I Grew Up in Cuba: America’s Campus Censorship Rings Alarm Bells
Gabriela Blanco, raised under Cuba’s authoritarian rule, sees chilling similarities between the censorship she faced and the limits on free speech growing on American campuses. As governments and universities tighten control, she challenges Americans: Will you defend your freedoms or wait for others to do it?
Gabriela Blanco
Jun 17, 2025 - 4:41 PM
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Funding Freeze, Speech Squeeze
Since Donald Trump froze over $3 billion in federal funds to Harvard University last week, civil rights advocates have joined with American academia to defend institutions of higher learning against federal overreach.
As controversial as the President’s move may be, Harvard’s record for protecting students’ rights to free speech is hardly clean. Just five days after Trump pulled the school’s funding, Harvard President Alan Garber admitted that students with right-leaning beliefs may be feeling unable to express them.
Campus Speech Crackdowns
The right to free expression is assaulted on all sides: As the executive branch imposes an ideological mandate on higher education, universities themselves suppress students’ expression in the name of combating ‘hate speech.’
Harvard students aren’t the only ones whose rights are being challenged. In April, Columbia University opened an investigation into a Catholic student, not for threats or slurs, but for stating his personal belief that sex is biologically determined. He was still treated as if he’d committed a hate crime. These examples follow a trend reported by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), showing that between 2020 and 2024, over 600 students or student organizations were penalized for protected speech on college campuses.
The trend of punishing politically inconvenient or religiously grounded views needs to be stopped in American academia, but Trump’s executive order to pull funding has simply shifted power from one elite institution to the other. As the government and universities grapple for control over what people are allowed to say and think, it’s time for individuals to stand up for their own rights.
Both sides of the political spectrum have shown they are willing to use power to control ideology. We should not rely on any institution to preserve civil rights, whether it's an elite academic institution or the Federal Government. The only way to stop this is by taking personal responsibility, pushing back and refusing to stay silent in the face of any institution that claims to be protecting your rights.
Authoritarian Echoes: Cuba to Latin America
I grew up in Cuba and have seen firsthand how authoritarian governments angle for power through coordinated efforts to control what is taught on college campuses using highly effective censorship techniques. Authoritarian regimes know that if you control what the youth believes, you control the future. The battle over American universities resembles the Communist Revolution in Cuba which began on college campuses, where students like Fidel Castro used calls for justice to silence others and seize power. Studies were interrupted, dissent in academia strictly forbidden after the Revolution, and the entire curriculum was rewritten to serve the regime.
Today students and teachers are still required to monitor each other for “counterrevolutionary” or “hateful” speech. Venezuela and Nicaragua followed the same pattern: Professors were fired or intimidated, students were arrested or faced disciplinary actions for expressing religious or political views contrary to the regime, curricula were rewritten, and entire faculties were replaced with people loyal to the state — all in the name of social justice, equality and public safety.
It is sobering to witness the same language and censorship techniques being used on U.S. campuses now.
Speech and Liberty
Those like me who grew up in regimes like these understand what most Western societies have forgotten — that universities are not neutral spaces. Young minds are targets because power can be challenged at these locations. Turning universities into ideological instruments allows corrupt governments and institutions to advance their policies while controlling opposing viewpoints. Speaking with American students, I hear the same hesitation I heard growing up in Cuba: “I don’t want to say X out loud.” They fear being labeled hateful or dangerous. Fear is more effective at silencing people than any law.
Everyday there is more potential for authoritarian abuse of power from both the left and the right. There is a growing effort from both elite institutions and the administration to silence ideas considered inconvenient: faith, tradition, biology, family, politics. The things that most people recognize as basic common sense are now treated as threats. Students are being silenced or punished for believing that sex is real, that faith matters or that ideas should be debated freely.
Americans must reject all forms of authoritarianism, especially those disguised as safety, and be on guard against ideological overreach, no matter which side it comes from. Liberty starts to disappear when people stop defending it for themselves.
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Gabriela Blanco
Cuban Dissident | Liberty Advocate