President Schmoke: Politics Can't Hamper Improved Relations with Cuba
December 8, 2014
Contact: University Relations
Phone: 410.837.5739
In a letter to The Baltimore Sun, University of Baltimore President Kurt Schmoke encourages the release of Alan Gross, an American being held in Cuba, and says the process must be seen as a humanitarian issue, not a political one.
The letter is in response to recent news about Gross's captivity and the potential for an exchange of prisoners between Cuba and the United States. The U.S. State Department has declined to negotiate a swap, saying there is no "equivalence" between the status of Gross and three Cuban intelligence officers currently in prison in the U.S.
"Raising the equivalence argument is bogus and just underscores the bizarre state of relations between the U.S. and Cuba," Schmoke says.
Read the letter.
Read the president's op-ed in the Sun about his trip to Cuba.