Richard Ingham's blog

Reforming the university in fascist Italy Writing about the vicissitudes of universities in 1950s America and in Nazi-occupied France (see previous posts) made me wonder if anyone had looked at the broader picture, of how higher education copes with totalitarian regimes more generally. It turns out they have. A 2005 book, Universities under Dictatorship , edited by Stuart Connelly and Michael Grüttner (Pennsylvania University Press), brought together a number of studies of higher education systems in countries as diverse as Czechoslovakia under communism and Spain under Franco. In  most cases, the book deals with regimes that took power after a period of violent struggle or even large-scale war.  Almost inevitably, in this kind of context the university system in each country was rapidly and drastically transformed. The exception was Italy, where the previous regime was not overthrown by civil war or foreign conquest, and where the introduction of fascism was car...