El Malecón, the seawall in Havana, Cuba

Policy experts, study abroad groups, and Latin American studies researchers are more hopeful now than ever that opening up academic travel to Cuba is imminent, although President Barack Obama has yet to make good on campaign promises to rescind Bush administration academic travel restrictions.

“We’re taking it step by step, seeing if, as we change some of the old approaches that we’ve been taking in the past, we are seeing some movement on the Cuban government side. I don’t think it’s going to be happening overnight. I think it’s going to be a work in progress,” said Obama in July, referencing government-to-government conversations.

In April, the president reversed Bush administration limits on family travel, remittances and telecommunications with the island nation, giving many international education advocates hope that things might be headed in a new direction.

Dr. Victor Johnson, the senior advisor for public policy at the National Association of Foreign Students Advisers (NAFSA), says, “We, of course, opposed Bush’s policies in 2004. They essentially outsourced their Cuba policy to the hard-line Miami Cuban community. When Obama was inaugurated, there were communications with his White House team [on opening academic travel].”

In anticipation of the new academic year, NAFSA sent a letter to President Obama on behalf of 18 policy and education groups insisting he ease regulations on academic travel to Cuba. Only slightly more than 200 students had the opportunity to study abroad in Cuba in 2006-07, compared with the more than 2,100 who did three years earlier, according to NAFSA.

The Bush administration barred short-term study trips to Cuba and prohibited colleges from sponsoring trips and accepting students from other schools for those programs. It also specified that only full-time tenured faculty members could lead study abroad trips to Cuba.