WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY SICILY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, Sicilia Libertaria #462 - Anonymous Review. Evaluate and Punish (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Every scientific innovation, Thomas Kuhn taught, is usually hindered by

the existing academic community - not so much on the basis of scientific
evidence, but rather because of corporate prejudices, entrenched
nomenclatures (names and authorities), and consolidated bodies of
knowledge. There are numerous examples of important discoveries, even in
the recent past (from the identity of the Riace bronzes to the "other
dealings" of the young Verga), dismissed as fanciful hypotheses simply
because they clashed with the dominant intellectual system. ---- The
academic establishment, in particular, has always excelled at preserving
power positions and perpetuating itself through transactions with
governments in office and the imposition of knowledge shared among its
members. Since 2006, Italy - more than any other Western country - has
adopted a strictly hierarchical and bureaucratized evaluation system to
secure both status and academic indoctrination.

This may seem like a matter for specialists, yet it now forms the
cornerstone on which the organization, accreditation, and dissemination
of knowledge in the Western world rest. Despite its well-known flaws,
evaluation has already become the main instrument for controlling
universities and the knowledge they produce. It aims to permeate every
sphere of contemporary culture, from digital products to social media.
It won't be long before the process - currently entrusted to committees,
anonymous reviewers (in the worst sense), and standardized models - will
be managed by algorithms designed to enforce conformity and steer
intellectual production, not only academic, toward profit.

Today the Italian evaluation system trickles down from two national
government-appointed commissions (ANVUR and CVNVR). These bodies assess
the "quality" (meaning alignment with government directives) of
universities, departments, research output, and projects. Professors, in
turn, pass this pressure down to assistants, impoverished students,
journals, and external scholars unlucky enough to collaborate by
attending seminars, courses, and conferences. Funding from the Ministry
of Education and Research (MIUR), eligibility for competitions, and even
hiring decisions depend on the resulting scores - creating a true
employment blackmail system.

It's a closed and stagnant system but evolving rapidly: politics
(following Trumpist logic) pushes for greater government control, while
the economy demands deeper market alignment. Its primary tool is the
"anonymous review" - another Anglo-Saxon aberration invented to keep
students and teachers in subjugation.

This "anonymous review" is conducted by external reviewers who were
themselves trained within the system, allegedly experts in the field
(but rarely are). Anonymity often breeds arrogance, censorship, and
intellectual mediocrity. Yet these reviewers fulfill their main function
perfectly: to enforce conformity to conventional knowledge - the
familiar, the already published, the mainstream - the average, dominant
scientific understanding by which every contribution is judged. It's an
authoritarian, inquisitorial, and arbitrary practice that blocks equal
exchange, discourages idea circulation and originality, excludes
alternative and foundational knowledge, fosters preventive censorship,
and - especially in journals - stifles the critical debate that once
animated intellectual and political life. It's been noted that none of
the landmark works of anthropology - nor, I add, the history of the
workers' and socialist movement - would pass today's "anonymous review"
filters.

The arbitrariness of this evaluation method is widely acknowledged and
debated abroad. Many universities, especially in the humanities, have
adopted "open peer review." In its most radical form, reviewers'
comments, all related documentation, and correspondence are published
online, and readers are invited to participate. This ensures maximum
transparency (author and reviewer are mutually identifiable) and enables
collaborative, multi-voiced work that can, in theory, improve
reliability and critical quality while involving the scholarly community.

In Italy, too, many scholars have raised critiques since the publication
of Valeria Pinto's 2012 book Valutare e punire, which exposed the close
link between evaluation and the commercialization of higher education.
Its theses were further explored in the collective volume Perché la
valutazione ha fallito. Per una nuova Università pubblica (Perugia
2023). Notably absent among the main critics are professors who call
themselves anarchists (despite their numbers) or rebellious students.
Many have adapted to the reigning mediocrity, embracing new evaluation
and teaching methods, praising selective, niche studies that rarely
offer broad critical perspectives. Today they even participate in
research on urban violence, favored by national evaluation boards,
blurring distinctions between riots and revolutions, bandits and
socialists, Mazzinians and anarchists. This - and it's no small thing -
prevents our movement from drawing authentic lessons while allowing some
to climb the academic ladder.

In the late 1970s, young comrades debated whether attending university
would risk turning them into "foolish servants" - "cadres," in technical
jargon - of capitalist society. Some decided to take the risk, believing
they could "undermine the institution from within." Decades later, this
goal seems to have failed. Many of those internal "saboteurs" are now
staunch defenders of "anonymous review," unashamedly engaging in
inexcusable misconduct - including blocking historically valuable texts
- against the few who dare to challenge or mock its absurdity.

Must even the history of anarchism remain hostage to self-styled or
declared "anarchist" professors more concerned with career advancement
and academic networking than serving our movement? Some, no longer bound
by the need to win appointments, could now create open-access journals -
unrestricted incubators of alternative ideas - and oppose the
mainstream. Others, younger and more rebellious, could publish in such
journals in protest and challenge the supposed scientific necessity and
effectiveness of authoritarian evaluation. It might cost a career or a
professorship - already hard to obtain - but perhaps it's the right
thing to do. If so, we'll stand beside them.

Natale Musarra

https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/
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