Crimson Red

Red-baiters of the world: unite! A paid employee of Fidel Castro's dictatorial regime is teaching architecture at Harvard.

As if the exploits of Dr. Cornel West were not controversial enough, Harvard recently hired Professor Mario Coyula-Cowley, an architect, Castro confidant, and "the first Cuban professor since the 1959 revolution to teach at Harvard," according to the Boston Globe.

As Cuba's foremost architect, Coyula is a lifelong Castro supporter, a senior member of the National Union of Artists and Writers, and the former director of the Group for the Comprehensive Development of Havana. Before the revolution, the mild-mannered professor of architecture even studied with Fidel at college.

As one would expect from a communist, it's impossible to separate Coyula's politics from how he approaches his work. Improving Havana's architecture somehow involves "finding a new model of production and appropriation of the built environment Ö [and] the the construction of a new paradigm, that of a sustainable socialism," writes Coyula in one recent paper, "Havana Forever, Forever Havana."

By Cuban standards, Coyula made a comfortable living in his hometown of Havana, earning $35 a month (the average Cuban makes $15 a month). In contrast, Harvard's School of Design is paying the professor $50,000 to teach two spring courses.

"Money isn't everything," says Coyula. But apparently money from Harvard is good enough to buy a new car and improve the Havana apartment where the good doctor spent his entire life. Money also means a lot to the thousands of Cubans who survive on funds sent from their American relatives living in exile.

With his substantial raise and his comfy digs in the People's Republic of Cambridge, one would assume Coyula is a happy man. After all, he shouldn't feel lonely: his wife and son came with him to America.

But the professor isn't entirely satisfied with his host country. "There are too many choices," Coyula complained to the Globe. "You go to the supermarket and there are 80 different kinds of cereal when you're just looking for oats. Or you make a call and you end up talking to a machine when you're looking for a person."

Unlike Cubans living under Castro, Americans face many choices. They can decide for themselves what car to buy, which house to live in, what brand of oats is best. The freedom to choose is what liberty is all about. And many Cubans have died in order to preserve, or reclaim, that freedom to make choices.

When asked if Harvard should hire a paid employee of Fidel Castro's sweatshop-state, Harvard professor Jorge Dominguez told the Globe, "I don't have to agree with [Coyula's] political views to respect his professional work. That's what the university is about."

But academic freedom is supposed to be a two-way street. Perhaps there would be some logic to Harvard hiring Professor Coyula if Havana U. hired Harvard Professor Harvey C. Mansfield to teach on liberty and virtue for a semester in return. But that's not about to happen. Mansfield's Straussian conservatism would be seen as a threat to the Castro regime.

Which is why Coyula is in America to begin with. A committed party member, he doesn't run the risk of defection, and certainly isn't threatening the Cuban leadership. And the urbane Coyula will promote Castro's image abroad. What's more, it won't take a SWAT team to send him back to Havana; he's already told the Globe he's looking forward to returning home.

The hundreds of Cubans who sought freedom last week at the Mexican embassy in Havana should be outraged. Here's one lucky Cuban allowed to leave his prison of a country only because he doesn't want to go. This is the loopy nature of communist regimes: one plus two equals four, war becomes peace, and freedom equals slavery.

But college students have reason to be angry too: Coyula's official title at Harvard is Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor. Ask yourself what Bobby Kennedy would say when told Harvard is paying a friend of Castro's $50,000 in his name. A dozen words spring to mind, but none would be appropriate in a family paper like Spectator.

In fact, the only person who should be happy about this is Castro. He knows that Professor Coyula's ideological purity won't be corrupted during his stay with the Yanks. Castro also knows that Coyula will be an apologist for his regime. For example, when the Globe inquired about Coyula's thoughts on democracy and pluralism in Cuba, the professor replied, "Open opposition could lead to the destruction of the revolution." In other words, a free press, dissent, free trade unions, and political parties might re-introduce Cuba into the Free World.

According to Coyula, that would be a bad thing. But I have a feeling that those languishing in Cuba's political prisons and the urchins begging for change on Havana's streets would disagree.

Matt Continetti is a Columbia College junior majoring in history.