Although the new College of Arts and Sciences dean, Ana Mari Cauce, was forced to leave her home country, Cuba, because of the communist revolution in 1959, she suggested strong socialist leanings.
Cauce’s father was the minister of education under Batista’s regime, which was overthrown by Fidel Castro’s revolution. When I asked Cauce if she had ever returned to Cuba, since she left at age 3, she told me she didn’t return, because her parents would have taken it as an insult.
When I asked her to explain, she thought hard and responded in a tone of exaggeration, “My parents and I have slightly different political views.”
She then went on to say that she liked what the Cuban government was doing with things like healthcare and education. She also said she thought the government as a whole was bad.
Cauce said her father was passionate about education, and they butt heads over Cuba, because she saw the new government as making it possible for more people to get an education, while he loathed Castro.
I wrote in a Daily story that her brother, Cesar, was killed in the Greensboro Massacre. However, I didn’t include the bit that he was an organizer with the Maoist Communist Workers Party.
I never asked if she was a communist or a socialist. She expressed a great interest in helping minorities and people from low-income families, and approval of social changes within Cuba’s communist party.
It will be interesting to see if any of this comes out as she starts making decisions about allocating funds.
You know, this is sort of the perfect journalistic blog post in terms of the concept. You did a story. You had a little tidbit that you didn’t have room for, so you turned it into a short post. This is exactly what the P-I reporters do. +++