Domenico Pacitti included this tidbit in an article which attempted, ten years ago, to touch on some of the most sordid crimes of Italy’s almost entirely sordid university system.
Pacitti points out that no legal remedy exists.
Adding more laws to the 200,000 already in existence has already proved futile and even counter-productive: in Italy breaking the law is literally a way of life and asking for it to be upheld is considered offensive. European derecognition of Italian universities as bona fide institutions would be the logical step to take.
Far from having been derecognized, the startlingly corrupt – even by Italian standards – San Raffaele has become the prime minister’s pet university. His daughter just graduated from the school.
The prime minister’s eldest daughter by his second marriage was awarded her philosophy degree by the San Raffaele Life-Health University after submitting a dissertation on the concepts of well-being, freedom and justice in the work of the Nobel prize-winning economist, Amartya Sen. Roberta de Monticelli, who holds the chair of philosophy of the person at San Raffaele, said that after declaring the results, chancellor Luigi Verzé had turned to Barbara Berlusconi “asking her if she thought a faculty of economics could be founded at the San Raffaele based on the thinking of the author on which she had written her thesis, and inviting her to become a teacher”.
De Monticelli claims she was not just kept from examining Barbara Berlusconi; she was kept even from seeing her thesis.
“The first candidate was programmed for 9.30am. My presence on the panel, however, was scheduled from 10am onwards,” she said. “I understood then that the first [candidate] was going to be Barbara Berlusconi.”
The professor said that she had asked to see the thesis written by the prime minister’s daughter “but there were no more copies”.
October 7th, 2011 at 5:20AM
[…] San Raffaele Life-Health University, in Milan. It has it all – plaything of politicians, ripper-off of the health system, and […]