According to the Associated Press, technology experts are gathering in Miami today to “brainstorm ways to improve access to the Internet and information” for the people of Cuba.
Unless their solutions include ending the U.S. embargo, their brainstorms will amount to little more than a light drizzle.
Medical Graduates in Cuba
When they try to go to class, students get this message instead:
“Our system indicates that you are attempting to access the Coursera site from an IP address associated with a country currently subject to U.S. economic and trade sanctions. In order for Coursera to comply with U.S. export controls, we cannot allow you access to the site.”
This cut-off is, of course, big news and, as one Internet expert suggested, very hard to explain: “My first reaction was anger that the Cuban government would block educational material — maybe they were trying to censor something from a Latin American history class?”
To be sure, Cuba is uncomfortable with the Internet and access to the web is meager compared to its neighbors in the region. But Cuba is not the cause of this problem.
Cuban students got shut out of their classes because, as the company wrote on its blog, “Under [U.S.] law, certain aspects of Coursera’s course offerings are considered services and are therefore subject to restrictions in sanctioned countries.”
We have often used this page to illustrate the costs and futility of our Cuba policy: the Cuban-American war hero barred from visiting his sons on the island, American diabetics unable to obtain a medication that could save them from amputations, the global condemnation of the U.S. embargo delivered annually by the UN.
But, after our country staked so much of our foreign policy on the Internet as an instrument of free expression, this story takes the cake.
Back in 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made our position clear: “We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas.” With this declaration as its guiding light, the State Department forged ahead.
The State Department built partnerships between the U.S. government and Internet companies to engage students globally through education. When the Department joined forces with (believe it or not) Coursera, this is what Meghann Curtis, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs said:
“The State Department and USAID promote a more peaceful, prosperous world, and we all know one of the best ways to get there is to ensure that all people have access to high-quality education.”
How do we “ensure” such a thing? We get tough. In November 2012, the United States imposed sanctions on several people in Iran for Internet censorship. Explaining the action, then-State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Washington was determined to stop the “Iranian government from creating an ‘electronic curtain’ to cut Iranian citizens off from the rest of the world.”
Or, we get crafty. In Cuba, our government engages in risky schemes using taxpayers’ money to “boost Internet activism,” as the State Department advertised last year:
“Digital Tools for Safe and Effective Civil Society Initiatives (subject to the availability of funding, approximately $850,000): The project should provide Cuban activists with ongoing capacity building and assistance to increase their level of technological proficiency and their ability to utilize new and existing technologies in a secure manner.”
This last clause is a reminder to applicants that the Helms-Burton program that funds these initiatives is illegal under Cuban law; just ask Alan Gross.
In other words, U.S. policy has made an implicit choice: While our sanctions broadly restrict access by Cuban students to educational content on the Internet, the government funds covert activities to give that access selectively to Cubans reached by our regime change programs.
As CDA’s Lisa Ndecky Llanos told Inter Press Service:
”The stated U.S. policy is that they want to enable Cubans to access information and be a part of a global community, but in this instance the policy is doing the exact opposite of that.”
When Meghann Curtis was interviewed about State’s partnership with Coursera, she told Fast Company magazine: “One of the classes is American foreign policy. I think that will make an extremely rich forum to debate the issues.”
Rich indeed! One class that Cuban students can’t access is called “21st Century American Foreign Policy,” taught by Professor Bruce Jentleson, whose course description reads: “What is American foreign policy? Who makes it? Why is it the way it is?”
Why is Cuba policy the way it is? It tries to fix a Cold War problem with sanctions that do not apply to the Internet Century. While Coursera meets with well-intentioned Treasury and State Department officials to make the service it offers “not a service,” we think the root of this problem is more akin to a “Flashing 12.”
Know the expression? That’s when you walk into someone’s house and their VCR is stuck “Flashing 12:00,” because they cannot figure out how to program it. You just can’t reprogram the embargo to make it work, you have to end it.
