Accusations against Cuban academic tarnish their tour of universities in Spain

The Academic Freedom Observatory (OLA) has denounced the participation of Cuban academic Sergio Guerra Vilaboy as a lecturer in various Spanish universities.

Ola accuses the Director of the History Department of the University of Havana, to be a «censor» and hold it responsible for the expulsion of Cuban historian and activist Leonardo Fernández Otaño of the Doctoral Program at the Faculty of Philosophy, History and Sociology of that Center for High Studies.

According to the complaint, the graduate as a historian from the University of Havana and a doctor in Philosophy from the University of Leipzig, Germany, would have questioned Fernández Otaño for a publication on social networks in which the student, identified as part of the doctoral program, demanded that the university magazine Alma mater greater journalistic rigor in its coverage on the protests of July 11, 2021.

«It is really worrying that a subject indicated by several human rights organizations due to their complicity and involvement in the violations of the principles of academic freedoms, come to give conference and courses in institutions located in democratic and liberal states,» the activist wrote in his social networks.

«It gives me a little pity with the students who listen to it because many do not imagine, who have a censor in front of a censor who would be able to expel him from their careers. I hope that one day someone respects the dignity of the survivors and our demand for repair – not repetition,» he added.

The Academic Freedom Observatory rejects in a statement the Vilaboy War Intervention in Spanish universities, arguing that the academic field must promote the plurality of ideas.

The organization highlights in the fact that, by hosting as a lecturer an academic indicated by censorship, these institutions contradict the values ​​of freedom and creativity essential for research.

The Vilaboy War Tour, who is also the honorary president of the Association of Historians of Latin America and the Caribbean, included conferences in the universities of Barcelona, ​​Zaragoza, Huelva and Pablo de Olavide, in Seville.

The historian was recognized in 2017 with the 2017 National Social and Humanistic Prize.

His investigations include «the Cuban revolution and the Sandinista revolution in the liberating process of our America»; «The popular movements and the problem of the bourgeois revolution in Latin America»; And Che: an anti -imperialist conception of the history of America. «