October 15, 2026 — Belly of the Beast
Blake Burdge
The only U.S. study abroad program with a physical presence in Cuba is shutting down after 11 years.
The Consortium for Advanced Studies Abroad (CASA), which brought hundreds of U.S. students to live and study in Cuba, has closed due to “the uncertainty in the U.S.-Cuban geopolitical landscape,” according to a notice on its website. The decision comes amid threats of U.S. military action, an escalation of sanctions and an oil blockade that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights warns is putting Cuban lives at risk.
Created during President Barack Obama’s opening with the island, CASA aimed to bring students from both countries closer together.
“After 55 years of significant isolation from Cuba, there has never been a more opportune moment for U.S. institutions to engage their students with Cuba’s leading academic talent,” Kendall Brostuen, then director of Brown’s Office of International Programs and chair of CASA’s board, wrote in 2015.
CASA welcomed its first class of 29 students that year. In the following years, students from U.S. universities, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard and Vanderbilt, traveled to Havana through the program. They attended class at the University of Havana and Casa de las Américas, a Cuban cultural and research institution specializing in Latin American and Caribbean studies. Students took courses in Spanish, participated in research projects and immersed themselves in Cuban society.
Studying with CASA also exposed U.S. students to Havana’s international academic community.
“You get brought into this small island, but you’re connected to people from all around the world who you wouldn’t have connections with otherwise,” said Justin Jiménez, an Oberlin College graduate who studied in Cuba with CASA in 2017. “There are students from Africa studying medicine, students from Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Jiménez arrived in Havana the day after Donald Trump’s first inauguration, which marked the end of the Obama-era rapprochement between the United States and Cuba.
Trump quickly abandoned Obama’s normalization efforts and revived a Cold War approach, tightening the longstanding embargo and restricting U.S. travel to the island. Biden largely maintained Trump’s hard-line policy.
Despite the renewed U.S. hostility and deteriorating conditions on the island, CASA managed to keep bringing students to Havana.
Trump’s return to office in 2025 ushered in an unprecedented escalation of economic warfare on Cuba, marked by “maximum pressure” sanctions imposed on a near-weekly basis and an oil blockade that has plunged the country into darkness for upwards of 20 hours a day.
The administration has also taken aim at U.S. citizens. On September 30, the Treasury Department eliminated group people-to-people travel, which had allowed organized educational trips from the United States. Accredited U.S. universities can still send students to Cuba for certain academic programs and research. But increased U.S. aggression toward the island has had a chilling effect, as institutions weigh the risks of breakdowns in basic services, civil unrest or possible military conflict.
In April, CASA suspended its fall 2026 program due to “geopolitical tensions and resource stress produced by the U.S. blockade on the island,” according to The Dartmouth.
The spring cohort had already shrunk from 16 to 12 students after four withdrew amid fears of instability. Those who remained were barred from traveling outside Havana over concerns they could be stranded during an emergency. Fuel shortages also disrupted classes at the University of Havana, depriving U.S. students of the opportunity to study alongside Cubans.
“We were on guard to evacuate at any moment if the program became untenable because of the energy situation, or if there was a U.S. invasion,” said Desi Silverman-Joseph, a Brown University senior who studied in Havana this spring.
The Trump administration has not only made academic exchanges with Cuba increasingly difficult, but has also cast them as a threat to U.S. national security. In July, Marco Rubio’s State Department released a 100-page McCarthyite report accusing Cuba of influencing U.S. protest movements, universities and political organizations for more than six decades. The report portrays academic and cultural engagement with Cuba as part of a broader campaign to “turn America against itself.”
That narrative is easier to sustain when U.S. students have fewer opportunities to experience Cuba firsthand and form their own impressions.
“In the United States, when you’re looking at U.S.-Cuba relations, you’re getting a very one-sided view on the situation,” said Camila Sánchez, a Dartmouth senior who studied with CASA this spring. “Being able to go to Cuba and be surrounded by Cuban professors, by Cuban students, and learn from them and their perspectives—that’s so, so, so valuable. You can then take both perspectives and come to your own conclusions about things.”
Former students interviewed by Belly of the Beast described CASA as an experience that reshaped their understanding of Cuba and the possibilities for relations between the two countries.
“I was shaken and saddened when I heard about the program’s closure,” said Ben Stevenson, a Dartmouth student who studied with CASA last year. “We are losing the ability to build relationships with Cubans our age over music, football and philosophy.”
“These relationships could be the foundation for a new, more positive U.S.-Cuba partnership,” he said. “But without these types of exchanges, that may never materialize.”
