The Anti-Fascist Network and Renata Calabresi: From Florence to Rome and New York

Abstract

The census of Jewish academics ordered by the minister of national education Bottai, in a circular of August 9, 1938, was quite simple to carry out for tenured professors who were all state employees. But the more numerous and lower-status personnel were mainly dependent on the local budget of that university where they worked on a part-time or temporary basis, even for a decade or more: assistenti ordinari and straordinari (the latter sounds higher but is not), aiuti and incaricati (adjunct professors and instructors, temporary lecturers), comandati (on leave from their full position in a high school), or assistenti volontari (mainly unpaid assistants). Scholars who had passed a concorso to obtain the university teaching qualification of liberi docenti were formally attached to a university only if they really taught there on a temporary basis, which was the minority of the cases. Yet most did take part actively in research and teaching in order to keep their title.¹