Harvard is preparing to launch a spring-semester study-abroad program at the University of Havana, despite strict federal regulations on U.S. travel to communist Cuba and activists’ concerns about academic freedom in the island-nation.

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (DRCLAS) and the Harvard College Office of International Programs (OIP) have obtained a federal license for a joint effort with Cuba’s preeminent educational institution.

The U.S. government’s current embargo on trade with Cuba has stymied Harvard students’ past attempts to study in the country with programs that were not College-affiliated. Current law forbids student travel to Cuba unless the student is from a university that has applied for and received an academic exchange license from the U.S. Treasury Department.

The arduous process of obtaining this license took 18 months, and permission lasts for only one year, according to Harvard’s vice provost for international affairs, Jorge I. Dominguez.

The Cuban-born Dominguez wrote in an e-mail to the Crimson, “We will apply again for a license [next year] but have no certainty whether we will get it or by what time.”

Even now that Harvard has a license, Cuba-bound undergraduates must participate in a formal 10-week or longer academic program that counts for College credit, according to the DRCLAS program associate who manages the center’s Cuban Studies arm, Lorena Barberia.

The ban on trade with Cuba makes for several unusual travel rules in addition to of the required letter-of-license. When returning home, students will be permitted to carry only $100 worth of merchandise, for which they must have receipts, according to the OIP.

The OIP instructs students not to take cell phones into Cuba. Cell phones can only be carried in the country with official authorization, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.

The 2007 program will run from late January to early May. For these four months, students will live in Havana, the country’s capital, which is home to 2.2 million residents and is the island’s cultural, educational, and industrial center.

All students in the program must take one mandatory course on U.S.-Cuban relations, according to the OIP.

According to a fact sheet from the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, academic freedom is “limited” in Cuba, and “some fields of study, such as the social sciences, are denied to those who lack the proper revolutionary zeal and political awareness.”

A March 2006 report from Amnesty International described freedom of expression in Cuba as “very restricted,” and said that 72 dissidents are currently being held as “prisoners of conscience” in the country.

DRCLAS and OIP officials expressed enthusiasm about the program. OIP Acting Director Leslie M. Hill wrote in an e-mail, “This is a unique intellectual opportunity for a small group of Harvard College students to study at an outstanding Latin American university, live in a dramatically different social, political, and economic landscape, view the world from a Cuban vantage point, and hear some of the world’s greatest music—live!”

The OIP will hold an information session for students interested in the program today at 4 p.m. in the University Hall ground floor conference room.