BRUNO LEONI NELLA STORIA DELLA FACOLTÀ DI SCIENZE POLITICHE

This essay outlines the academic path of Bruno Leoni from the years of apprenticeship as a voluntary assistant of Giole Solari and Pietro Vaccari up to the professorship in Philosophy of Law in 1942 and the call as extraordinary professor of Doctrine of the State in the Faculty of Political Sciences of Pavia at the end of that same year, when he was carrying out his military service as an officer. The armistice of 8 September 1943 temporarily interrupted his career. Until the Liberation he worked in the I.S.9 section of the Allied secret services which dealt with the rescue and possible evacuation of prisoners or stragglers. Leoni will complete some risky missions. Returning to civilian life in 1946, he began his teaching activity in Pavia in the Faculty of Law since the activity of all the faculties of Political Science, born as fascist, had been suspended. In 1948, in a normalized situation, he was finally able to occupy his chair and was also elected dean of the Faculty. He immediately began to build the architecture, introducing new disciplines and enhancing interdisciplinarity. It also intends to update and de-provincialize the Faculty, making it responsive to the needs of public administration and other social institutions and establishing research relationships with international academies and research centers. For these purposes he also founded the magazine “Il Politico” (1950), the first in Italy in which politics was addressed in scientific terms. The magazine marked a turning point in the life of the Faculty of Political Science in Pavia and brought it into the midst of the scientific and cultural debate of the time. On the one hand, Leoni’s approach was welcomed with great consensus and participation by the students and some of the teachers and on the other hand it found resistance from a certain number of colleagues and from the Rector of the University himself, with whom he came into conflict. In 12 years the Faculty, under his leadership, had grown in number and quality and had gained prestige and visibility. For this reason, in 1960, Leoni did not expect his re-election as dean to be questioned. Instead, this is how it happened. This outcome saddened him greatly. He began traveling at the invitation of the most prestigious universities and moved away from Pavia, even though he continued to fulfill his academic obligations. His death on May 28, 1967 came as a shock. However, his Faculty continued to renew his memory and made his legacy bear fruit, starting with “Il Politico”, which is still published today.