CHICAGO, Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Dr. Zafra Lerman, head of Columbia College Chicago's Science Institute, is back in Chicago after addressing the Third International Chemical Congress in Havana, Cuba, with some new insights into the cultural climate of the Socialist state 90 miles from our borders.
To get there from the U.S. she had to fight government bureaucracy -- especially the Departments of State and the Treasury -- for twelve months to get the chairman of the American Chemical Society and five other colleagues, as well as herself, permission to go to Cuba for an international conference.
And it wouldn't have happened without the direct intervention of U.S. Congressmen Danny Davis and Sidney Yates, of Chicago, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and New York Senator-elect Charles Shumer, who personally intervened to get the Treasury Department to pass on the applications before the conference took place.
Ironically, Lerman, Chair of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights of the American Chemical Society and vice chair of the Committee of Concerned Scientists, has spent the past 15 years fighting for the scientific freedom and freedom of travel for scientists in the former Soviet Union, Russia, and China, among others, with the full support of our government, and with great success.
Lerman, who has traveled to the Soviet Union and China many times on behalf of scientists seeking permission to visit the free world, says that conditions in Cuba "bear no resemblance to what I saw in those countries in respect to scientific freedom."
"Scientists and other professionals are not speaking Russian, even though it is one of the languages taught in Cuban schools. I met scientists who earned their Ph.D.s in Germany and Great Britain, and they speak German or English in addition to their native Spanish," she points out.
"The scientists with whom I spent time while in Cuba talked freely. We walked the streets as late as 4 a.m. without any feeling of fear or being watched, unlike my experiences in the Soviet Union and China," she adds.
Dr. Lerman is working with Cuban and other scientists to solve some of the environmental issues in Cuba which, because of its proximity to the United States, could have an impact on our environment.
Dr. Lerman is available for one-on-one interviews at your mutual convenience. She can be reached at her office at 312-344-7361. Or you can contact Carol Bryant, Columbia's Director of College Relations, at 312-344-7524, or Herb Kraus at 312-649-6791.
SOURCE Columbia College Chicago
CO: Columbia College Chicago
ST: Illinois, Cuba
IN: EDU
SU:
12/09/98 08:24 EST http://www.prnewswire.com