The Captured Academy: How Authoritarian States Colonizethe Institutions Meant to Resist Them

Abstract

This article examines how authoritarian states convert the procedural safeguards of democratic scholarly associations into instruments of their own legitimation, using the Cuba Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) as a critical case. Building on the concept of “sharp power”, it situates the manipulation of academic space within a longer genealogy that begins with Soviet efforts to subordinate universities, continues through the Cuban state’s replication of that template after 1961, and persists in the transnational networks through which Havana’s authoritarian public diplomacy still circulates. Drawing on the case of LASA’s Cuba Section, the essay traces a recurring mechanism, state organized delegations that present themselves as autonomous academic sections, the presence of securitylinked officials on ostensibly scholarly panels, and a procedural asymmetry that tolerates criticism of Washington while obstructing criticism of Havana. This asymmetry reflects a broader ideological unevenness within Latin American studies and the wider academic left, in which left-wing authoritarianism receives systematically more indulgent treatment than its right wing counterpart. But the defense of academic freedom is a public good whose value depends on its consistent, non-selective application, and that institutional capture is best countered by coherent universalism, by centering the testimony of those most affected, and by monitoring the transnational channels through which authoritarian influence travels.