EXCLUSIVE — A University of South Florida professor’s repeated trips to Cuba sparked internal security concerns amid a crackdown on academic ties with the island, records obtained by the Washington Examiner show.
The public university’s board of trustees investigated economics teacher Dr. Gabriel Picone over four Cuba visits he took between July 2022 and June 2025, leading trustee Charbel Barakat to suggest that USF steer clear of Cuba in an August 2025 email. Barakat, an appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), referenced “risks” associated with Cuba’s “surveillance and intelligence apparatus.” Six trustees on the 13-member board were DeSantis appointees by the time of the inquiry.
USF’s records detail the pressure driven by DeSantis for public schools to avoid relations with Cuba, a regime the United States has found using such partnerships for espionage across presidencies. USF tracked Picone’s trips to comply with a law DeSantis signed in 2021 that requires universities to report travel to several adversarial countries annually. The law also banned state schools from accepting certain gifts from those governments or entering into agreements that let them control their activities.
Florida’s posture toward its island neighbor differs greatly from states across the U.S., where schools have built extensive bonds with Cuba despite FBI warnings about the country’s intentions. But the hawkish approach closely echoes the federal government as President Donald Trump sanctions Cuba’s communist leadership and pressures it to align with American interests.
Picone funded his own travel to attend Cuban health conferences “aimed at advancing academic research and fostering international collaboration in the areas of diabetes and wound care,” a USF legal compliance officer told Barakat in an August 2025 email. The compliance officer’s explanation came in response to the board of trustees asking for more detail on Picone’s travel, though the scholar was not accused of any wrongdoing.
“As you know, the Cuban government maintains a robust surveillance and intelligence apparatus, which includes monitoring visitors and academics,” Barakat told the staffer in response. “I am sensitive to any situation that would unduly expose our colleagues to such risks.”
“Given those risks, I’m glad to hear that Dr. Picone doesn’t plan to travel to Cuba in the future,” Barakat wrote. “I am optimistic that he’ll be able to find comparable opportunities to study global health economics expertise elsewhere.”
USF’s media team, Picone, and Barakat did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.
Florida campuses under the microscope
Picone’s scrutinized travel included three visits to the formerly sanctioned Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and two to the government-controlled University of Havana.
The University of Havana serves as “a key node in the Cuban intelligence network,” a July State Department report warned. In one case, a spy for Cuba told the FBI in 2005 that the campus became a place to coordinate with his Cuban handlers. He referred to his accomplices as “scholars who have ties to intelligence” during interrogation. A federal court sentenced the spy, formerly a Florida International University psychology professor, to five years in prison in 2007 after he gave information helping the regime hunt Cuban-American exiles.
Seven Ivy League institutions and two other top-ranked schools have student exchange agreements with the University of Havana, but economic sanctions are putting the programs under strain, the Washington Examiner previously reported.
Cuba also used the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology to help Iran develop weapons of mass destruction in violation of international agreements, the Bush administration said in 2006. The U.S. responded with sanctions on the research institution that lasted two years.
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In addition to disclosure, DeSantis’s 2021 foreign influence law required strict university protocols for approving and tracking visits to “countries of concern” such as Cuba. An internal spreadsheet on the Picone investigation shows USF examined detailed questions about the purposes of his trips, including whether he had any further connection to the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.
“Were the topics purely academic, or did they involve discussions that could be seen as promoting or supporting the Cuban government?” a portion of the document asked.