Blog interview: Aldo Giannuli, lecturer in Contemporary History, Università Statale di Milano

The decree under the aegis of Gelmini has been approved. Anyway parliament is by now discredited. It is useless. The government decides, decrees, orders. I propose the closure of the Chamber of Deputies and of the Senate. The psycho dwarf’s majordomos vote on command. They have the majority. They don’t discuss the texts of the laws to be approved with the Opposition (not even with this stand-in Opposition).
Italy has become a private presidential Republic. It’s Tar Head that commands in his own name and on behalf of the powers that put him there, to represent them. It’s as though Morpheus Napolitano didn’t exist. He shakes hands and drinks tea. Parliament is just an expense for the tax payers. It should be closed down. And while we are at it, let’s close down the schools, whatever is left of the schools after years of being ignored by the governments. What’s the point of studying if you won’t have a job, if you can’t participate in the democratic life of your country, if you live submerged in information of the regime? Survival? But at the age of 20 years old, survival is an insult.
Listen to Aldo Giannuli, lecturer in Contemporary History at the State University in Milan. With the Gelmini decree, funding is taken from the Universities and the staff. In “seven to eight years, the number of academic staff will go down by about 40 per cent.”
They will never give up, neither will we.

Text:
”The situation of the universities has already been disastrous for many years. Anyway, the Gelmini decree cannot take the blame for everything that has been put down to it because the Gelmini decree is just finishing off a story that was started off by the former Minister Ruberti and that is going ever nearer to the privatization of the university and its transformation into an enterprise. This is happening in a university that for some time has been poorly resourced from a financial viewpoint. Structurally, the lack of finance is part of the history of our universities.
For more than 35 years, our universities have received on average 25% less, in relation to the State accounts, when compared to how much is received by the average University in Europe. Ours are the universities that are the worst organized and the worst paid in relation to which there have been a series of erroneous reforms and they are by now on the verge of collapse. In this situation, there are new cuts added and you can understand that this represents the final blow for a structure that is in crisis. If this reform says that in the next few years it is possible to have a recruitment competition for one person for every five that retire, can you tell me what meritocracy we are talking about? If there are no competitions, what merit are we talking about? We are talking about 1 in 5 until 2011 and then 1 in 2.
Now, if you know that by 2014 we will see the retirement of almost 50% of the academic staff, this means that within seven to eight years, the number of academic staff will go down by about 40%. Thus just to start with, let us ask if there is to be recognition there must also be the opportunity to show that, otherwise what merit are we talking about? Meritocracy is a concept with which I am profoundly in agreement, as long as it is not just a word. Meanwhile, our society is indeed not meritocratic, not just within universities but all over.
There’s nepotism in the universities. Just look at the universities in the South. But not only there. Where entire family-clans are installed in the faculties of the universities.

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