The College of Calle Ocho: Miami-Cuban Politics and Florida International University, 1989–2002.

This article explores the history of Florida International University, the only public research university in Miami-Dade County, in relation to local Cuban American politics and those of the island toward the Cuban diaspora. The article begins in 1989, with the effort of the Cuban American National Foundation to open an institute at FIU; it then progresses to 1991, with the founding of FIU's Cuban Research Institute. Of key interest are the efforts of the institute's leadership to forge working relationships with Cuba-based academics and the effects of those leaders' own identities as Cuban exiles, evolving US-Cuba relations, and critiques in Miami of bringing academics employed by Cuban state institutions to FIU. The article also revisits three events from 1992 to 2002 that brought island-based speakers with a pro–Cuban government message to FIU, largely with the support of the US Socialist Workers Party and non-Cuban faculty and student groups. It concludes with a reflection on the controversy surrounding the December 2022 presentation at FIU by Susan Eckstein in relation to a longer history of conflict at the university, both within the Cuban American community and between Cuban Americans and other diasporas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]