Photo credit: Flickr user Doug Wheller.

The Václav Havel Initiative for Human Rights and Diplomacy at Florida International University supports democratic aspirations around the world, with emphasis on Cuba and the Americas. Below, Martin Palous, a School of International Public Affairs Senior Fellow and director of the Václav Havel Initiative, writes about the Preparing Miami for Democratic Transition in Cuba project, which Knight Foundation supports.

After 55 years of dictatorship, will change come to Cuba? Perhaps nowhere on earth outside of the island nation itself is interest in this question greater than in Miami. Anticipation of coming changes takes many forms in our city, ranging from cynical disinterest to passionate expectations for the recovery of lost property.

We at FIU’s Václav Havel Initiative for Human Rights and Diplomacy are collaborating with Knight Foundation to help our community understand the elements that go into freeing a nation from totalitarian rule and to successfully sustaining that change. The goal of the Preparing Miami for Democratic Transition in Cuba project is to educate Miamians, not just Cuban Americans, about the realities of the process of peaceful transition so that the community will know better what to expect as Cuba changes.

For the first year, the project is planning three public panel discussions and one town hall-style forum designed to expose Miamians to a wide range of information on how countries become free and stay that way, including international experiences, successes, failures and opportunities. The idea is to help the community manage its expectations through a better grasp of the institutions, procedures, policies and attitudes that must undergo change for a free Cuba.

As the Havel Initiative’s name suggests, it takes its inspiration from the Czech experience – the actions that led up to the peaceful overthrow of the Soviet-backed regime in 1989, and the lessons learned in the aftermath as Václav Havel and his inexperienced team of reformers sought to replace decades of totalitarian institutions, laws and policies with the elements of freedom.

The project kicks off on May 14 with a lecture and panel discussion on the “Economics of Democratic Transition,” presented by Jan Svejnar, the prominent Czech economist who currently serves as the director of Columbia University’s Center for Global Economic Governance. Joined by an expert on the Cuban economy, Svejnar will lead the audience through the nature of changes taking place in Cuba, and the economic elements and institutions that must be in place to sustain democracy. Svejnar will also draw on his experiences in Eastern and Central Europe to cover tough issues such as property rights and reconciliation.

The second Knight-funded event, scheduled for late June, will focus on “Human Rights and Change in Cuba.” A third event, in September, will consider “The Politics of Memory,” examining the role of memory and perception in the process of reconciliation following the fall of a totalitarian regime.

Our first-year program concludes in November with a town hall-style meeting featuring a synopsis of the three previous panel events, followed by extensive public discussion. The town hall will also celebrate the 25th anniversaries of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and conclude with cultural offerings and entertainment as part of our “Havel in the Streets” series.

We are excited about this ambitious program, and given recent events in the Ukraine, Middle East and East Asia, believe the timing is right for our human rights and diplomacy-based agenda.