The Marquette Sports Law Moot Court team advanced to the final eight of the 2016 Mardi Gras Sports Law Invitational Competition hosted by Tulane University Law School. Please congratulate team members Alexa Callahan, Darius Love, and Nicole Ways. Professors Matt Mitten and Paul Anderson coached the team. This year the competition included more than 50 competitors and 26 teams.
(cross-posted from www.indisputably.org)
Since returning, I’ve received calls from those about to go and questions from others—what are the Cuban people like? And what do they think of Americans?
The official Cuban policy, of course, is that the US policy has been shortsighted and narrow minded. And the list of US policies that need to change was also outlined for us:
And one can definitely see anti-American sentiment in the Museum of the Revolution in a very funny little exhibit called the Rincon de los Cretinos(the Corner of Idiots).
But those are the official sentiments, and not at all what one hears around and about. According to the American journalist, Mark Frank, who spoke to us, there has not been any anti-US demonstrations in a decade. And I did not see any billboards or posters that were anti-US (other than the historic exhibits in the Museum). Most importantly, each student noted how individually friendly the Cubans were.
For the blog today, I thought I would incorporate some of the student reflections about one of our first speakers. We had a terrific briefing on the economy from Guilio Ricci, an economics professor at the University of Havana.
From Max Rabkin:
Spending a week in Havana was an eye-opening experience for many reasons. I expected good food, friendly people and time-capsule-like architecture, and was not disappointed with any of those. However, I was most intrigued with how the country and the Castro government was handling the introduction of market reforms and resuming diplomatic relations with the United States.
Most fascinating was the talk with the economist from the University of Havana. I went into the trip expecting a heavy dose of Marxist-Leninist thought to permeate every discussion the group had, and although this was generally true, the economic lecture ended up being one of the fairest and provided the most realistic outlook for the Cuban economy and future enterprise prospects for the public.