The Luigi Einaudi Foundation from 1964 to the Present |
complex society that was evolving. The Foundation’s founders believed
that this function could best be carried out by an institution that was
private, yet closely connected to the heritage of knowledge conserved in
universities, and could thereby also contribute to improving higher
education. Equally important was the fact that the Foundation and its
research were autonomous. It was a place in which the intellectual and
professional growth of its fellowship holders could be engendered by
cooperation in an environment of complete freedom from special
interests. This second aspect of the Foundation was characteristic of the
years when Mario Einaudi took part in directing it, the period up to 1984,
when there were no doctoral programs in Italian universities.
The model of the Center for International Studies that the Foundation
adapted to the context in which it functioned were given concrete form
in the decision to give preference to areas of study that would foster the
formation of sectors of the governing class capable of understanding and
using modern social science. In this sense Mario Einaudi and other
members of the Academic Committee, albeit within the bounds of strict
scholarly confines, shared a common ethos rooted in Western democratic
traditions and the sought through the Foundation to offer the young
people studying there the cultural instruments that had been crucial to
history’s “great transformations”.
This was translated into a complex organizational structure, with the
presence of internal researchers alongside the Academic Committee. In
addition, although grant holders could continue and complete their
studies elsewhere in Italy or abroad, the Luigi Einaudi Foundation in Turin,
where the seminars and meetings held defined the progress of research

5