US-Cuba Relations: What’s Next?

Join us for a discussion on the future of US-Cuba relations. Explore key political, economic, and social factors shaping the bilateral relationship and what lies ahead for diplomacy, trade, and engagement between the two nations.

Speakers

Ben Rhodes, writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. 

Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis, American diplomat, Chargé d'affaires ad interim of the Embassy of the United States at Havana (2015-2017), Warburg Professor of International Relations at Simmons University.

Moderated by Tania Bruguera is Senior Lecturer in Media & Performance, Theater, Dance & Media, and Affiliate of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University

About the Speakers

Ben Rhodes is a writer, political commentator, and national security analyst. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers “After the Fall: Being American in the World We’ve Made,” and “The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House.” He is currently co-host of Pod Save the World; a contributor for MSNBC; a senior advisor to former President Barack Obama; and chair of National Security Action. From 2009-2017, Ben served as a speechwriter and Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama. In that capacity, he participated in all of President Obama’s key decisions, oversaw the President’s national security communications and public diplomacy, and led the secret negotiations with the Cuban government that resulted in the effort to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. His work has also been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Foreign Affairs. A native New Yorker, Ben has a B.A. from Rice University and an M.F.A from New York University.

Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis is Warburg Professor of International Relations at Simmons University. During his 28-year career in the Foreign Service he worked almost exclusively on Western Hemisphere issues and served as a multilateral diplomat at the United Nations. He served as the first Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Havana following the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. Prior to taking up his Cuba post in August 2014, he was Ambassador/Alternate Representative for Special Political Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. Previously, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, and as Minister Counselor for Political Affairs and Security Council Coordinator at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

Ambassador DeLaurentis began his State Department career in 1991 as a consular officer in Havana, and returned to Cuba as Political-Economic Section Chief in 1999-2002. In Washington, he served as Executive Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, and Director of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council. His last assignment in the Foreign Service was at the Harvard Kennedy School as a Senior Diplomatic Fellow with the Belfer Center Future of Diplomacy Project. He is a graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Columbia University Graduate School of International and Public Affairs.

About the Moderator

Tania Bruguera is Senior Lecturer in Media & Performance, Theater, Dance & Media, and Affiliate of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University. She researches ways in which art can be applied to everyday political life, focusing on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness. Her long-term projects have been intensive interventions on the institutional structure of collective memory, education, and politics.

Bruguera earned her MFA in performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the founder and director of Cátedra Arte de Conducta (Behavior Art School), the first performance studies program in Latin America. Bruguera’s work has been exhibited at documenta 11, the Guggenheim Museum, and Tate Modern and also at the Bienal Iberoamericana de Arquitectura y Urbanismo, the Gwangju Biennale, the Istanbul Biennial, and Shanghai Biennale. Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions around the world, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, and the Museum of Modern Art, in New York.