Month: June 2005

Pro-Embargo Caucus

It’s called the Congressional Cuba Democracy Caucus. It’s a bi-partisan mix of seven senators and 18 representatives who have, among other priorities, recently underscored their support for the Cuban embargo and stressed their stonewalling of any efforts to permit American tourists to visit and spend money in Cuba.

FYI: The CCDC Florida contingent consists of Senators Mel Martinez (R) and Bill Nelson (D) and Representatives Allen Boyd (D), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R), Mario Diaz-Balart (R), Tom Feeney (R), Connie Mack (R), Kendrick Meek (D), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D).

Mobile Hosting Cuba Summit

Last year Tampa hosted the National Summit on Cuba. Previously it had been held in Washington and Miami. This weekend – June 10-11 – the Summit will be in Mobile, Ala.

Mobile has cultural and economic ties to Cuba and in 1993 became the first U.S. city to establish formal relations with Cuba through formation of Societe Mobile La Habana, a sister cities organization.

Fallen Troops Tribute

Call it America’s only true “reality show.”

ABC’s “Nightline” is to be saluted – again — for converting its Memorial Day program – for the second consecutive year — into a homage to U.S. troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, the names and photos of the fallen – now totaling more than 1,600 – have been nationally memorialized by a country and a culture otherwise caught up in sacrifice-less life as usual.

Then there’s the “Doonesbury” In Memoriam comic strip. Call it well intentioned.

For the second year running, cartoonist-polemicist Gary Trudeau has used a Memorial weekend comic strip to run nothing but the names of those who have died during “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Trudeau is also to be commended – with one significant qualifier.

In general, “Doonesbury” belongs on the editorial – not the comics’ page. This is especially – and acutely — so with the In Memoriam strip.

“Doonesbury” is an editorial decision that individual newspapers have to make. Most make the wrong call and leave Trudeau satirically op-eding among the Garfields and Phantoms. It’s inappropriate, nothing more.

But a sincere and somber salute to fallen American G.I.’s deserves better than the light-hearted context of “Marmaduke,” “Mother Goose and Grimm,” “Jeff MacNelly’s Shoe,” “The Family Circus” and “Hi & Lois.”

USF Going Big Time – Really BIG Time

The University of South Florida: It’s not your father’s USF anymore.

Cosmetically, the Fowler Avenue entrance no longer features that ’60s industrial park ambience. There are on-campus fraternities and dorms that wouldn’t look out of place in SoHo. There’s a snazzy, contemporary Bulls’ logo and a football team that plays in the Big East Conference with the likes of Syracuse, West Virginia and Pittsburgh.

USF, which didn’t graduate its first class until Lyndon Johnson was president, is the second largest university in the Southeast with an enrollment of some 43,000. It anchors the I-4 high-tech corridor. Sponsored research now tops $250 million.

The campus is home to the state’s only accredited college of public health and houses the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer and Research Institute, the third busiest cancer center in the country. Currently under construction is a $20-million Alzheimer’s research institute.

Even with its geographic misnomer of a name, USF is on the map.

Now it goes for the globe — thanks to the Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions. That’s what will be built on the USF campus – thanks to the biggest gift in the university’s history. That $18.5-million bounty – from Tampa doctors Kiran Patel and his wife, Pallavi – will be matched with $16 million in state matching grants. Ultimately, it will be parlayed into a $62.5-million project that will include a conference center, classrooms, an auditorium and quarters for scholars and foreign dignitaries.

It means that USF’s academic credentials will be significantly enhanced as well as its international status.

The timing couldn’t be more propitious. It wasn’t that long ago that USF, a global nonentity, was smitten with the World Islamic Studies Enterprise, a think tank of dubious virtue and value. The WISE guys ultimately brought ignominy instead of enlightenment. “Jihad U” epithets made “Sandspur U” pejoratives seem quaint. An upcoming trial in downtown Tampa is a disturbing reminder.

But USF will now be a real player on the world stage of academe. The Patel Center represents the legitimate big time, an institute that could logically have been located in Washington or New York. It will house researchers and host foreign leaders on a range of planetary topics from global trade and environmental destruction to world hunger and health issues.

Most impressively, the Patel Center’s charge won’t be theoretical or abstract. Its mission will be concrete and solution oriented.

And it will be in our own back yard.

If ever there was a “win-win” scenario, this is it. USF’s profile should ratchet up markedly. But much more importantly, the world will be better off.

The Patels, whose generosity already ensures their legacy, are more than philanthropists and humanitarians. They are natural resources. We are all in their debt.