1. A RUINOUS ANOMALY OF ITALIAN UNIVERSITIES

In spite of the richness of intellectual resources in Italy, which certainly are not inferior to those of other countries, the global condition of the Italian university is far from being near comforting. According to international data it is in last place in the industrialized world regarding training and research – not just regarding the percentage of graduates and masters. Italian “brains” who permanently emigrate abroad – where frequently they are successful – reach tens of thousands each year, while there are just a very small number of capable foreigners who choose Italy for their research and teaching.

We ourselves, Italian professors who often travel abroad and may have confrontations with other countries’ universities, verify the existence of our lag – which seems to get bigger, rather than smaller – at the scientific, technological, organizational and financial level (for instance, the much inferior number of our doctorates) and concerning the relationship of university with professional work (chronic intellectual unemployment, unsuitability of training before and after graduation, etc.). What is more, we verify the existence of a specifically Italian “cultural” or “mind” anomaly in dealing with university careers, in acknowledgment – or rather in non-acknowledgment – of individuals’ scientific and didactical merit, in intergenerational relationships and generally in relational “styles” among colleagues and with the institution.

It appears clear, to many of us, that these two problems are strictly interconnected, in the sense that the “cultural” or “mind” anomaly (which is not easily visible from outside) largely explains the impressive scientific, technological, organizational and financial lag.

2. THE TWO FORMS OF ACADEMIC POWER: “ROLE POWER” AND “POWER FOR POWER” 

This Italian anomaly involves the general question of power, and academic power in particular. Here, we need a fundamental distinction.

Exercise of academic power may be dictated by the authoritativeness which is implied in the role of professor or researcher, and thus may express itself as defense and promotion of significant cultural, scientific or didactic approaches and as social and institutional service.

In this case, we can speak of “Role Power” or “Service Power”, which is a power deriving its legitimacy and limits from role and from solely role.

On the contrary, exercise of academic power may only be dictated by the power itself as prevarication, i.e., as occupation of strength positions for the interests of individuals or groups, such as prestige, financial advantage, constitution of co-optations and alliances, positions, influence on the functioning of structures, control of resources and people, hoarding of extra-academic professional activities, and so on – in no case for the sake of cultural, scientific, didactic, social or truly institutional purposes.

In this second case, we can speak of “Power For Power” at the university – nationally, locally, inside faculties, between one faculty and another, in the relationship with the territory, and so on.

“Power For Power” utilizes conceptual categories and language of knowledge, simulating connections with research and didactics and with the institutional objectives of faculties, departments, etc. However, it can also show itself in an immediate way: <<It must be like this because I or we want it, and this is more than enough>>.

The struggle inside “Role Power” implies conflict or dialectics between ideas and/or individuals or groups as bearers of ideas. On the contrary, the struggle inside “Power For Power” implies conflict between individuals or groups (cliques) as bearers of particularistic interests, which are directly expressed as such or – most of the time – are masked by ideas.

Now, in the Italian academic context “Power For Power” is very strong, much too strong, in comparison with “Role Power” or “Service Power”.

This corresponds to a marked and anomalous Italian tendency to patronage, favouritism in careers, and pre-determination of competition results.

3. THE “PERVASIVE CAPACITY” OF “POWER FOR POWER” (PFP)

Experience shows that “Power For Power” (PFP, to simplify) has a high “pervasive capacity”. All PFP holders inside the university behave in the same way concerning power exercise, independently from their other different characteristics. Men or women, old or young, agnostic or religious, politically right, left or center oriented, in the North, Center or South regions of Italy, in large or in very small faculties, in ancient public universities or in recent free universities, and so on. Even personality differences, which emerge outside PFP, become non-influential. Indeed, one often sees a personality very different from the former succeeding in a PFP position, and any visible difference between the two disappears in a short while. This is due to a sort of “rethinking”, which is an adjustment to mechanisms of PFP as such.

This flattening also concerns knowledge areas – or disciplines – which are the object of university PFP. Independently from their nature, they are uninfluential in modifying its mechanisms. Of course, the stakes are different according to the faculty and the territory structures which are connected to it. For example, a Faculty of Medicine is exposed to greater financial interests and has a greater media visibility, compared to a Faculty of Philosophy. Moreover, especially in cases of PFP with vile motivations, very particular situations arise if drugs, survival apparatuses or similar are involved. However, experience teaches that PFP based mechanisms are the same in all Italian university contexts, even when the financing at stake is modest, and even when real financial interests are absent. 

4. THE “EPISTEMIC PRIMACY” OF PFP

One can wonder what is that makes university PFP different from other forms of prevarication, i.e., other PFP which more or less exist in all human work organizations, both public and private, inside other corporative institutions – army, health, law, churches, etc. – and even more in the daily practice of so-called “professional politics”, from which the average citizen expects anything bad.

The answer may be that for most part university PFP mechanisms and instruments (“exchange”, “carve-up”, “blackmail”, “retaliation”, etc.) are non-specific. This shows that institutionalized knowledge is homologated by society as such, and one cannot claim it has a privileged status concerning the sphere of values. This also shows that it is necessary to rethink the traditional and consolatory idea about the intellectual as a legitimate critic of society not conditioned by society.

However, one should not forget a peculiarity of university PFP: the endless richness of knowledge categories it manipulates conceptually and linguistically. It is easy to adapt these categories to one’s own particularistic interests, without really –“irrefutably” – being disclaimed. On the contrary, PFP in a financial or political context is obliged to reckon with the narrowness and also the poverty of its own conceptual categories. Beyond a certain level of mystification, which is even predictable, also in the case of a very clever but unscrupulous politician or financier, non-university PFP is compelled to a confrontation with the world of facts, which makes it lose credibility and burns it. It is much easier to unmask the real intentions of a politician than those of an intellectual. “First class” politicians know this, and this is why they attribute importance to “ideological foundations” of their work and give money to the intellectuals who are willing to elaborate those foundations for them.

Thus, one can speak of an “epistemic primacy” of university PFP over non-university PFP.

5. THE FALSE CONCORSI

False concorsi are the most visible aspect of university PFP.

In Italian, concorso (plural concorsi) is a public competition for a university post (study grant, PhD, researcher, associate professor, full professor), based on qualifications and/or  examinations. Each concorso has many candidates, while the available posts are very few, very often just one or two.

In itself, the idea of concorso implies the periodic opening of a protected system in search of novelty – besides a legitimate continuity – in order to reach the system’s objectives better and better. The system (university, in our case) addresses itself outside to recruit resources that do not exist or no longer exist inside.

However, in the Italian university system the concorso is very often directed to maintain and strengthen pre-existing PFP, closing up towards anything that might modify it, like really new, not “tested” and therefore destabilizing elements. Thus, the concorso, and the planning and construction before it, becomes a crucial moment where each PFP holder – behaving as a “mafia godfather” – coagulates and expresses the strength he/she has matured until then and tests it at the same time. Before the announcement of the concorso, or before the beginning anyway, the strength relationships among the PFP holders give way to equal agreements or prevailing of one over the other, and this absolutely predetermines the winners – who are the individuals who are “carried” (portati in Italian) by each godfather, independently from any qualifications and/or examinations.

So, these are false concorsi, a very grave institutional pretence. Also the “comparative judgments” which fill the pages of the minute book written and signed by the members of the examining board are “cultural” pretences. These “comparative judgments” are just standard rhetoric formulae – with sometimes a few “original” adjectives – which have been pre-established in order to “justify” the exclusion of candidates who were destined to be excluded from the very beginning, without any evaluations of their qualifications. Very often, the envelopes containing their publications are not opened at all.

However, merit and qualifications (publications, competence, experience, etc.) of the persons who participate to these false concorsi – be they the predetermined winners or the a priori excluded candidates – are not pretence. This would require a separate specific analysis.

“Pervasive capacity” of PFP in false concorsi is demonstrated by the fact that their strategies and modalities are just the same in a concorso of Moral Philosophy and in a concorso of Management, to mention two disciplines which are very far away from each other.

As for “epistemic primacy” of university PFP, it is demonstrated by the fact that concorsi judgements are unappealable concerning the merits. So, the only legal appeals that have some chance of being accepted are those which are based on form or procedure motivations – such as material mistakes in transcriptions, wrong dates or names, etc. 

6. INEFFECTIVENESS OF UNIVERSITY LAWS OVER PFP

The strong tendency of PFP to abuse “Role Power” refers to a structural condition of the Italian university, before and independently from the Reform Law N. 127 of May 15, 1997 (and following “line notes” of June 16, 1998 and October 16, 1998), the so-called “Berlinguer Law”, which has strengthened university local autonomy.

This law has given more discretionary power to each local faculty, and this has determined faculty assumption of prerogatives which before belonged to the central power (Rome) and were codified by written rules that were the same for all –even though they were differently interpreted – ad usum delphini – very often. What is more, this law has given completely new prerogatives to the faculties.

The most direct consequence of such local-policy unquestionableness has been diversification between faculties having the same denomination but situated in different places in the country. This diversification has concerned not only management criteria but cultural and scientific content as well. For example, two disciplines have been declared related to each other in the faculty of a town, and non-related in the homonymous faculty of another town. The competence required to teach the same discipline has been defined in two different or even opposite ways in two homonymous faculties in two towns. Concerning university concorsi, with this law each faculty has been able to autonomously and unquestionably define management questions such as its research and didactic needs, and distribution of the so-called “points” necessary to appoint Italian candidates as full professors, associate professors, or research assistants. What is more, with the same legalities and authority, each local faculty has been in condition to define fundamental questions of substance and merit: such as the number of publications and the cultural and scientific content the candidates should provide, which content should be excluded, and the affinity between disciplines that allows the candidates to be accepted as such.

Thus, faculties have been in the position to legitimately outline a rigid identikit profile of the winner they wish to appoint which excludes characteristics such as specific competence or international recognition or value of publications or didactic diligence. It has been possible to substitute such characteristics with just the <<intentions or promises of the winner candidate about the things that he/she will do in the specific interest of his/her faculty>>. This has been done although everyone was aware that there was no possibility of remedy in the case those promises were not kept once the involved person was appointed – especially in the case of a full professor position.

As a consequence of this law, and openly and legitimately acting at the level of formal democracy (faculty councils, elected commissions, etc.), the university local PFP holders and cliques have been able to obtain assent or non-dissent about certain resource requirements or point distribution, and about cultural and scientific content to be accepted or excluded. They have been able to have all of this recognized as necessary and functional for the faculty. In fact, all of this was only functional and “tailor made” for the predetermined winner, who in turn was only functional to the PFP holder and, almost always, was a member of his/her local clique.

In a word, academic advancements in each faculty involve local cliques whose members “appoint” each other, preventing any personnel circulation among faculties.

Also, the concorso has become the place where PFP alliances extended, from local to national or better inter-local. It has become the place where future exchanges between PFP holders have been prefigured, through definitive affiliation of the new winners. At the very moment of their victory, they have assumed debts and commitments, not only towards the PFP holders that are members of their faculties who did “carry” them, but also towards the “external members” of the examining board, that is, those who were not elected by their own faculties but who helped them in winning.

In a wrong or tendentious way, this 1997 law has been presented as being the sole reason for the corruption of the Italian university system, false concorsi in first place. In reality, this law only caused PFP to be transferred from a unique national context to the different contexts of local faculties, with a series of secondary adaptations and consequences.

The recent Law N. 230 of November 4, 2005 (the “Moratti Law”) does not affect Italian university recruitment at all. The fact that it has been presented by center-right political parties is irrelevant, because an almost identical “reform” had been prepared by center-left political parties.

The structural corruption of the Italian university system has nothing to do with Italian political parties. It existed before, behind and beyond them, on a cultural ground – as I shall try to show later.

The Moratti Law leaves Italian research in its pitiful conditions. It institutionalizes university job insecurity and consequent blackmailing. Regarding reintroduction of national concorsi, as this Law requires, this will not “restore” merit conditions that were never guaranteed – even when the concorsi were national, over tens of years before 1997 law. In fact, national examining boards – which are constructed with complicated and largely manipulable criteria – will be identical in their conception to those before 1997. What is more, their resolutions will always need to be confirmed by local boards, because concorsi winners are concretely “called” and hired by local faculties. As a consequence, national appointments will always coincide with local and predetermined appointments. There is no reason why ancient and experimented patronage procedures should change [1].

7. THE NECESSITY OF BREAKING UP UNIVERSITY PFP

The necessity of urgently breaking up university PFP is intuitive, but it may be useful to focus on some reasons for doing it.

First, in ethical terms, both individual and social, PFP is dreadful. It created and continues to create a huge number of personal predicaments. One of the worst sources of human frustration is represented by impotence towards iniquity which has been institutionalized at an intellectual level, towards the “reduction to nothing” of one’s years of hard work  – according to the words of a capable Italian researcher who is about to emigrate.

Second, by obstructing and damaging individual scientific and didactic merit, PFP represents a determining factor of the impressive lag of Italian intellectual productivity.

Third, beyond Italian context, an international debate is under way about the conditionings that great economic powers (multinationals, etc.) exert on academic freedom and scientific research in general. Moreover, beyond Italian context again, academics more and more  wonder about the soundness of “mechanical” criteria such as number of publications, “impact factor”, and so on, for academic competition and selection, as these criteria risk obscuring other intellectually more substantial requirements.

Today, these two debates are also fundamental for Italian universities, but they cannot be put into the right terms if one has not untied or made explicit – at leas – the “national knot” that makes Italian academic reality anomalous in comparison with the rather homogeneous academic realities of other countries in the industrialized world [2].

8. INSUFFICIENCY OF INDIVIDUAL BATTLES AGAINST PFP

In terms of competence, the ideal place to fight university PFP is the university itself, where there are a lot of people who feel it as an unbearable burden. The issue is inseparably ethical and cultural, and the university is the institution of culture especially in Italy, where there are no other institutions of culture. Fighting PFP in the law courts solely is wrong, as there the issue acquires a narrow, super-personalized and culturally poor dimension, and is then deformed and exploited by gutter press and petty politicians.

However, experience teaches that battles against PFP which are carried on from inside the university are destined to failure if they only are individual.

Indeed, victims’ revelations and claims about concorsi or general academic injustice – even in the form of caustic books – are not enough. Though very shareable, these revelations and claims do not go beyond the personal event and the generic considerations which are connected; and it is easy to label them as forms of self-commiseration or personal revenge, or even mental illness – for instance, in the case of a “frustrated” sixty-year-old person who has remained in the “youthful” researcher role, after having been failed in tens of concorsi, in spite of his/her many and qualified publications. Who is lonely, in a coherently polluted system, tends to make the prophecy of his/her “being ill” come true, even in ways that are unthinkable to him/herself.

What is more, the academic who has undergone a negative experience due to a hostile  PFP, but has at last succeeded in going out of it, tends to project him/herself towards the future and to “forget” the suffered injustice, as he/she considers it would be quixotic to continue denouncing it, without any more benefit for him/her. Also, he/she may feel the need of safeguarding the image or prestige of his/her discipline, faculty or university, without forgetting that he/she may still be liable to blackmail during the career or has pupils who are exposed to “indirect revenge”.

Finally, one should be certain that individuals attacking PFP from inside the university do not do so with the “secret” aim of entering into the citadel of PFP. Indeed, together with patient prostration over years, well calculated and often “ideological” anger of individuals against PFP is one of the main mechanisms through which PFP self-perpetuates. For example, it would be interesting to know how many study grants and academic advancements were obtained during the years of “Marxist protest” (‘70s), by those who exploited for their personal interests the socially shared blame of the academic role and even knowledge, as typical expressions of “bourgeois and capitalistic power”. In the same way, once the spirit of protest fell into disgrace, study grants and academic advancements were obtained by those who were able to ride the tiger of “free-trade privatization”, so that their “scientific and didactic qualifications” mainly consisted of their public aversion to former “institutional monopoly” of left culture.

9. HISTORICAL-CULTURAL, ECONOMIC AND PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF PFP: A FIRST STEP IN THE DIRECTION OF PFP EFFECTIVE BREAKING UP

In spite of very frequent off-the-record reference to PFP by university personnel, PFP is not recognized nor officialized as a “normal” object of scientific study inside the university community. This constitutes its main strength. 

Therefore, recognizing and officializing PFP as an object of scientific study would be the first step – though not the only one of course – in the direction of its breaking up.

To make an analogy, prejudice and racism would be much more influent and dangerous than they are, if social sciences and psychology, whose results in part are diffused through media, did not objectify and examine them in depth.

Incidentally, one can wonder why social sciences and psychology have objectified and examined prejudice and racism in depth, but not PFP.

In the frame of a shared and interdisciplinary university project, study of PFP should inquire both into PFP general causes, which have a historical-cultural and economic character and concern Italian society on the whole; and PFP specific causes, which concern the Italian university context. Such study should also examine interactions between general causes, and the latter’s interactions with specific causes.

In studying both general and specific causes, psychology and social sciences can provide significant contributions, particularly with specializations as “psychology of history”, “social psychology”, “psycho-sociology” and “cognitive history of science" [3], “historiographic sciences”, “history of ideas”, “cultural anthropology” and  “sociology” (“economic sociology” included).

Moreover, in particular with its specializations “psychology of science” and “cognitive psychology and psychopathology of science”, psychology can study PFP effects over individuals and groups who do research and teach inside the university.

To schematize:

I- General – historical-cultural and economic – causes of PFP concerning Italian society on the whole.

-The tradition of feudalism and neo-feudalism.

The PFP holder expects gratitude from the person he/she “helps” in the academic career, a gratitude which must turn into a personal advantage for him/herself, outside institutional context. Very often, the “helped” person thinks that this is “fair”, after all.

This interpersonal structure can be traced back to feudalistic tradition, where the beneficiary explicitly recognized that the representative of a public power had the “right” to derive a personal advantage from the exercise of his institutional functions – such as the appointment of a charge or a feud. Today, Italian dynastic “anomalous capitalism”, i.e., economic and media power concentration in the hands of a very few families, and “Berlusconism”, which is largely shared by Italians, correspond to a favouritistic neo- feudalistic logic that is not paralleled in other Western countries. The unsolvability of Italian “conflicts of interests” even at the highest government levels –something which never ceases to amaze foreign observers – is mainly due to the fact that a huge number of Italians have an anomalous neo-feudalistic mentality: that is, they think that those who administrate “common good” necessarily must derive some “private good” for themselves from it, independently from their ideological-political orientation and from their claims that they will not do so. Such claims belong to roles, and Italian public administrators know that people “understand” them and would do the same if in turn they were public administrators.

-The omertà tradition interlaced with the gattopardo tradition.

The widespread practice of false concorsi is supported by a collective syndrome of acceptance which is close to omertà, the mafia code of connivance. This explains why the PFP holder is confident even when facing (and denying) factual evidence against him/her – for example, candidates going to court, or pre-concorsi telephone calls which have been intercepted by police, as newspapers have reported in recent months, etc. He/she is sustained by the awareness of general omertà around him/her, in the members of the examination board but also in the great majority of the candidates, because everyone knows that this pathologic modality of concorsi is at least as structural as the healthy modality, and therefore has no alternative. Everyone knows that any change (new concorsi rules, etc.) would easily be reabsorbed, so there only would be a “change in order not to change”. Everyone also knows that denouncing a particular PFP holder would most probably turn into giving way to another PFP holder. It would be a battle lost from the very start, so it is better not doing it and getting the advantages which derive from not doing it.

Here are two emblematic sentences by colleagues of mine: <<New concorsi rules are used for not changing the substance>>; <<Nothing would change, even if the concorsi in Italian universities were international>>. In this context, any purpose to start “cleaning one’s own home” first is put out of question as being quixotic: indeed, one would be lonely in doing such “cleaning”, and “self-denigration” would keep off the resources that are also necessary to really capable and productive individuals.

This social structure can be traced back to omertà tradition as a defence against foreign occupants, which has marked Italian people for centuries, throughout the country – not just the South – in an anomalous way compared to other European countries. It is also ascribable to the tradition of “changing everything in order to leave everything just as it is”, which is masterfully delineated in the book Il Gattopardo (“The Ocelot”) by Sicilian author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896-1957). Also the writings of Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989) and certain insights of Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975) are very helpful.

-The patronage tradition (going back to late Roman Empire) and the nepotistic tradition (going back to the popes practices since the Middle Age).

These two traditions melt together strengthening each other and still have deep roots in Italian society, universities included. This is the origin of widespread raccomandazione, which is semantically the very opposite of “recommendation” in Anglo-Saxon culture. A letter of raccomandazione means: <<If you help that person, you do a favor to me and I shall not forget this>>.

-The traditions of Renaissance particularism-localism, well explained by Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) and corporatism, which were revitalized by fascism (1922-1943) and are expressed by present day neo-fascism and strong leghismo in the North of Italy. These traditions have been reinforced by the lag in the formation of national unity (formally between 1861 and 1871) and identity and by the so-called “Italian incomplete democracy”. The latter is particularly visible by the fact that social rules are widely perceived as not really cogent and over and over renegotiable – for example, in the question of tax evasion, for which the State grants frequent pardons which citizens expect.

These social traditions help to explain why the following facts are accepted as ineluctable and unchangeable in the Italian university: the fact that each PFP clique has the “right” to operate undisturbed; the fact that there are “uncontrollable pressures” upon the members of the examination board, and that denouncing this “from outside” would mean a violation of the “private and unquestionable” sphere of those members; the fact that there are two levels of information: the irrelevant and diffused level, in the faculty councils for instance, and the relevant level which is reserved only to a few, in non-official encounters; the fact that there is – or rather, there must necessarily be – an occult decisional power, that can allow itself to coexist with widely democratic and very poor decisional apparatuses.

In such a wide historical-cultural perspective, non-transparency of Italian university concorsi can be read – partially at least – as a particular case of generally poor transparency of all the powers in Italy – which, according to an OCSA classification of February 2006, is placed at the fortieth place, below all the countries in the industrialized world.

-The non-accomplished elaboration of “laicity” and “lay ethics”, due to clerical influence and “culture of suspicion” of a certain Marxism (which views ethics as merely an “ideological cover”), and to a very particular Italian link between a certain Marxism and a certain Catholicism. All of this without a religious reformation such as Protestantism, with its emphasis on the responsibility of each individual even outside his/her clan, and with the extremely strong influence that the Catholic Counter-Reformation -from 1563, Trento Council, until 1965, Vatican Two Council- exercised in Italy, more than elsewhere.

Even today in Italy, one who is interested in ethics “necessarily” is a Catholic or a disguised Catholic, who pretends to be a layman. In French moraliste means “one who studies moral questions”, while in Italian moralista means “hypocrite” or “religionist”. In English idealist means “one who has ideals”, while in Italian idealista means “dreamer” (stupid or dangerous).

-The rhetoric and legalistic traditions ascribable to Byzantinism and clericalism.

This is the “famous” Italian primacy of so-called “humanistic culture” over scientific culture, that even today is confirmed by the small number of young people enrolling in scientific faculties in Italy, which is by now largely surpassed by India and China. This is the primacy of a “well-constructed sentence”, which can be discretionally interpreted, over the knowledge content – as one can read in the minute books of so many university concorsi.

-The tradition that Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) outlined in the book Il Principe (“The Prince”), which sanctions the supremacy of instrumental or political intelligence over pure intelligence, in synergy with the “political use of knowledge” of Gentile’s philosophy – Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944) being the author of a School Reform (1923) that is still valid – and of a certain Marxism – particularly with reference to the intellettuale organico of philosopher Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). The intellettuale organico is the intellectual who thinks and writes only for the sake of his/her political party.

This specifically Italian “political use of intelligence” – which should not be confused with the very different “pragmatism” of Anglo-Saxon culture or of Italian philosophers Vailati and Calderoni – explains why in Italy so many and even smart academic and intellectual careers are only a springboard or an arena for a political career.

-Persisting lack of a university work market in Italy, so that selection of the “really best” personnel is not encouraged and supported.

In fact, “pressures” in the concorsi work against the quality of the candidates. Now, even if a compromise is reached between pressures and quality, the final result, i.e., the winner’s nomination, tends to be a middle course which corresponds to institutionalized promotion of mediocrity. The winner may be passable or even good, but seldom excellent, as there is not a real competitiveness in research and didactics – and so excellent personnel are not really needed.

I have mentioned this economic causal factor in last place because, in a complex society as the Italian society is, economic factors have shown themselves to be strongly conditioned by cultural factors – let us just think of Italian anomalies in the “free” market of telecommunications, etc., which in fact are not free. Recently, in Italy new free universities have appeared – they are not properly “private”, as in other countries, because they are authorized and partially financed by the State. So they have just reproduced or even worsened the ancient bad habits of public universities. Even elimination of the present legal value of university titles would not be a magic wand.

II- Specific causes of PFP in the Italian university context.

-Almost absolute self-referentiality of the Italian university.

“Confusion” between “Role Power” (or “Service Power”) and PFP is strongly encouraged, as there is no social control over the university, there is a prevailing separateness between the university and the world of work, and the university has the monopoly of knowledge due to the absence of institutional alternatives – such as the academies in other countries.

-Privileged and “sacral” character of academic investiture.

In Italy academic investiture was influenced by “clerical consecration” (the sacerdos in aeternum, “priest for ever” of Catholic tradition), which was confirmed in lay culture by  philosophical conceptions (by Gentile and others) concerning knowledge transmission from master to pupils. This strongly affects perception and self-perception of the “consecrated” academic. In Italy a “contract lecturer”, who has only taught a few months at university and has earned about 1,000 euros all in all, will generally leave the caption of “professor” on his/her visiting card for the rest of his/her life. Let us determine what the self-perception of a full professor generally is…

-Fragmentation of disciplinary areas predisposing to patronage favouritism.

Sectionalization of institutionalized knowledge, already present at an international level, in the Italian university system has been exacerbated into a proper micro-disciplinary fragmentation. This condition, which looks custom-made for PFP operations, allows few people, always the same or their clones, to carve out and colonize their own knowledge territory. PFP holders define this territory according to their own language and modalities, and only work to keep it for themselves and their clique exclusively. The cake of knowledge is cut up into many slices and small slices for its owners, without leaving a single crumb. Each disciplinary area and sub-area becomes a “private club”, with the full authority given by the institution.

Self-referentiality of the university and of disciplinary areas and sub-areas finally coincides with PFP self-referentiality thus confirming “epistemic primacy” of university PFP compared to non-university PFP, which I spoke about before. As a “definer of knowledge as such”, the university PFP becomes the unequalled pattern of any other PFP.

-Influence of general Machiavellian tradition (i.e., supremacy of instrumental or political intelligence over pure intelligence) in evaluation of qualifications (publications, etc.) for concorsi and similar events.

From a Machiavellian perspective, evaluation of the “pure intellectual intrinsic value” of something produced by someone (mostly a scientific manuscript or publication, in the university context) looks as “simplistic” or “reductive”, so it needs to be integrated or entirely substituted with the “complex vision” that characterizes instrumental or political intelligence. The “true” product that has to be evaluated is not what it is or appears to be, but what it “means”, what it refers to, the relations with reality that it allows establishing. It is not the “thing in itself” that has a value, but the relations that the “thing” has. Not “merit”, but “belonging”. Concretely, what matters are the academic or anyway “significant” relationships of the person who has produced that manuscript or publication. Thus, “complexity” becomes functional to PFP: I will not evaluate “what that manuscript or publication says”, but “who wrote it and whom he/she is related to”. In the end, the real point is: “What my personal advantage will be, if I evaluate it positively or negatively, or if I do not evaluate it at all?”.

As a consequence, the PFP holder may develop and cultivate feelings of pride in relation to his/her “complex strategic capacity”, in a sort of chess game where candidates are just some of the pawns, often the less important ones, and in a context of meanings that anyway transcends them, even when it seems to involve them very closely. Thus, a sort of “practical science of academic power” is constituted, a science that works on appearances (the false targets) in order to affect substance (the true targets), just as professional politics does – with the difference being that the latter involves “intellectual products” incidentally only.

III- Psychological study of PFP effects on individuals and groups who do research and teach inside the university.

I shall limit myself to a few clues.

-Absence of guilt feelings in PFP holders

PFP holders do not seem to develop feelings of guilt, and act in a dimension which is separate from their own ethical and social consciousness – often alive in other, extra-academic dimensions of their life – when they handle or let themselves be handled by “pressures” that are completely unrelated to the scientific-didactic quality of candidates, or when they have the clear intention to derive personal advantages from the success or failure of those candidates – while it is obvious that the only ethically allowed “personal advantage” should be their satisfaction for the promotion of scientific-didactic quality as such. Such anomalous and split  consciousness, in “normal people” as most PFP holders are, is an interesting issue that should be gone into further.

-Psychological damage in PFP victims.

As there is no possibility of having “clear and shared rules” with a PFP holder – and his/her clique –-, university personnel who are under him/her are always uncertain about his/her behavior and its meaning. This uncertainty, added to ambiguous perception of the “double code” of academic power (visible and occult) and to intra-psychic conflicts between feelings concerning knowledge and feelings concerning power, cause Italian university personnel to develop deterioration at the cognitive, motivational, emotional and relational levels, both in university and extra-university life. This deterioration spoils the micro-social work environment which is the humus of research, and causes the competitiveness among young people to become properly pathologic, and intergenerational relationships to become structurally ambiguous. This makes research work non-serene and poorly productive in real terms, because the delicate processes of creative ideation are hindered, while incompetence and frustration fall upon didactics. Care is only given to relationships and publications which are useful for local careers. The idea of real merit and real merit attribution are corrupted and even new “cogent rules” concerning evaluation of productivity become non-credible. Indeed, it is useless to button up a shirt if one knows that its first button has been buttoned wrong.

Italian university is psychologically ill.

-Damage concerning interdisciplinary research.

PFP structures rule out horizontal communication, which characterizes interdisciplinary research, because they are hierarchically and vertically closed onto themselves.

10. PFP AS A POSSIBLE OBJECT OF RELEVANT PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

PFP is “simple” – and monotonous – but its causes are many, interrelated, ancient and deep. They are so deep that people take PFP for granted and inevitable, almost “necessary”, in spite of its devastating effects.

On this matter, which is so crucial for the whole university and society, Italian academic psychology should do research. However, it is unlikely that it will do so, as it is itself part of the system that it should study.

FOOTNOTES

1    University and Research undersecretary Luciano Modica, presently of the center-left Italian government, said that reintroduction of national concorsi would not be useful: <<National concorsi do not convince us. We experimented with them for years and they never worked well. I am not saying that (local) concorsi introduced by Berlinguer are better, because they do not work as well…>>> (Interview by Daniele Semeraro, la Repubblica, May 29, 2006).

2    Italian university “anomaly”, especially concerning concorsi, has aroused a considerable interest at an international level. In recent years many articles have been published on this topic, not only in widespread newspapers, such as the Guardian, but also in prestigious scientific journals such as Nature and Lancet. Moreover, JUST Response houses a section which is entirely dedicated to Italian academic corruption. Particularly, foreign observers and columnists are bewildered by the widespread practice of “public concorsi” for researchers that in reality are entirely planned and carried out just for one candidate, who is the predetermined winner.

3    We also should remember Frankfurt School contributions, classical analysis of Michel Foucault about the relationship between knowledge and power, Adlerian individual psychology and current social constructionism, with authors who are also socially committed, such as Kenneth Gergen.

Note: This article was published by JUST Response on September 24 2007. It is a slightly modified version of a paper which was published in Italian in the “Giornale Italiano di Psicologia” (Italian Journal of Psychology) No. 4, December 2006. Sadi Marhaba is a full professor at the University of Padua's Department of Psychology.