Vincenzo Scotti, President of Link Campus University at Affaritaliani: "We will stay in the competent offices. Requests for damages "
Scotti (Link Campus): "They attack us to hit the 5Stelle. But we will defend ourselves "
We propose the interview done by Italian Businesses.
Professor Scotti, the Link Campus University, the University that you preside, has been under attack by the media for about two weeks. "La Repubblica" before and "Il Giornale" then targeted the University with the most various accusations. Among these the idea that Link is the "Frattocchie dei Cinque Stelle". Did you understand why?
"In 2015, our University promoted a study seminar on the manipulation of information in the cyberspace era. Over three years ago, we understood, before the others, that we were starting a new phase, I would call it barbaric, in which it is possible to falsify information with extreme ease, with great technique and in a scientific way, making it impossible to distinguish the true from the false. An era in which it becomes almost impossible to restore the truth after a false news has entered the network.
I'll give you an example: the story involving a journalist and Pope Francis. The Pope has denied the truth of a quotation mark and the journalist has not even uttered a word, leaving what he wrote continues to circulate freely on the Internet. Yet those are contained in a theological and pastoral reasoning that does not support gross simplifications, which, however, go to affect a secular magisterium.
If this happens, it can also become customary that, in the external and internal political struggle of our country, a sudden smear campaign based on news, obviously false and manipulated against our University, is built only because it is engaged in a rigorous project of innovative excellence with results recognized at international levels. A bolt from the blue without any reasonable motivation but based only on a theorem, an alleged organic link between the University and the Five Star Movement that would have led the movement to a choice of two of our female researchers and teachers for a role of minister in the case of victory of the Movement.
Incomprehensible attack. I would say no. You know, it seems clear to me the end: to hit the Five Stars, to delegitimize their elected and their possible Government throwing mud where it happens and no matter whether to be hit is a University that has achieved important research results (visible on the site of the Link Campus University) and has set up completely innovative undergraduate and master courses, all characterized by interdisciplinarity, internationalization and a teaching that has treasured the best experiences of universities all over the world.
Do you know what makes me angry? It makes me angry that those newspapers, expression of old logics and power-offs in the process of exhaustion, could at least ask the academic personalities who work for us, on what is done at Link Campus University. Or at least, if this was too difficult, just click on our site or read the publications of our publishing house, the Eurilink University Press, to understand how much passion and scientific rigor there is in our daily work. This small effort would have avoided falsehoods and claims for damages that we have been forced to ask, in a legal way, to protect the image of the University and of individuals who are or will be de-legitimized ".
"The writer is in bad faith and ignorant because our scientific area is not that of espionage or counterintelligence (the 007 to simplify) but analysis in the era of 'cyberspace', strategic and diplomatic studies. We were the first to introduce research, academic courses and masters in the field into universities, and we are happy about this. Moreover, whoever writes this forgets, but does so on purpose, that our training offer is very wide and articulated and concerns economic, managerial and circular economy studies, the juridical ones, sociology and psychology of change (Palo Alto school) , interactive computer science and artificial intelligence (machine learning) and DAMS, for which strategic studies are only a part.
I would like to mention that, for years, our sociological research laboratory (made up of excellent researchers) carries out surveys on young people today (the so-called Proteo generation), involving schools and over twenty thousand students and that our Research Department wins many international and national competitions, public and private. And the excellence of researchers is not only in international strategic studies, in sociological research, in interactive computing and in artificial intelligence and in art (DAMS) but also in the area of management and finance and international taxation, where there is a qualified offer of excellent universities (think that in these days out of six qualified in financial intermediation two come from Link Campus University). Does all this seem to you little? Not me. And he knows why. Because here we are helping to create the new ruling class of this country. I suspect this really annoys me ".
Professor Paola Giannetakis and Professor Elisabetta Trenta have been indicated by Luigi Di Maio as possible Ministers of his Government. What do you think and what role did Link Campus University have in these choices?
"No role, just to be clear. These are two teachers with excellent preparation, with international and interdisciplinary training and certainly ready to perform any difficult tasks. In this case it will be the field to measure them. I want those who read us understand that ours is a free University, a University that has only one goal: to train to critical knowledge. If our slanderers had read well, and not with the glasses of prejudice, the list of the Scientific Committee of our Political School would have seen the great cultural richness and, surprisingly, would have discovered that five were elected or re-elected in Parliament in different lines and not just the Five Stars ".
Another question that seems to me to be leaning against Link Campus University is having Professor Joseph Mifsud as a professor involved in the Russiagate. Can you better explain your relationship with him?
"Professor Mifsud collaborated with us when we were a member of the Malta State University in Italy, indicated by Malta, until he became president of EMUNI (Euro Mediterranean University) in 2008. For the academic year 2017-2018 then had an assignment as a foreign professor in Link Campus University as full professor of the prestigious Stirling University, in compliance with the relevant regulations. When Stirling declared him lapsed - in November 2017 - at his own university, the position we held, as a visiting professor, has failed, even here in compliance with Italian laws ".
Do you know where it is and why it disappeared?
"The University has no information on where it is and on the reasons".
On more articles of "Il Giornale" one speaks then of easy degrees with the SIULP and above all of fees of the students paid on an account in San Marino. But is it really possible that this happened?
"Academic activities took place and took place in full compliance with the relevant regulations. Other than easy degrees, other than favors. I would also like to remind you that the course, now the subject of the most driven fantasies, is managed by the Fondazione Sicurezza e Libertà and that there is no account in San Marino in the name of Link Campus University. Those who say the opposite simply say the false. And we are also forced here to protect ourselves in the competent offices ".
Do you think that after the Easter break and with the beginning of the consultations at the Quirinale all this can end?
"We are not prophets, we can only suppose that, since we have come into a political clash of attempted delegitimization of the grillini, the machine of misinformation should then become useless. But everything is possible now in the political life of the world and of our country, but we are ready for anything at any attempt to delegitimize the University or its members, we will react with the force of our history and transparency together with all those who from 20 years there are neighbors and that despite all these attacks there are even closer. But we do not wish it because then barbarism will have won and freedom will become increasingly limited ".