ZURICH (Reuters) – A Swiss university is hosting an exhibition about its controversial award of an honorary doctorate to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, putting the links between his fascist government and Swiss society in the 1930s into the spotlight.
“Doctor Mussolini- a delicate past” explores the background of the award granted to the fascist leader by the University of Lausanne in 1937, which has never been revoked.
It focuses on why the university honoured Mussolini, who founded the fascist government in Italy and allied with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in World War Two.
Mussolini, who used the title “Il Duce”, was honoured “for having conceived and realised in his homeland a social organisation… that will leave a profound mark on history”, the citation for the doctorate said.
He was granted the honour in April 1937, after his forces invaded Ethiopia, where they broke the Geneva Conventions by using mustard gas.
“It was a wrong and shameful decision by the university,” said Olga Canton Caro, who organised the exhibition, which runs to September. “The crimes and brutality of Mussolini were clearly known at the time.”
She said there was a strong attraction at the time between some academics at the university and Mussolini, who spent a few months studying there in 1904.
Many business leaders and academics in the 1930s admired the dictator because of his anti-communism and efforts to modernise Italy and strengthen its military.
“There was a close relationship with the city of Lausanne, which was a centre of fascism in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, with many organisations paid for by Mussolini’s government,” said Canton Caro.
But even in 1937 the award was controversial, with many students and academics opposed.
The doctorate has remained unrevoked despite protests that have continued into recent years and a commission looking into the award in 2022 that led to the university acknowledging it had “failed in its mission and academic values”.
The exhibition, which features a copy of the doctoral certificate and other documents, is part of the university’s decision to discuss and raise awareness of the issue.
“Rather than denying or erasing this episode which is part of its history, the university management wants it to serve as a permanent warning,” the university said in 2022.
(Reporting by John Revill; Editing by Alex Richardson)
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