The {Miami-Dade} University is for Counterrevolutionaries

[Judi Lynn]

3. Clearly, an honest exchange is something they want to avoid. From the O.P.:

Not only is the funding an ethical embarrassment — so is the selection process. FHRC and Miami Dade College choose scholarship recipients based on suggestions from Guillermo Fariñas and Berta Soler, two pro-embargo activists living on the island, whom CANF selected as liaisons to recommend Cubans for the fellowships. Both Soler and Fariñas have expressed their extreme biases openly, respectively calling the Batista dictatorship “a little golden cup” and terrorist Posada Carriles “an oppositionist.” It’s an understatement to say that these two don’t constitute optimal staff for selecting students to study abroad, even if the goal is to prevent the Cuban government from sending agents to the United States. If you want to study in the United States, USAID seems to be telling Cubans, you have to buddy up with our favorite Cuban opposition activists.

This is not to say that private money can’t be used for such ends. If Jorge Mas Santos — and the CANF organization he leads — wants to spend his money on scholarships for activists who favor his goals, then that’s his business. But to funnel U.S. taxpayer money toward his pet projects amounts to opportunism, and ultimately harms U.S. foreign policy. It does no service to U.S. values or interests to partner in a public diplomacy program with supporters of terrorists and admirers of the Batista dictatorship.