Sign This Petition in Solidarity with Cuban Scholar Denied Academic Freedom by Cuban Government

The Cuban government is preventing Alexander Hall,  young Afro-Cuban scholar and social movement specialist from leaving the country to continue his education in Ecuador.  Sign this petition to demand that he be allowed to leave.

Alexander Hall, a young Cuban researcher, earned a full scholarship at FLACSO Ecuador through his own academic merit to pursue a master’s degree in Political Sociology. His academic work has been essential for the critical study of Black republicanisms in Cuba, the criminalization of protest, and counter-hegemonic analyses of the social uprising of July 11, 2021, which was the most significant popular social protest in Cuba that spread to 70 cities and led to the government  imprisoning 1500 people as political prisoners. He is also the coordinator of a key book on this subject, where diverse voices —across gender, race, and class— reflect from critical and socially grounded perspectives.  https://marx21.net/2023/07/11/libro-cuba-11j/

Today, Alexander faces a serious violation of his academic freedom: Cuban authorities are preventing him from leaving the country to continue his studies abroad. The migration ban imposed on him began after the publication of the book he coordinated on July 11, 2021. —a fundamental contribution to understanding contemporary Cuban reality.  https://www.sinpermiso.info/autores/alexander-hall-lujardo

To allow him to travel, the Cuban authorities are asking him to record a video “admitting” that he is a “counter-revolutionary activist.”  This type of coercion violates basic ethical principles and constitutes an unacceptable form of pressure against any academic, journalist, artist, or producer of critical thought.

Intellectual work does not exist to please political power, but to contribute truth, analysis, and debate. As long as criminalization of protest and threats against researchers, artists, families of political prisoners, and producers of meaning persist in Cuba, it is an ethical duty to denounce these practices and defend the right to critical inquiry.

For this reason, we make an urgent call to:

* The Cuban and international academic community

* FLACSO Ecuador, CLACSO, and all Latin American academic networks

* Researchers of republicanism, Afro-descendant studies, and critical thought

* Media outlets, platforms, and organizations that have supported Latin American critical left perspectives

* Artists, intellectuals, and human rights advocates

We ask for your signature and your public statement in solidarity with Alexander Hall to demand that he be allowed to leave Cuba and pursue his education in Ecuador.  Reject persecution, censorship, and arbitrary restrictions against Cuban academics and intellectuals.

Today it is Alexander. Yesterday it was others. Tomorrow it may be anyone who dares to think, investigate, or narrate Cuban reality with honesty.

We demand the immediate end of these practices and full respect for academic freedoms.

Sign and Share:

https://forms.gle/jXm6Lzv6Mrw5e8cKA

Signatures:

Nancy Holmstrom, Philosophy Professor Emerita, U.S.