It was supposed to be an opportunity to follow up on what was decided the day before by the Academic Senate, but the Board of Directors of the University of Turin found himself “split” on several points. And so, after three hours of discussions, it was decided to nothing done: no vote but only “an acknowledgment”.
Too many points to clarify and so, without the time to add «appropriate» amendments, there has been a slowdown, not without controversy. The Senate had chosen to take sides against the boycott and a sort of blacklist towards Israel and some private companies, first and foremost Leonardo and Thalesbut had opened up to the establishment of a commission responsible for monitoring and making scientific agreements with possible war implications more transparent (dual use). The debate revolved around these two positions, but not only. The board of directors actually split immediately, already in the introductions.
Most of the members would have liked to include the word in the text “genocide”, a term already cleared by Amnesty International. This is because the document speaks of an “inhumane attack” on the October 7, but the same terminology is not used to describe the Israeli government’s reaction. Another member, at that point, would have liked to highlight the faults of Hamas, bringing to the board of directors the same divisions found in public opinion. And it was still early in the debate. There are many questions and controversies on the plate. A member of the board of directors attacked the rector Geuna stating that «our body has equal dignity to the Senate, we are not here to ratify in silence».
Some even claimed that the text would be decided at the table, without real consideration of student representation. The entire board of directors, however, agreed on the establishment of a commission to judge dual use risk agreements, a topic which, as stated by the rector, had never been taken into consideration in previous years.
But even in this case there were differences: how many commissions? Composed by whom? Joint? With each answer, other questions opened up. «We cannot leave the evaluation to external experts, perhaps already on the payroll of other companies» complained some members, while others focused on a «problem of representativeness of the parties in the commissions».
And then the board of directors expressed the need to use a hierarchy in monitoring research projects, starting from those connected to the most critical countries. Finally he found himself one point of agreement with the request to make the reason for the decision taken by the commissions on whether or not to approve a partnership “transparent and public”. However, there is no controversy over the desire to provide funds to support the Palestinian academic community, to which, however, according to the board of directors, support for the acquisition of visas should also be added.
Questions and queries impossible to resolve in a few hours. For this reason it was decided not to vote on the text, giving the rector the mandate to prepare an implementation plan for the implementation of the proposals, soliciting further points of attention that emerged in the session. But not without discomfort. «Young people are often accused of being disinterested in politics, but when they question us we are not able to provide precise answers – stated a member of the board of directors – they presented us with an emergency situation already in winter, we are in June and this is the our non-response. A pedagogical defeat.”
