The absurd diktat at Sapienza University

“No to halting collaboration with Israeli universities.” This, in summary, was the gist of a letter written a year ago by Sapienza Rector Antonella Polimeni in response to the Sapienza Committee for Palestine. Now, an open letter signed by some forty lecturers from the Sapienza Committee for Palestine demands that the future rector make an explicit and “binding” commitment against Israel. A textbook example of how political activism has taken hold in parts of Italian academia. A public university is neither a political party nor a campaign committee. The rector must ensure the quality of research, teaching and resource management, as well as the academic freedom of all lecturers and students; they must not endorse a unilateral geopolitical platform.

To claim otherwise would be to turn the university into an actor in a parallel foreign policy, bypassing the government and Parliament. The ideological selectivity is, moreover, striking. The text speaks of 78 years of Israeli ‘genocide’, deliberately ignoring 7 October 2023 and the fact that Israel, the region’s only liberal democracy, is surrounded by regimes and movements that deny its right to exist. Where is the committee condemning Assad’s wars in Syria, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Hezbollah, jihadism in Africa or the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds? Why must only Israel be subject to an academic boycott? The answer is obvious to anyone who is not acting in bad faith. Then there is the violation of academic freedom. The letter seeks to impose an ideological oath on the vice-chancellor. Will those who do not sign it become suspects, as during the McCarthy era? Letters that turn vice-chancellors and lecturers into activists and catechists are the antithesis of democracy. They are highly reminiscent of fascism.