After months of intense, stubborn, often invisible work to ensure that young artists and musicians from Gaza have the opportunity to continue studying, creating, and giving voice to a people under siege, a circular has finally been released that opens up to "further applications for the admission of new Palestinian scholarship holders," signed by Laura Ramaciotti, rector of the University of Ferrara and president of the Conference of Rectors of Italian Universities (Crui).
WE WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE ITa sign of openness. We would like to read it as an act of responsibility. Above all, we would like it to be an opportunity to heal a wound that the Italian university system continues to inflict: the systematic exclusion of scholarships from private universities, conservatories, and academies of fine arts. For months we have been pointing out a serious, structural, incomprehensible discrimination. Not ideological, but administrative. Not political, but legal.
Private universities and Afam institutions – music, visual arts, dance, theater – have been ignored as if they were not a full part of the Italian higher education system, as if art were not knowledge and culture were not a vital necessity, especially for those coming from Gaza.
Yet the scholarships from private universities, conservatories, and academies of fine arts fully meet the Iupals criteria. For this reason, the inclusion of these scholarships alongside those from Crui within the iupals project would not be a concession, but an act of institutional coherence. It would be the recognition of a natural collaboration between systems that, by law, have equal dignity.
THE SCHOLARSHIPS OF THESEUniversities and institutions guarantee tuition, accommodation, meals, health insurance; they provide enrollment in a regular academic course; they cover the entire duration of the study program; they ensure air travel to the destination. They are complete, structured, solid scholarships. Exactly like those from Crui.
So why exclude them? Why implicitly say that a violinist, a composer, a visual artist, a dancer from Gaza are worth less than an engineering or medical student? Why deny that, for a wounded society, music and art are tools of survival, trauma processing, and future? Why accept that, just as Italy positions itself as a humanitarian and cultural bridge, a hierarchy of knowledge that reeks of injustice is perpetuated?
This latest wave of evacuations can – and must – be the opportunity to correct the mistake. Not in an indefinite future, but now. The boys and girls of Gaza cannot afford long waits, delays, or loopholes. Every exclusion is a closed door. Every institutional silence is a talent that fades away.
We do not ask for exceptions. We ask for consistency. We do not ask for favoritism. We ask for fairness. We ask that the system of conservatories and academies of fine arts be recognized for what it is: an integral part of higher education in Italy, as established by law, and therefore deserving of the same treatment, the same protection, the same public responsibility. This should not be a decision of foreign authorities, but ours, an Italian decision: to include in the Iupals lists all scholarships with guarantees comparable to those required by the project.
ITALY HAS THE OPPORTUNITYto say, with actions and not with statements, that culture is a right, not a luxury. That art is not an ornament, but a necessary language. That even from Gaza can come not only the wounded, but future masters, musicians, creators of beauty. It is necessary to urgently call for the immediate evacuation of students from Gaza with scholarships comparable to Iupals scholarships. January 31 represents the final and non-negotiable deadline for formalizing enrollments for the current academic year. Any further delay risks seriously and irreversibly compromising the right to education of the involved students.
It is up to Crui, the Ministry of University and Research, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to decide whether this circular will remain an administrative act or become an authentic political gesture: to take responsibility for real lives. To determine who to include or exclude, to recognize or deny equal dignity to knowledge, is politics in its purest form. The time to act is now.