Italy's vampire universities

A letter from David Aliaga, Calgary

Dear Editor,

I read David Petrie's comments in Cut cash to Italy's universities about the RAI 3 journalist's investigation into academic research in Italy. I want to make some comments (even if I mostly agree with David's) about Italian universities, since I myself have been fighting a protracted battle for my own human and academic rights against the Mafia system that corrodes and pervades Italian universities.

I believe that if you want to understand why Italian universities are in such a rut, there are just a few words which can clearly describe it: power, corruption and nepotism. Yes, power, corruption and nepotism best describe the condition of the Italian university system. The inability or the adamant refusal of university leaders and professors to relinquish power and try to minimize corruption and outright nepotism has been for many years the bane of development for Italian universities.

I call many of those hijacked universities or departments vampire universities or vampire departments. Yes, vampire universities/departments because they suck the vitality out of the life of young and idealistic researchers and students, as well as taxpayers' money. The vampire university is simply a university or department which has been hijacked by a phalanx of bandits and crooks who would use the instruments and bureaucracy of the university machinery to enrich and maintain themselves and their cronies in their positions and exclude everybody else.

Some analysts believe that throwing more money into research and hiring more young researchers will help to bring about some change. I believe that if the pot is already broken and leaking not much will be fixed until the real problem which is the leak in the pot is properly fixed.

What I have found most amazing and intriguing through my years of struggle for justice is how young Italian student leaders are absolutely incapable or unwilling of really mounting a serious challenge to the power structures of corruption and nepotism that pervade their universities. Unfortunately, until that happen not much would ever change with the Italian university system. 

When I see the mess in Italian universities, I find it humiliating as it deprecates my pride and dignity as an academic and researcher of Italian origin.

Regarding my own case, readers should consult Doctoral torture (a comprehensive interview conducted by JUST Response editor Domenico Pacitti), Appeal for David Aliaga (the Pacitti letter to the Human Rights Watch Academic Freedom Committee) and Researchers' Charter: A Paradigm Leap? (an article in Science by Anne Forde).

Note: This letter was published by JUST Response on July 29 2005.

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