Class Notes: Paul Hare and a Changing Cuba
Since President Obama’s landmark announcement in December 2014 that the U. S. was forging new diplomatic links with Cuba after a 50-year embargo, many in the media, politics and business have been scrambling to catch up on news of the tiny island nation. But for Paul Hare’s students, that’s just business as usual.
“Cuba in Transition,” a 500-level class offered at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, takes the unique approach of focusing on Cuba’s current events – a rich seam even before Obama’s announcement.
“One of the big attractions of this class is that it is the only class at BU, perhaps any American university, that deals only with modern Cuba,” said Paul Hare, Lecturer at the Pardee School, who teaches the class. “It posits that learning about Cuba is relevant to the present and the future, whether a student wants to go into NGOs, business, education or other fields. When students finish the class, they know as much about contemporary Cuba as policy makers in Washington.”
Hare would know. Before coming to the Pardee School, he served from 2001 to 2004 as the British ambassador to Cuba. From both Havana and Boston, he has had a front row seat to the seismic changes that have characterized modern Cuba, and has helped Pardee School students understand them.
“The course’s central objective is to help students understand Cuba, and that doesn’t simply mean in regards to its relationship to the U. S. – though that changing relationship has the potential for enormous ramifications,” Hare said. “For 55 years, this is a nation that has been ruled by two brothers, that has had a single political party. It’s a fascinating and complex story.”
Hare, who arrived at BU to teach diplomacy, designed the course and uses a ripped-from-the-headlines approach to syllabus. Students learn from up to date media coverage and materials from sources like the Brookings Institution – and, occasionally, from each other.
“One thing that’s wonderful about BU is that they have a strong commitment to travel. Students have been traveling from BU to Cuba for many years,” Hare said. “We’ve also often had students who were Cuban-American, who hard learned about Cuba from relatives or in some cases traveled to visit family.”
What’s next for the country? Hare knows Cuba too well to do more than guess.
“Those who try to predict the future in Cuba often fall flat on their face,” Hare said. “No one knows where they will be in 2020. But there will be a non-Castro in power in 2018, and all sectors of the economy will open up – a middle class might even develop, one less interested in being deferential to centralized control. It’s going to be interesting.”
What is certain – when change comes, students will learn about it in “Cuba in Transition.”
Hare is a Fellow of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University and a member of the Brookings Institution Core Group on Cuba. He has also written a new book on diplomacy, “Making Diplomacy Work: Intelligent Innovation for the Modern World.” Learn more about him here.
“Cuba in Transition” (IR 529) will be taught on Tuesdays in the fall semester. Learn more here.