Yale, Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Columbia, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Duke, and Stanford. These are the universities prioritized by Cuban intelligence services within the United States. This assertion comes from researcher María Werlau in a study examining the influence of Castroism within academia.

Furthermore, she highlights that — given the regime’s tendency to utilize its embassies as intelligence hubs — other institutions located in close proximity to Cuban diplomatic missions are also likely in the crosshairs for the recruitment of collaborators.

These include Hunter College in New York, as well as Georgetown and American University in Washington, D.C. Additionally, institutions of higher learning in Miami — the flagship city of the Cuban exile community — are reportedly under surveillance and have been infiltrated.

Other higher education centers across Latin America have also been extensively exploited by the Castro regime, which places anti-imperialist rhetoric and opposition to Anglo-Saxon culture at the forefront of its strategy.

Two such institutions are the Institute of International Studies at the University of Chile and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). According to Werlau, the latter country serves as a frequent rendezvous point for establishing face-to-face contact with students recruited in the state of California.

In 2017, “Operation Achilles” — an initiative by Colombian intelligence services — detected that the Castro regime’s vice-consul in that South American nation, Eric Sosa Frutos, along with his presumed successor, Kendry Sosa, traveled from Bogotá to the city of Cali to hold a meeting. The target of this operation was “a Cuban national identified as Alejandro Pavel Vidal, who has served as a faculty member at Javeriana University in Cali since 2012.”

Vidal is also involved with the Horizonte Cubano (Cuban Horizon) initiative, a component of the Cuba Capacity Building Project at Columbia University’s School of Law.

One of the former intelligence officials interviewed by researcher María Werlau for her report identifies the University of Denver as a key institution for Castro regime intelligence operations. From that location, for several years, significant academic exchanges with the island took place.

And in particular, he “insists that it is no coincidence that a man he still considers to be a loyal officer of Cuba’s intelligence services — Arturo López-Levy — earned his Ph.D. there and taught courses in comparative politics and similar subjects.”

The former military officer, who requested anonymity, asserted that López-Levy was “his peer within the intelligence services and was specially trained and prepared with a ‘cover story’ to infiltrate U.S. academia — first by embracing his Jewish heritage and penetrating the Jewish community in Cuba; he then traveled to Israel and finally arrived in the United States.”

The interviewee maintained that, operating from the University of Denver, López-Levy “quickly became — likely thanks to other Cuban agents or collaborators — a go-to expert on Cuba for major media outlets, as well as an influential activist advocating for exchanges and the normalization of relations,” a cause he firmly established during the Obama era.

Cuba Is No Exception

However, academia is not merely a wound through which the Castroist virus penetrates, but also a conduit for other variants of the same socialist malady.

Jim Lewis is a former U.S. diplomat with over 30 years of direct experience dealing with Chinese intelligence services. As he told the program “60 Minutes” last year, in addition to monitoring online activity, Chinese intelligence agents have also infiltrated university campuses across the United States.

Two years ago, while a freshman at Stanford, Elsa Johnson served as a research assistant at the Hoover Institution, focusing on Chinese military industry and tactics.

Months later, a man calling himself Charles Chen contacted her via social media. “Over the following weeks, he asked me detailed questions about my background, offered to pay for a trip to China for me, sent me a flight itinerary to Shanghai, and pressured me to move our conversation to WeChat — an app that is monitored by the CCP,” Johnson recounted during a hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

“Most likely, he was operating on behalf of China’s Ministry of State Security,” said the young woman, now a junior majoring in East Asian Studies.

Despite feeling surveilled on social media, Johnson published an investigative report in The Stanford Review in May detailing how agents of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) conduct espionage on the Stanford campus, threatening and pressuring Chinese students to participate in their activities.

The publication of the report marked a turning point. She began receiving intimidating phone calls in which the person on the other end of the line would suddenly switch to Mandarin; in one instance, the caller made reference to Johnson’s mother. Her email inbox has also been flooded with fraudulent and threatening messages.

“This autumn, the FBI informed me that I am being subjected to physical surveillance on the Stanford campus by CCP agents, and that my family is also under surveillance,” Johnson recounted in her testimony.

Despite this, the university offered the young woman no assistance whatsoever. However, cases like hers could well multiply. As reported by The Washington Stand, Chinese espionage poses a national security threat on university campuses.