About the lecture:
January 1, 2009, marked a half century for the Cuban regime created and shaped by the powerful will of Fidel Castro, who transferred power to his brother Raúl last year. What does the end of Fidel's leadership mean for the future of Cuba? And what will it mean for the United States? Is it possible that the long cold war between the United States and Cuba will finally draw to a close during the Obama administration?
About the speaker:
Daniel Erikson is the senior associate for U.S. policy and director of Caribbean programs at the Inter-American Dialogue, the Washington-based policy forum on Western Hemisphere affairs. He has published more than 60 articles on hemispheric affairs in publications, including The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald and Journal of Democracy, and he has testified before the U.S. Congress. Erikson is a contributor to several books, including The Obama Administration and the Americas: Agenda for Change (2009), The Diplomacies of Small States: Between Vulnerability and Resistance (2009), Latin America’s Struggle for Democracy (2008), Looking Forward: Comparative Perspectives on Cuba’s Transition, Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Latin America (2007), and Transforming Socialist Economies: Lessons for Cuba and Beyond (2005), which he co-edited.
Erikson has taught Latin American politics at Johns Hopkins-SAIS and has appeared as a guest analyst on ABC’s “Politics Live,” the BBC, Bloomberg Television, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CNN, and NPR (2007), His past positions include research associate at Harvard Business School and Fulbright scholar in U.S.-Mexican business relations. He earned a Masters in Public Policy as a Dean’s Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a BA from Brown University.
Mr. Erikson’s highly acclaimed book, The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolution, was published by Bloomsbury Press in November 2008. Foreign Affairs magazine hailed The Cuba Wars as a "fresh, astute, and compassionate exploration of the past two decades of U.S.-Cuban relations,” and Current History magazine described it as “the most important book on Cuba in a generation. The book has recently been recognized as a finalist in the political science category of Foreword magazine's 2008 Book of the Year Awards.