ALA and Cuba: More Bad…

I can reluctantly accept that ALA has kept it’s hands off the entire Cuba issue. But it hasn’t. It welcomed a delegation of official Cuban librarians and heard their complaints about the negative effects of the US Embargo. It sent representatives to Cuba to see those effects first hand.

It seems disingenuous to me that ALA feels that making statements about US foreign policy is within it’s mission, but that foreign human rights is not to be commented on. That invites criticism of ALA as being selectively motivated by a particular political slant. In this case I believe that’s true, and is weakening the Association.

We need to get out of the business of the random application of standards.

This view protects ALA’s leadership as both an organization that works for freedom of access while establishing and maintaining the credentials of professional librarianship.

I like Karen’s points. I like Frederick’s points. I have no interest in defending either Castro, Cuba’s judicial system or the U.S. embargo against Cuba. Surely there is some tenable middle ground that ALA could claim without being dragged into a morass.

Besides which, American librarians have been called dupes of Communism before, more than once. Political bad press can and will go away, wavering from our principles is a bigger concern.

As for identifying those detainees, I suspect the term “activists” is more apt than “archivists,” but I think Karen is also right to object to resorting to defining away a problem by saying they aren’t real librarians. On the other hand, FoCL’s agenda has been to promote its cause by defining a problem into existence, claiming they *are* real librarians being persecuted for lending books rather than activists jailed for violating currency laws. Kent et al base their position that ALA (as opposed to any other organization) should condemn the Cuban government on the claim that the jailed Cubans *are* librarians. You really can’t accuse one side of playing the red herring here without acknowledging the other side is doing the same.

US/Cuba relations have a long and murky history and this issue cannot be understood outside that historical context. What’s more, both the United States and Cuba have strict prohibitions against their citizens engaging in many kinds of economic exchanges with the other country.

How far do these prohibitions go? Well, on the US side they include information exchange. The American government recently issued an opinion saying that the international engineering organization IEEE would be in violation of its prohibitions against doing business with Cuba should it edit any work of Cuban engineers for inclusion in its journals. Penalties for such a terrible act include fines and jail time.

Should ALA take a position on this issue? I don’t know, but I think there is a good case to be made that the US ban is more relevant to ALA than Cuba’s internal politics. Why? Because the US government action denies American libraries and their patrons access to information without just cause. But I will not belabor this.

The most important point in Karen’s post, I believe, comes when she says, “It is rarely a good idea for ALA to get involved in international relations, but when it does, the stand of ALA should always be on the side of free speech in open societies.” I agree, ALA should avoid entry into international relations. When it does so, that action should be taken evenhandedly and according to criteria applied internationally, and not just to particular nations. If ALA is to take a stand with respect to the domestic activities of other governments (and I agree with Karen that it should not), it must do so for all other nations after considered reflection and due process.

Mr. Kent and Mr. Hentoff are trying to goad ALA into taking their position on an issue of international relations while they do nothing the help people understand the issues at stake, and indeed count on their badgering and obfuscation to prevent people from coming to such understanding. ALA and its members should resist falling victim to their narrow ideological agenda.

Should people get special ALA treatment because they call themselves “independent librarians”? Yes: Just as soon as the AMA gives special (favorable) treatment to anyone who calls themselves “independent doctors” and the ABA protests mistreatment of anyone who calls themselves an “independent lawyer”–for, in one case, offering medical advice or, in the other case, offering legal advice (in both cases, with no special training or qualifications).

Otherwise, shouldn’t there be at least a tiny bit of a showing that these Cubans are doing anything other than lending “their” books–and maybe a tiny bit of a showing that they’re not US-funded agents working to bring down the Cuban government? Not that that justifies jailing them (although, of course, in the U.S. even suggesting that someone might be affiliated with certain foreign operations is enough to put them away indefinitely without the formality of charges or a trial), but it does justify ALA not giving them special treatment. (Or is the definition of “librarian” now simply “anyone who calls themselves a librarian”? That does simplify matters!)

Anonymous for the usual reasons: Cowardice.