Since its founding in 1994, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) at Harvard University has prioritized finding ways to overcome the many obstacles that impeded scholarly collaboration between the United States and Cuba . Guided by the oversight and leadership of the Harvard University-wide faculty Committee on Cuban Studies, the Center's work has been sustained with generous support from the John D. and Catherine MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Christopher Reynolds Foundation.

The Center's program of scholarly collaboration and exchanges with Cuba has sought to accomplish three important goals:

(a)     to facilitate research on Cuba and the development of academic contacts in Cuba by Harvard faculty and students;

(b)    to assist Cuban scholars and scientists to advance their research and develop professional and institutional contacts both at Harvard and at other U.S. universities and organizations; and,

(c)     to strengthen institutional ties of cooperation and exchange between Harvard and Cuban academic, scientific and research institutions through exchanges of faculty and researchers as well as jointly organized workshops and conferences.

Harvard's long-standing interest in Cuba is reflected in the number of faculty with research interests in Cuba , in the comparatively large number of courses that treat Cuban issues, and in the University's extensive library holdings of Cuban materials. For example, the Center sponsored a year long seminar at Harvard Medical School aimed at exploring the development of the Cuban Health System during the 2002-3 academic year. Taught by Harvard faculty, distinguished international health researchers and visiting Cuban scholars, the seminar focused on examining the health system in the last four decades, and also its current strengths and weaknesses. Seeking to understand how Cuban public health officials have maintained their effectiveness in setting up successful control strategies for infectious disease threats, such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, dengue, and immuno-preventable diseases, even in the context of dramatic economic adjustment, the seminar's proceedings and research bibliography on Cuban public health were also published as part of DRCLAS's Working Paper series and have been utilized as course materials at Harvard and by universities throughout the U.S.

In the last 10 years, DRCLAS has hosted more than 60 Cuban visiting scholars for extended periods of research and collaboration in fields as diverse as archival preservation, economics, history, intellectual property law, literature, tropical medicine, political science, public administration, public health and urban planning. In the area of microbiology, for example, DRCLAS supports research by scientists from the Pedro Kourí Institute funding research visits of up to three months at Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health to work with Harvard faculty on lab projects related important global health problems in the areas of HIV viral testing, dengue vaccine research, tuberculosis and STDs. The 2004 visit by Dr. Raúl Díaz Rodríguez, a member of the team that directs the National Reference and Research Laboratoryon Tuberculosis and Mycobacteria and the WHO/PAHO National Reference Lab, a keystone of the Cuban Tuberculosis Control Program, is exemplary of the Center's model for scientific exchange. In collaboration with Harvard School of Public Health Professor Eric Rubin's lab in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Díaz conducted research to develop a new, rapid and more accurate method for distinguishing strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes one of the most important worldwide causes of death. 

Aiming to strengthen and deepen initiatives in a broad range of disciplines, a cornerstone of the Center's work has been working to engage in building institutional links between research centers in Cuba and Harvard.  In its program of scholarly exchange, the Center has cooperated with several Cuban academic and scientific institutions, including the Centro Juan Marinello, Revista Temas, the research institutes of the University of Havana, the Center for the Sociological and Psychological Studies (CIPS), the Instituto de Medicina Tropical Pedro Kourí (IPK), the Jardin Botanico de Cienfuegos, the Group for the Integrated Development of the Capital (GDIC) and the Academia de Ciencias. Numerous international and U.S.-based institutions have also been essential partners in the Center's programs including the Universityof Massachusetts, Boston, Boston University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Latin American Studies Association, the Pan America Health Organization (PAHO), El Colegio de Mexico and the U.S. House of Representatives Cuba Working Group. As part of these collaborations, each year during the last decade, the number of Harvard faculty and students traveling to Cuba for research or other educational activities has increased.

Between 1994 and 2004, DRCLAS organized six academic conferences related to Cuba. Meetings on the history of U.S.-Cuban cultural relations, the impact of Cuba's recent health reforms on public health systems, the history of the former Harvard Botanical Garden (now the Jardin Botanico de Cienfuegos), the lessons to be learned from Cuba's dengue fever control program, the current and future prospects for U.S. business in Cuba, and applied research in poverty and social policy were organized in both countries. For example, in the area of applied social research MIT Professor Xavier de Souza Briggs, University of Massachusetts, Boston Professor Miren Uriarte and the Center for Psychological and Sociological Studies (Centro de Investigaciones Psicologicas y Sociologicas-CIPS) initiated a two-part joint research conference on Poverty, Inequality and Applied Social Research which advanced throughout 2003 and 2004.  Aimed at advancing research on Cuba's social safety net, the project focused on the innovations in Cuba's social policy aimed at meeting the challenges of near-economic collapse and the measurement of poverty in light on the vast changes in standard of living that have taken place in the past decade.

DRCLAS has also published two edited volumes resulting from joint collaborations with Cuban co-editors and showcasing scholarship by both U.S. and Cuban scholars. The first volume was Culturas Encontradas: Cuba y los Estados Unidos (Havana 2001), edited by John H. Coatsworth and Rafael Hernández, explores the history of cultural interactions and mutual influences, which have been much less studied that the political and economic aspects of U.S.-Cuban relations. The second volume is a just recently released book on the Cuba's development trajectory, The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press 2004), edited by Jorge I. Domínguez, Omar Everleny Pérez Villanueva and Lorena Barberia.  This work is a collaborative effort between scholars in the U.S. and Cuba aimed at examining the lessons learned from recent reforms and their impact on the Cuban economy.

The Center's recent events include a special seminar on the Cuban Economy held at El Colegio in Mexico City. Originally scheduled to take place in October 2004, the event was rescheduled after the U.S. State Department's denial of the visas for all 65 Cuban scholars who had been planning to 2004 Latin American Studies Association (LASA) International Congress in Las Vegas, including the Cuban authors and co-editor of the Center's most recent volume on the Cuban economy.  Six months later, the Center and the Cuban authors celebrated the book's publication in a seminar organized in collaboration with El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City on March 3, 2005. In addition to the book launch in Mexico City, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and the El Colegio de Mexico have agreed to collaborate on the publication of the volume, The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century, in Spanish.

In March 2005, the Center also brought together specialists from the Dominican Republic , Cuba , Haiti , Trinidad and Guyana for a meeting on Resource Allocation Practices in the Prevention and Treatment of HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean co-sponsored by the Instituto de Medicina Pedro Kourí and CARICOM's Pan-Caribbean Partnership Against HIV/AIDS -PANCAP.  More information on this specific meeting can be found in the Center's Cuba Program Public Health Initiatives section of the website.