Newsgroup: it.diritto
Titolo: No antidote to academic corruption in Italy

Estimati Colleghi,
JUST Response ha pubblicato una lettera
del collega Zvani Rosseti a proposito
della mia intervista sulla mia nota
vicenda al giornale.
http://www.justresponse.net/Rossetti.html
Cordiali Saluti,
David Aliaga
-----------------------------------------------------
No antidote to academic corruption in Italy
A letter from Zvani Rossetti, Cagliari
Dear Editor,
Your recent David Aliaga interview [Doctoral torture, JUST Response,
Dec 21 2002] reveals nothing new about the Italian higher education
system. The facts described by Aliaga are part of the everyday
experience of all of us here in Italy. Italian academics and students
are well aware of the mechanisms and unwritten rules that govern
progress at all levels of the curricula from doctorate to professorship.
To complain about Aliaga's letters and statements is therefore to
attempt to argue against hard facts, which is useless and can easily
add insult to injury.
What is surprising and worrying is that Italian academia appears
impervious both to Aliaga's claims and to those allegations of
Italian academic corruption that have been repeatedly put forward
not only by JUST Response but also by Nature and Science and
denounced by international associations and eminent figures from
international culture. Similarly surprising and worrying is the
silence of our state institutions, the arrogance of our bureaucracy
and the ambiguities of CUN [the Italian national universities council]
in the Aliaga case. For example, rather than investigate, as they
ought to have done, they chose instead to define the examination
committee’s failure to turn up on July 25 1991 as simply a "strange
episode".
Aliaga is right that academic corruption is a human disease and can
affect all countries. The difference is that in Italy we do not have
antidotes, while other countries do. Other countries have means of
encouraging, sustaining and rewarding academic merit and intellectual
integrity while identifying and isolating corrupt procedures and this
makes up an important component of student education in the USA and in
Canada, for example. Here in Italy, on the contrary, we seldom
recognize merit, all too often promote mediocrity and never reward
integrity. Perhaps when some Italian university decides to introduce
into its statutes the statement that the university belongs to the
students there will be a change. In that case much of the merit will
go to David Aliaga.
Zvani Rossetti
Associate Professor, Department of Neuroscience
University of Cagliari & CNR Institute of Neuroscience, Italy
Note: This letter was published by JUST Response on January 8 2003.
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 vicenda al giornale.
Da quello che ho letto mi sembra di aver capito che la causa formale
del tuo esito negativo all'esame di dottorato è stata la valutazione
di insufficienza della tesi che consisteva solo in uno schema
riassuntivo al contrario di quanto previsto dalla relativa normativa.
Posso capire che affermi di essere stato tratto in errore dal tuo
coordinatore o tutor che fosse su questo punto e che nè la commissione
nè altri hanno mostrato la minima comprensione per la tua condizione
di residente all'estero, tuttavia non credo che il male, ormai
incurabile, che effettivamente mina l'università italiana abbia
trovato la sua massima manifestazione nella tua vicenda e ci sarebbero
fatti ben più gravi da denunciare.
Francamente, dalla tua narrazione dei fatti, non so quanto nel tuo
caso sia stato dovuto a strane coincidenze ed incomprensioni piuttosto
che a una volontà persecutoria specifica, almeno all'inizio.
Max max