A-Infos (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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