We’ve all come across it, the mind-boggling ignorance of many Americans when it comes to Cuba, or even worse yet outright lies about the socialist paradise. It should not come as a surprise when we see the people shaping American perception. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger has appointed John Coatsworth as dean of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Mr. Coatsworth once discussed the management of the Cuban economy and its relations to the Soviet Union in the 1980’s in the following terms:
The benefits of this strategy were impressive,” Mr. Coatsworth wrote, citing, “rising standards of living in a society characterized by a high degree of equality and universal access to employment, basic nutrition, housing, education and medical care.” When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, he wrote, “Cuba confronted an economic catastrophe roughly equivalent to what would occur in the rest of Latin America if the U.S. government were suddenly to impose an economic embargo on trade and investment in the Western Hemisphere.
Any doubts as to where and how firm the ground on which this worthy gentleman stands? Read the article in the New York Sun in which “experts” from Otto Reich to Jaime Suchlicki to Mark Falcoff voice their objections. Shameful.
4 thoughts on “Look Who’s in Charge of the Hen House”
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Everyone –
Coatsworth IS right about the effect on CUBA when the new Russian Government pulled the plug, and to an extent of what would happen if the US embargoed the Hemisphere. The point he misses is that the rest of the Hemisphere TRADES with the US and vice versa, selling goods and services we are ready, willing and able to buy. The SOVIET-CUBA relationship was nothing like that. Without discussing right, wrong or indifferent – the USSR subsidies to the Castro Regime were the price the USSR paid to maintain influence on the island. When that situation ended – so did the subsidies. -S-
What’s sad is that these people are academics; they know better, and are just trying to spin another success out of failed marxism.
It’s far worse than sad; it’s perverse, malicious and fraudulent. So many SOB’s, so little time…
In the early ’80s Coatsworth was a grad student at the University of Chicago, where he was a well known and outspoken supporter of communist insurgencies in Latin America. From what I have read he has not changed his views much, if at all, since then.