Today, the journalist Luciana Cimino wrote a piece for Il Manifesto on how the Italian government is strengthening control over universities. The problems are twofold. On the one hand, there is the proposal of inserting someone appointed by the Government into the board of directors of every Italian academic institution. On the other hand, the government will directly appoint the director of the Agency for the Evaluation of the University and Research System.
These are troubling developments, which are related to the willingness of the far-right Meloni’s government to control academic life and freedom of expression at its roots. Such a willingness takes the form both of direct intervention into the governance of the University sector, but also through the violent repression by police forces of students organising. These include, as I have indicated previously, practices of intimidation and espionage directed against student-led movements (recently, the Secretary General of the Ministry of Education has invited university rectors to keep student protests “under control”).
In my interview with Luciana, whom I thank for her investigative work, I stated:
The measures concerning ANVUR and university governance are part of a reform process that began under Berlusconi’s right-wing government, but there has been a change of pace under Meloni’s government, explained Michele Lancione, professor at the Polytechnic University of Turin, to Il Manifesto. “They are no longer content with the corporatisation of universities, but want to give research an ideological slant and a political mandate”. “There is certainly a relentless drive,” Lancione notes, “beyond the desire to put universities at the service of the country’s military-industrial complex, there is also a desire to gag them. We must mobilise with students to defend the university space as a public good.”
Il Manifesto, 17 October 2025