embassy in DC. They then send us the radio number. Students complete the applications; we mail them to DC with the radio number photo, $70 for participant with the US postal service money order only, and we include an express mail for the Visas to be returned. If everything is completed, the turn-around-time is usually less than a month and the students will have their Visa in time for entry into Cuba.

[00:11:54] For some of our other programs who operate in Cuba, the Cuban Partner Institution obtains the Visa in Cuba on behalf of [00:12:00] the API, and the Cuban Representative meets our students and US Representative at the airport prior to the students going through immigration, literally right after they declaim. And the students then have them for arrival. We always receive a copy of these Visas prior to a program start day to give to the travel agencies state side to facilitate the

29


travel on this chart of lights. Both processes are relatively seamless and we’ve experienced minimal issues.

[00:12:28] I’d like to end my part of the discussion by reiterating what an exciting time it is to be operating and starting programs in Cuba. All of the efforts in energy that you put into Cuba will be well worth it, for both our Cuban counterparts and the US, and our students. Anyone who touches a program in Cuba has the opportunity to grow on a personal level. Having been involved in the field of international education for more than two-and-a-half decades, there has never been another country that I felt offered more meaningful and enriching opportunities for education of people-to-people exchanges. I know that these young students [00:13:00] will one day be the leaders of their respective nations and set the policies that shape how our countries relate to one another in the future.

[00:13:07] To me, each piece of paperwork that we must process, each set of rags that we must seek to understand and assimilate, allows for the personal transformations that take place as a result of operating programs in Cuba. I think that our former students can say it best. I'm going to end my section with the quote; it's from one of our students. She said, “I would not change the experience for anything else. My time in Cuba has been amazing. I love the culture, the people, the history…" and this is my favorite "has everything; and everything that comes with Cuba is amazing. If I had the chance to study abroad again, I would hands-down choose Cuba again." Thank you.

Lydia: [00:13:45] Thank you, thanks. Our next panelist is Mike Eizenberg. He’s the President of Educational Travel Alliance and has been working in Cuba since 2001. He specializes in friendship tournaments for athletic teams [00:14:00] most recently the NBA, and university and academic programs, as well as dance music and religious groups. He is a very courageous man because he is taking a very large group from [IB] Boston to Cuba next week for the Pope’s visit. And for any of you who have travelled on Chicago Flights to Cuba, he’s even more courageous because he’s travelled to Cuba over 60 times and dealt with that mass. So Mike, please.

Mike: [00:14:27] Well, first of all Lydia it’s a real pleasure to see you here in [Nodic] Havana. The last time we saw each other there was so many pending projects. We scarcely ever have time to get through the whole list, but somehow rather the projects get done. And to begin, I want to acknowledge the great support that our organization and I’m sure lots of organizations have received from your embassy where it went from, your office when it was the Interests Section and from the embassy. [00:15:00] And it’s a real pleasure to look up and see Lynn [Rocia]. Lynn served in Cuba for three years and the changes that she both participated in and

30


observed are astounding. And it surprises us; everything that happens in Cuba is a surprise. Because, what was impossible and unthinkable yesterday suddenly it happens the next day, and it’s never, it’s never easy. It never goes from Point A to Point B, it goes from Point A to I-don’t-know-where to some-place-else, and it’s something extraordinary.

[00:15:42] I want to take, say a few words about exchange. In 2000 when we started working in exchange, it was during President Clinton’s administration. And it was a shock to the Cubans that we were able [00:16:00] to go there. And it was a shock people-to-people meetings; can you translate that into Spanish? I mean what does that mean? You can travel all over the world, and it doesn’t say you have to participate in a full-time schedule with people-to-people meetings. This is something that uniquely happened in Cuba because of initiative that President Clinton took. And it really forced organizations like mine to find a way to engage the Cuban people. And anyone who’s been involved in travel anywhere, knows that the best part is not the [] tower it’s not the Eiffel Tower, it’s not the Louvre, it's not the Prado, it’s actually connecting with people.

[00:16:44] And President Clinton’s initiative, we felt was going a long way. And we didn’t know the exact words of how to explain it, but little by little it started to happen. Many of the friends that made back in 2000 [00:17:00] are integral to the programs that are for now. I want to say something about the word exchange. Exchange means something happens both ways. So initially, we only brought people from the US to Cuba, what turned out to be very rich people-to-people programs. Subsequently, we said you know, "We’re off at such amazing hospitality here, and we're made to feel so welcome. We have to invite you to come back." And somehow or rather, somehow or rather in the beginning everyone said phs-phs-phs-phs. Because in the beginning Cubans didn’t have passports, only a very select few would be allowed to leave the country. Approximately five years ago, Cubans all were able to get passports. Five years ago, with the help of people at the Interests Section, we brought Danza Contemporánea [00:18:00] de Cuba from Cuba to the United States for a two-week tour that included the Joyce Theatre in New York and in, and actually the Strand Theatre in Boston for no good reason except that I live there. And it was extraordinary.

[00:18:19] And to be with these young dancers and watch just their minds opened up, open up as they encountered what it's really like to be in the United States, and to see their minds change, it was something extraordinary. Today we have… last night, we had a softball team arrive from Cuba includes many players from the Cuba big leagues but they’re my age, they’re not young guys. We’re going down in Cape Cod to play in the Cape Cod Invitational Tournament; they won last year my team didn’t, I hope to reverse it this year. And then [00:19:00] today is the night. So

31


today the Malpaso Dance Company is arriving from Cuba, they’re going to be in Los Angeles and subsequently in Atlanta.

[00:19:10] And I want to say that exchange means it happens both ways. And one of the reasons we believe that our programs have been able to have the depth that they have is that it’s been both ways. And by having people come from their here, it's really opened up opportunities for us to have deeper and richer exchanges there. So I encourage you if you want to have a program in Cuba, don’t only think about people from the US going. Everything that Jennifer said is true, and I’ve been involved in international education for more than 40 years. And I didn’t get to Cuba until 15 years ago, but I echo everything you said about the experience for students. [00:20:00] But, it’s just very important to realize going there is big. Cubans coming here and going back to Cuba and relating to the Cubans all the goodwill, the way that we genuinely are here, is something extraordinary.

[00:20:19] I want to say that from you know, there's, there was a term that we used for a long time for international exchange it was "breaking the ice" because there was ice between two cultures and you had to find a way to breakthrough. In Cuba, there's no ice to break. Cuba is actually three... we’re a nation from immigrants from all over the world. And most of the places you go France is French, China is China, Cuba is people from all over the world; there are people from Africa, there are people from Spain, and the US until 1959 [00:21:00] had a major cultural impact. And we’re used to cultural diversity just the way that they are. So there’s no ice to break. And we’re just like them; we can’t keep our mouth shut. You know the most popular phrase that you’ll hear from a Cuban is “Don’t tell anybody I told you this” So and what I always say is that, “Tell everybody I told you this” So it’s a unique opportunity.

[00:21:33] I want to say that, we are, we were actually, there’s longer a requirement to be a license travel service provider, we were licensed by the US government to bring legal groups to Cuba. And we’ve dealt with lifelong learning organizations, with colleges, with the universities, with dance companies, with athletic teams; we’re very proud to have taken the NBA there [00:22:00] in April. We do a number of what we call embedded courses with the universities or professor teachers 11 or 12 or 13 win course of which one we spent in Cuba to really experience Cuba after having learned about it. And our programs are initiated and they are done through the institutions that Jennifer spoke of and professors come and work with the universities and the professors work on syllabi and things like that before.

[00:22:43] But those embedded programs there’s no reason for any university not to encourage that. That is something that’s fully licensable

32


from the US point of view. It is something that can be arranged by a private organization like mine. The programs [00:23:00] are extraordinary. And the difference between just learning about Cuba in the classroom and then actually going there is staggering.

[00:23:11] I also want to say something about athletic teams. We took amazing course from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. There was voices from the heart, yeah voices from the heart; 125 ladies and me. So but there’s something every summer called Colt… no, every other summer excuse called Colt Habana. So for the first time ever, a US course went and participated in Colt Habana which had courses from all over Latin America plus us. These ladies were so talented and sing their hearts out. And every place we went, they sang both the US National Anthem and [00:24:00] the US National Anthem, and I can only tell you I had tears in my ears because I looked in the audience and saw all the tears in their eyes when the two national anthems were sang by those ladies. This means so much to the Cuban people that they get to see a side of us that we should be very proud of, that doesn’t come through media.

[00:24:23] And then every year we bring a number of support teams, any age group in sports exchanges. Again, it's just a great way for people to get to know each other in a cultural exchange that they’re comfortable with, that it's not just talk; it’s just doing things together. So and I just want to finish my remarks by saying that everything is so dynamic in Cuba. Anything, everything is changing. And the rate of change will probably slow down, but it will incorporate [00:25:00] so much of the work that we all do. And bridges are built one brick at a time. New relations are not so much built by legislatures in the two countries, but by people who find a meaningful way to interact.

[00:25:17] And I want to say that I think the current administrations program foreign policy, Visa, the Cuba has been enlightened. I think the contributions that I’ve seen people like Lynne, and Lydia, and Tim, and Conrad have made, have been extraordinary. And I think we’re not ever going to be in a final place I don’t think in a relationship with Cuba, but I’ve seen it at least in my opinion from talking to the Cuban people, I know they feel so much better than they did 15 years ago. They're so much more optimistic that their future might be better. And they’ve always [00:26:00] been welcoming, and they feel that they’re welcoming attitude has been more than reciprocated by us. And I think that’s something important. It’s an honor to be here, thank you.

Lydia: [00:26:11] Thank you Mike. And before we move on to the next panelist, I just want to remind all of you that you’ve received a little piece of paper for questions. So if you do have any question for any of the panelists or the panel in general, just make sure to hand it to the staff that’s here

33


collecting the questions, and we’ll go through those at the end of the panel.

[00:26:31] Our next panelist is Cynthia Vidaurri. She’s a Folklorist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian. She first went to Cuba in 1999 with James Early to this noble idea of proposing to the Ministry of Culture the idea of a Cuba festival. And then over the course of time, she’s travelled all over Cuba and advised on the content for the Smithsonian journeys [00:27:00] to Cuba. She’s currently the Program Curator for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on Cuba, so a lot on the cultural side. Welcome Cynthia.

Cynthia: [00:27:10] One of the first lesson for women to live and to arrive in Cuba is always ignite the niceties, and you always say Good Morning, good day, good afternoon to folks when you first meet them. And you need to kind of get rid of your American personal space bubble because everybody will kiss you, and it’s absolutely nothing but good morning or good afternoon.

[00:27:30] I'd like to, I want to thank all the folks that put this event together because this is an historic moment. It is an important moment. And I think if we do this well, it will set a course in the way our future connections and exchanges goes. So it’s very important that we not just be there but that we be there in some sort of substantive fashion and do things well.

[00:27:53] I want to acknowledge all the folks from the State Department that have always helped us through since ’99, since I’ve been travelling there. During these, we’ve [00:28:00] learned a lot of names and faces and have gone through different tenures of folks being there. And just when we feel we’re at home and comfortable with one set of folks, you get cycled out, and we get to meet another wonderful set of folks that have been very helpful in this process. So for us, it’s very important to have that kind of support in doing the work. All of our work is complicated as it is on our side, but when you add the bureaucracies on both sides and logistics, it makes... you have to do work in order to do the work, so that kind of support is critically important to us.

Mike, you said in 1999 James Early, my longtime colleague and friend and family member from the Smithsonian who was at the time Director of Cultural Heritage Policy approached me about going to Cuba. I thought it was a really wonderful idea just the thought of going to Cuba and doing a Folklife Festival project. And I’m really impressed to hear kind of your visions and your philosophies about the way you do your work because that’s precisely the way this Smithsonian Folklore Festival approaches things in the [00:29:00] kind of deep engagement and associative engagement and with [apricity] you’re so critical to this. And I think that

34


speaks a lot to the success of being able to have a long-term sustainable project in Cuba. So we thought that Cuba would be a wonderful idea for a folklife festival. How many of you have been to the festival? If you haven’t, you need to go out and do it every summer; it becomes a local tradition for you.

[00:29:26] But we’ve done this kind of work that’s now coined people-to-people long before we knew the term as people-to-people, the Smithsonian Festival is designed by intent to do this. So we thought Cuba was a perfect idea. And I was really amazed on this first meeting, James and I going there. And they said you know all these kind of protocol-administrative type meetings that we go from meeting, to meeting, to meeting. And I think I technically overdosed on Cuban coffee over the first few days because at every meeting there was Cuban coffee. And at one point, they have a presentation for what they’re doing in the field that’s parallel to what we do.

[00:29:59] And I remember leaning over to James [00:30:00] and telling him, "James, we have nothing to offer these folks" because I was absolutely blown away by the quality of the research that was done, and that was probably for me were the first most important lesson is; never underestimate what Cubans have done. Their scholarship is incredible; there’s a tremendous amount of value as a nation on education and culture, and we have scholars and collaborators on this project that have done absolutely world class research and scholarships on this, which makes my life as a curator much easier because I don’t necessarily have that in every environment in which we work.

[00:30:39] So that was to be very important thing like, what do we offer folks, what is it about the, what the folklife that's different? And I think fundamentally is the same types of things that we’re talking about. This is a place where everyday people get to talk to everyday Americans on the mall. And it’s a symbolic place, where this is kind of where our democracy plays itself out, and this is a way for people to get [00:31:00] past the rhetoric, past the politics. And I think it’s important to make a footnote here, because when we talk about Cuba and these kinds of exchanges, in our minds it’s seared that this is an idea of what’s happened in politics in the last 50 or so years. But our two nations have a history that goes back to when we were both colonies of European powers. We’ve had positions towards and about Cuba around a whole array of issues dealing with shipping, dealing with piracy, the institution of slavery, and we have such a list histories that we cannot removed ourselves from it.

[00:31:31] There’s so much about who we are as a nation that we cannot talk about without really understanding Cuba. So to be able to talk about your traditional culture in Cuba, basically we’re talking about bringing

35


100-125 folks that are the living embodiment of their collective history that intersects with ours in some way. And for me, that was a really exciting place where the project go through.

[00:31:55] We’re in a slightly different position with the Smithsonian, and that carries a lot of really wonderful cloud [00:32:00] and also very complicated baggage. People assume that we have money for these projects which we don’t necessarily do and we have to go through in addition to doing the work, raising the money to do the work. But we also have, as a large institution, we have the same kinds of complexities of other large institutions, that we have our own policies and procedures to go through in addition with those policies and procedures then match by equal number of policies and procedures on the outside time.

[00:32:25] And I have to say that we were very fortunate in a sense because James has got… and James excuse me for dating you, but, 35-plus years of working in Cuba and I completely acknowledge that I rode his curtails in there because it’s so important that your reputation precedes you. You have to do what you say you’re going to do in Cuba, and you had to be very transparent about it. So I was very fortunate in being able to not spend that much time in the front end of that project, we’re able to go in, and then in that very first meeting the ministry approved it and that the approval came from the Minister [00:33:00] of Culture himself. And it was a done deal. We were assigned 45 scholars from throughout the country to help do the research, so we have a tremendous amount of support that normally for other projects we would have to raise the money to do that, but there was incoming support that came to us.

[00:33:17] And this project for Cuba or any other department or organization requires a tremendous commitment of time. It requires a tremendous commitment of resources. And I quickly learned what that means in Cuba, learning well, there’s about one, its power outage and you can’t make the phone call, and back then you couldn’t send a fax at a certain time of day. So that mean perhaps I had to stay in the office till nine o’clock, so when the power came on and somebody indicated that I could now send a fax would do that. So you have to become adept in living and functioning within the kind of challenges that they face there with infrastructure and such. But, we also were very fortunate that we [00:34:00] have and now have a very key important partners in this because of the scale and scope of the project. It has to be kind of toppled down as well as grassroots up as we go through there.

[00:34:12] And there’s multiple stages in this project, where we're together working on the conceptual framework, and that’s going to guide the project and the content development. It determines a collective set of objectives because in addition to wanting to put something that’s engaging

36


on the mall for people to observe and participate into, we wanted to mean more than that. You know what did we really want to do. And this is where the Cubans really came back to us, “We want Americans to know us as people” And that was really important and that came through over and over again. We deal with a series of workshops and exchanges, because, we go into places with assumptions. And sometimes we’re a little bit too insolent and think like, everybody does it our way. So these exchanges were, "Okay, this is how we come up with… this is how we do our field work, this is why we need the field work."

[00:34:58] And it’s a little bit difficult to be in a room with people [00:35:00] who are award-winning researchers, who had published and who does the… For me just to tell, "I need for you to do your research report this way" Because I really wasn’t trying to tell them you don’t know how to really do the research but this particular entity requires a certain kind of structure there. We together do the field research, and we do site visits independently some of them are doing field research. At some point in the future, once we get… for the down and content development, we’ll be doing other exchanges, I mean and site design with [IB] colleagues here who has for free labored on this because she’s passionate about the topic and work with science design. Another colleague who was Former Assistant Technical Director who’s given hours of labor because of the commitment to the idea of feeling of how to actually build this item the mall with about a week’s lead time and to endure the summer weather.

[00:35:53] So these folks have really kind of been advising us. And if, for those of you who have seen the festival know that this is a monumental [00:36:00] activity and it requires a tremendous amount of energy and bodies and will to get this done. Together we will work out programming sessions what will the narrative sessions be like, what are points of interest? My job is to help them understand a little bit what American audiences are interested in. They know their culture the best. I am helping to make the translation into what our venue is like. And it simple, we'll actually do presenter training; these are the folks that help facilitate the exchange not only doing the language translations but also doing kind of the cultural translations, which to me is one of the most challenging things about working in places that are in some ways very different from this.

[00:36:40] I think your point is very well taken about the two-way exchanges that it’s critical; these can’t just be a project for the Smithsonian but it has to be a project that benefits them given the amount of time and labor and resources of their communities, how does this benefit Cuba? And you know we’re hoping that we offer another way of presenting [00:37:00] traditional culture in Cuba that perhaps is a model that is unique in the world. I mean this is what’s really we've kind of been

37


experimenting and people have come to the festival to look at that as a guiding force. So much of these is a negotiated process.

[00:37:17] One of the things that I have to say that is probably one of the most difficult thing for a curator is to say, "No we can’t bring that." It’s a wonderful thing but we can’t do that with a 100-125 slots for people to come here" Because we would basically have to bring the entire island over because the range of possibilities are just tremendous. And what do you leave out? There is so much that could possibly be done there. So it’s been a tremendous, tremendous experience for me. I never imagined that it would turn out to be what I've experienced so far and I have to confess my own ignorance as undergraduate student from the University of Texas in government with folks [00:38:00] in Latin America I thought I had read everything about social, political theory, and economic theory, and I thought I’d read everything about Cuba. I got there and I had to check it out the window and really talk to the people and learn from the people.

[00:38:10] And it was very humbling on there. And still after 15 years of doing this, I’m still learning trusting people who now trust me to explain things to me when I don’t understand what’s being said, because it’s not just the language translation, it’s the subtleties of what’s meant and it’s in Cuban Spanish. On that first trip when James and I were there, I was in an elevator at the National Hotel, and I rode all the way to the top and there was these two Cuban men there. And they were talking to each other and by the time we were done with the elevator right I thought, "How in the world am I ever going to work with the Cuba?" because I didn’t understand one word they said. And it was Cuban Spanish.

[00:38:49] And so now I speak a totally hybrid version of Spanish that includes a little bit of everywhere in relation with a lot of Cuban Spanish, but it was absolutely necessary to get through that process. [00:39:00] Had I not had the advantage of going with a colleague who showed me the ropes and not had the advantage of representing an institution that’s well respected and recognized in Cuba, if I had to do this all by myself, what kind of advise would I give myself, what would I want somebody to tell me?

[00:39:17] And my colleagues here have mentioned some of these things to them. Be patient and persevere. I have been doing this project since 1999. And multiple times James and I thought, "We’re actually going to get this off the ground" And then things happened totally beyond our control, then we said, "Okay, maybe not so much right now." And we’re still there, and we kept it alive in bits and drags and found little pockets of money and we’re able to move it along a little bit at a time and just kept the idea live and kept on going back, and kept a presence there for the project over the course of many years. Understand time constraints for

38


Cubans. They are in tremendous demand right now. You are one of many people who [00:40:00] wants access to the... so if they don’t get back to you and what you think is an appropriate business timeframe, you may be in a very long line. And it has nothing to do with kind of the way they’re working; it’s just the reality of the workloads that they’re facing.

[00:40:15] Do your homework; do your homework. Who do you need to work with, what their your process for getting approved; and it varies according to the project, the scale and scope of the project. What are the protocols of that type of project? Know what you have to do. Be prepared. Know what it is that you want to say. Know how it might impact then make recommendations for how it might be impacted. What’s the purpose of your research and project? What are you going to do with this once you gather all of this information or say that you’re going to take people to the United States to do things, what is the purpose of it?

[00:40:49] Finally, what’s being done in Cuba? That point it would be really amazing to use it, it was for me at that first meeting that they didn’t need to do anymore research, they had pretty much [skewered] the island and found [00:41:00] just an incredible wealth of cultural resources for the type of work that I’ve been doing. What kind of demands will your project or activity have on their staff and infrastructure? How is this of specific benefit to them, why would they want to partner with you on these things?

[00:41:17] And all these things are kind of a bit important to know. And there is you know amount more of questions that we could possibly ask ourselves. And I have to say, after all these years of working there, I was extended a tremendous amount of war chest with our major partner organization. And at one point all of a sudden, this new person appears in email and says “I need for you to send your Vitae. I need for you to send me your…" You know, what is your research finesse and additional research project that I was working on. You know, what kind of questions are you going to be asking?” And I’m simply going like, “Does he not know who I am?” Like, “Does he not know that I’m there every other week?” And I was a little bit offended by it at first, and then I thought, "No, you know he’s just doing his job." And after I got off my high horse for a little bit, I stopped to think about it. That it really made me think about what I was [00:42:00] asking for colleagues to do for me, because, yes they didn’t send me a lot of policies but once again I was straining their resources and their infrastructure.

[00:42:09] So it was... Again, I get humbled a lot in Cuba as I go through, learning through the process. But I really encourage you to think about all the possible ways that your personal interest in your organizations can maximize the potential for exchanges between the two countries.

39


[FOREIGN LANGUAGE]

Lydia: [00:42:31] Thank you Cynthia. And our final panelist is Adam Kaplan who comes to us from the Sister Cities International which we’ve already acknowledged as being on one of the principle organizers of this symposium. He’s the Vice-President and he’s responsible for member services for over 545 US communities that have 2,100 partnerships in 145 countries. He works specifically [00:43:00] on some programs in Africa and Iraqi youth exchanges. So he also has tremendous insight into the programs that already existing and the partnerships that already exist between US and Cuban Cities.

Adam: [00:43:13] Thank you.

Lydia: [00:43:13] Welcome Adam.

Adam: [00:43:14] Thank you. Thank you to GW for hosting us. And to my fellow panelists, good morning. I know you want to pick up all the cultural tips that you can wherever you are, so good morning to everyone. And I’m going to take a page out of our moderator’s book and ask a couple of questions mainly because I’m curious. How many people before you came here had a heard of a sister city relationship, just heard of the relationship? Okay. How many of you actually knew what they did? Okay, fewer. How many of you have ever participated in a sister city or could name your hometown's sister city? All right, so we still got some work to do. You’re in the right spot.

[00:43:52] Mary talked a little bit before about some of the activities that sister cities do and it really is a tremendous breadth of activities; and that’s one of our strengths [00:44:00] is our versatility. People do exchanges in art, culture, youth, education, municipal exchange, technical exchange, economic development, humanitarian work, and everything in between. Really, it’s an incredibly versatile framework under which you can do activities. All sister city relationships are established by the mayor or highest elected or appointed official signing a Memorandum of Understanding establishing the relationship. So if you hear about a sister city relationship, it means that it’s received official approval from municipal governments. Sometimes cities will have their own, other stipulations or requirements before establishing a relationship, but for us all you need is for the mayors to sign up and then it’s a permanent relationship.

[00:44:45] And also that we talk about sister cities, but there are sister state relationships, sister county relationships. We’ve seen US cities twining with districts and mega cities in China. So basically any administrative region can form a sister relationship. In terms of how

40


[00:45:00] they’re organized, around two-thirds of our members are incorporated as 501(c)(3)s here in the US. And when you hear me talk about a member, I really mean a community, a US-community that takes part in the sister city program. Around two-thirds are 501(c)(3)s, the remaining are either unincorporated volunteer groups, maybe they run out the city government, maybe they’re housed in another organization like IBC or World Affairs Council or university. Sometimes they might be run of a different part of municipal government, anything from the Chamber of Commerce, to Office of Tourism, to the Mayor’s Office, Office of [IB] City of Office of International Affairs. But really in terms of organization, we consider them to be not just a network of organizations but a social framework and a social movement. And that again is one of our strengths.

[00:45:52] So within a sister city program you might have the municipal government doing exchanges and city planning and water management, [00:46:00] you might have universities and high schools doing student exchanges or faculty exchanges. The Chamber of Commerce might be organizing trade visits. You might have museums doing art exchanges or things like that. And this all happens under the umbrella of the sister city relationship. Abroad they tend to be more municipal focused, tend to be more run out of municipal government offices. And for better or for worse, this means that you are closer to all of the decision makers, but as anyone that's worked with municipalities know sometimes when administration changes, everything will go quiet, and you have to rebuild all of those relationships.

[00:46:38] So really successful sister city partnerships don’t just work with municipal governments, they work with different organizations within the community. And this sort of framework I think is one of the our biggest strengths, and sort of how we got to this place of not focusing on one particular type of exchange I think it goes back to our core mission which is to build peace through mutual respect, cooperation, and [00:47:00] understanding; one individual, one community at a time. Which is a little touchy feeling for DC but really I think is a strength for us, and it colors everything that we do. And I think it’s really something that provides our motivation to people. I know that we are a peace-building organization and people approach these exchanges with the idea that this is overall even if you’re going to learn about something or to help figure out how to do something better, the core is to build peace. And it’s a recognition that this peace can only be built through personal relationships. And we’ve heard some of the other panelists talk about you know people might go on a sports exchange or on a educational visit, but when they come back they say, "The thing I love most is the people."

[00:47:41] And we start from there; we say the most important thing is to have people-to-people relationships and exchanges and long-term

41


engagement; the type of activity that you do that comes from that is almost incidental. But we do insist that there are mutually beneficial, and that they involve cooperation, they involve mutual understanding. And this has a lot of benefits. [00:48:00] Americans for better or worse sometimes have a reputation internationally of being somewhat patronizing. We like to say that we encourage people to be partners and not patrons. Even though other members do, do humanitarian work or deliver medical supplies to cities in Cuba, there’s always this concept of reciprocity and I think that really speaks to other communities abroad and the type of relationships that they want to do. And I think that a lot of US cities can learn a lot for many communities abroad. Certainly I think US cities could learn a lot about hurricane preparedness or medical fields or things like that. So there is a lot to learn and it’s great to hear all the practitioners and panelists really emphasizing that it does have to be a two-way relation. And as part of sister cities, there is this insistence that you have two-way relationships.

[00:48:50] One of the benefits I think of putting all these exchanges under the umbrella of sister cities there is that we really as communities and organizations to pull their resources, pull their contacts [00:49:00] and pull their knowledge. We’ve already heard a lot of panelists talk about some of the difficulty, even for people that have been going there for 10, 15, 20 years but every time we got back it’s a little bit different; there’s different groups to jump through, different processes. There is no flow chart or organizational chart that is going to allow you go get your activities done; a lot of it is who you know and being able to leverage your relationships and build on that knowledge.

[00:49:25] The idea under sister city programs is that whether it’s a municipal government or a chamber of commerce or another organization doing these activities, there’s always going to be a lot of pure learning that goes on. And it’s a way to connect cities and have a holistic approach to engaging internationally. And I think this is really important for all these organizations to have such limited resources. I don’t think it’s controversial to say especially in this panel that exchanges and cultural activities and these things are underfunded and we’re often very strapped for cash. And time is money, and then how you spend your staff time [00:50:00] investigating and researching things, if you can have someone that can save you a couple of hours of research or can save you time and effort by making an introduction, this is incredibly powerful and beneficial.

[00:50:12] And this is the way that we see sister city programs building relationships in these communities. It brings everyone under the same banner and provides more resources for everyone to use. And also I think that by having the municipal government as signing off on these relationships adds a certain sense of authority that this is really

42


representative of the community. And it’s a way of having checks and balances between civic organizations, business, elected officials, all playing off one another and sort of negotiating the relationship with the community abroad.

[00:50:48] The other advantage is that these are long term and permanent relationships. The idea is that even if you’re working on a short-term project or program, you’re always going to come back. You’re always going to… that you’ve never seen the last of a [00:51:00] visitor in a sister city program, and people once they get involved they tend to stay involved. Once they have that initial visit and they meet someone and they start thinking about, you know when someone mentions Cuba they don’t think about seagulls and old cars, they think about their friends. And that’s what all of us in exchanges really look towards, and that life changing experience is that when you think of relationship between countries that’s about how you interact with individuals and your friends abroad and that I think is at the core of sister cities.

[00:51:30] So being able to build on this knowledge and that sort of underlined goal is always going to be very important to our members. In terms of specific sister city programs, one advantage also is that we don’t just work in the big cities; we do have sisters cities in Havana and Holguín and Santiago de Cuba, but there’s also in Matenzas, and [Vegla] and Caibarién; you can have a town of any size form a sister city relationship. And this is [00:52:00] important for two reasons because you just don’t need to work with and understand, you know you can understand America by coming to New York City and DC. And you aren’t going to understand Cuba by staying in Havana the whole time. And it's funny, you know, dealing with a lot of visitors coming into the US they're always saying… anyone that’s been involved in the IVLP program will say, okay you’re going to go to New York, you’re going to go to DC. And then, we’re going to send you to Minot South Dakota or Peoria Illinois or you know Amarillo Texas. He will say, "Why am I going there? What’s the... why?" And then they come back and inevitably that’s the best part of their trip, because it's where they engage with people the most and it’s where they can really engage and see a part of the country that they don’t see normally.

[00:52:49] And we feel it’s the same way here. We want people to go outside of the major cities in Cuba to develop these relationships. And we want people in the US who aren’t from big cities to have the opportunity to build these relationships. [00:53:00] Even Mary one of the cities she mentioned was Havana Illinois which is smaller city, I think it has around 5,000 people so we probably aren’t going to try and twin them with Havana in Cuba, but we’ll look at a community of a similar size. And there’s this idea that if you’re doing exchanges in all these fields, having

43


cities that are of similar sizes, they might tend to have similar resources or restrictions on resources; similar challenges. A lot of times people will form relationships based on similar geographical qualities that they have to deal with and that was one of the motivating factors between Mobile and Alabama because they’re both port cities… Mobile and Havana. It might be because they have similar universities or those sort of institutions, similar industries.

[00:53:50] And a lot of times the thing if you’re looking to start a new relationship, the thing that always helps them the most is having a personal connection. And people laugh, but really, so many [00:54:00] sister cities start because someone married someone from another country and they have some good connections back in their hometown. And, and they leverage those connections and that knowledge and there’s always going to be a few champions that service that bridge to help get these things started. But once they get started, they do have a life of their own and you might have one like it was Tacoma [CM Flagos] which initially started doing medical exchanges and delivering medical supplies. And as people built connections and as the community became more aware of the relationship and more people get interested. Eventually that lead to in 2012, doing an exchange where members of the symphony and [CM Flagos] came and performed with the Northwestern for me at the… which their name of Seattle's or Tacoma's symphony and played concerts in Tacoma, at universities. And also they travelled to Cuba to perform [00:55:00] as well. So having that mutual aspect in all these things build interest and motivate others in the community to take advantage of that relationship.

[00:55:10] So, I can monologue about sister cities for another hour, but I think I’ll go ahead and stop there and look forward to hearing some more questions later.

Lydia: [00:55:19] Thank you Adam.


Concluding Remarks

Lydia: [00:00:01] And I will quickly introduce our, one of our closing speakers. This is the, Gonzalo Gallegos is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy for Public Diplomacy in Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. And he brings with him a wealth of expertise in Latin America. He serves all over South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, most recently comes from San Jose, Costa Rica as the Charge D'affaires, before coming to be the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the State Department.

44


[00:00:32] I know Gonzo specifically because I have been cleaning out years and years of files of my office. And he was the Public Affairs Officer to Havana in 2001 to 2003 in a totally different era. And cleaning out for days thousands of files, I realized the creativity really that it takes for a Public Diplomacy Officer or that it took especially in previous years to really implement creative [00:01:00] innovative programs, and the real challenges that they face that we are now starting to kind of see disappear as we enter this new era. So please welcome the Deputy Assistant Secretary, Gallegos.

Gonzalo: [00:01:18] I appreciate it. Lydia was a time-honored exercise in the Foreign Service Bureaucracy. I’m sure she’ll be unhappy to hear that when I cleaned out those files, I came across about $385 sitting right there that I was able to use for my, for the public diplomacy stuff. So, so that was great. I doubt I left any cash in the safe but thank you.

[00:01:48] I want to thank our hosting partners, the George Washington University and Sister Cities International for their contribution to this symposium, the panelist for their shared expertise, and you the audience for [00:02:00] your engagement. You know the reality of it is, is that we in government have learned over the years that these types of programs can’t happen just by government alone. And in fact we need citizen partners, universities, non-governmental organizations to come together and to work with us to truly have successful programs and to really make a difference, so I want to thank you all for participating. It’s your responsibility as private democracy, and you get so much more out of it by sharing the experience with us.

[00:02:36] We hope this is exchange of ideas and shared experiences and best practices have kind of strengthened your resolve, giving you some good ideas, and a general direction to head towards. As Lydia said, I was, as the Public Affairs Officer and the spokesman for the US intersection back in 2001 to 2003, those were probably some of the darker days [00:03:00] definitely in the last 20 years of the bilateral relationship. And it was a different time. And it was a time where our program as Lydia I’m sure saw all of the paperwork that was involved in doing it, our programs were involved in highlighting the differences between our two governments. And what the new... what the Obama administration has provided us and you all with the new policy is an opportunity to build programs based on what we have in common. And so, I urge you all to be creative, I urge you all to become engaged. You know we as public diplomacy practitioners see everything through a complimentary lens that the incredible opportunity that we have in strengthening the people-to-people connections. The practitioner panelists as well as many of you in the audience have done some really amazing work in [00:04:00]

45


partnering with Cuba on academic and cultural exchanges; and you described some of the realities of working in this field today.

[00:04:09] Some of you with deep and long relationships working in Cuba, I know and have told us about the challenges that you face, frustrations with these challenges, and the time it might take to cultivate the relationships and partnerships to implement exchange programs are bound to surface. However your committed and serious efforts coupled with the agreement and coordination with the Cuban people and adherence to US and Cuban policies and regulations are needed in order to continue these steps to a positive and normal engagement. In reality what the president has done with new policy is really placed upon your shoulders the opportunity and the responsibility to create this high level of engagement that is going to bring a common understanding between our two peoples and really advance [00:05:00] what the president has started.

[00:05:04] We used to work by sliding things under the door, the closed door, and then the door opened the crack; and now the door is probably I’d say about half-way open. And then the reality of it is, if wanted to, if we want to open that door fully to allow for direct work between our two countries, a lot of this is going to be dependent upon you all, the private sector, universities, NGOs, who want to participate and learn more about the Cubans and share our experiences with them.

Male Speaker: [00:05:34] Thank you Gonzo, so I’ve always, I get to follow someone named Gonzo which rather intimidating. I want to thank the State Department and Sister City’s International for helping us bring together this fantastic event. At GW, we are very committed to engaging in the future of exchange programs and [00:06:00] research and anything else that we can do to further relations between the United States and Cuba. One of the ways in which we do is through the Institute for Public Diplomacy and Global Communication which is part of the College of Arts and Sciences, School of Media and Public Affairs which Frank Sesno is the director of but also the Elliott School of International Affairs. And this is a real focal point for us going forward.

[00:06:24] We already have students as Frank mentioned that are engaged in research projects in this area. We have one student here say today who with her partner who is actually doing study abroad in Argentina right now is doing a capstone project in our global communication masters program this year, that will be looking at public diplomacy between the United States and Cuba. So, this is an area in which we’re very much committed and want to be a part of.

[00:06:53] There were a couple of things that I thought are really important that came out today. One of them is the importance of patience.

46


[00:07:00] That was something that really came out of both panels with Secretary Ryan, said this is something that is going to take a lot of time. There’s a lot of protocol involved, there’s the importance as a couple of people especially in the second panel mentioned, of taking the time not only to go through the paperwork and the steps that are necessary but in listening to your partners in Cuba and understanding that their needs are. Understanding what they’re going through, understanding as someone said that they’re being deloused right now as well. And so that kind of patience is really important.

[00:07:34] But that’s what public diplomacy is about. It’s a long-term effort. The genius of public diplomacy and the reason why those of us in this room are committed to it is because it can survive through politics and partisanship and rhetoric and administrations, and if we have the patience to stick it up as well. We had a lot about how the goal here from the United States’ [00:08:00] perspective is to empower the Cuban people. But I think there’s another way to think about it that came out of a lot of the discussions today too. Which is that people-to-people exchanges, exchange programs generally; one of the great things about them is that, if we do them right then we’re listening a lot in the way. Which means in the process of doing them, even in a situation as you were describing where so far most of the exchanges you know US citizens going there and we need to find ways to increase the direction going the other way.

[00:08:33] Even in these circumstance, people-to-people exchanges done right means that we’re empowering everybody involved in that. Because, if you’re listening while you’re in Cuba, then you’re being empowered as well. If you go into these programs with a sense of humility, the kind of humility we heard from our panelists who are engaged in these, then that’s exactly what will happen. It’s not just about empowering the Cuban people, it’s about through this process powering [00:09:00] ourselves; understanding their perspective of us in the same way that we’re trying to engage with them in our perspective.

[00:09:09] Breaking the ice, this sort of building relationships in these people-to-people exchanges we know… as an academic I can tell you that we know from a variety of different domains that research shows us very clearly that this type of exchange program can work very effectively especially when it’s peer-to-peer. Okay, so its exchange programs or any sort of exchange situation in which you don’t have a peer-to-peer relationship are much less effective in the kinds of programs we heard about today. Where you have people engaging with other people from other cultures who are very much like the military-to-military exchanges for instance, are great examples for successful public diplomacy efforts in this area where you have officers with other officers and that sort of thing. People-to-people exchanges, artists to artists exchanges, these are areas in

47


which we know from research in [IB] and other areas [00:10:00] we expect to have a great deal of success. And it’s one of the reasons why we’re confident that these sorts of public diplomacy programs have been successful in past and can be successful in the future.

[00:10:12] So I want to just wrap up by saying that this has been a wonderful opportunity for us. But I think it’s really as Secretary Ryan tweeted this morning actually, the beginning of a process. That this event and that preceded it especially in the last year is the beginning of a process. And that if we continue it, is the kind of thing that can survive the kinds of challenges that P. J. was raising in the first panel about politics or elections or that sort of thing. The more momentum you build through these kinds of programs, the less rhetoric, the less the politics, the less the partisanship will matter. We already heard the public according to polls at least is very supportive of this sort of relationship of this change and this thaw [00:11:00] and that’s going to have a lot to do, and that’s going to have a lot of impact I think on the future here.


48

Documents

ipdgc.gwu.edu Bridges... · Web viewstudents, educators, actors, athletes; [00:03:00] all sort of types, more than a million people that this program has touched over the years as