My history books are being made available for free to history students after the History Department censored my books

The long-time Head of the Department of History and Dean of Faculty of arts Dominic Fenech, has run the faculty and the department as his personal fiefdom, banning people he doesn’t like from academic opportunities and progression and awarding those who are loyal to him. Meritocracy at the Faculty of Arts is barely existent as the main prerequisite for employment and academic progression is friendship with Dominic Fenech and his close associates.

Dominic Fenech was the Labour Party’s Secretary-General in the 1980s and has held his post at the University for more than three decades. His only publications are reproductions of his Phd thesis. Dominic Fenech told me bluntly in my face once that due to reasons of political patronage and influence, I could not be employed by the faculty as this would have alienated politicians and the government. I can not prove this because this was a private conversation.

What I can prove however, is the Dominic Fenech gutted the history department and obliterated decades of potential research with his spiteful and infantile behaviour. He has openly and publicly told academics to boycott me and is refusing to use my books at the history department.

The most recent historiographic publications about Malta’s economic history are those by Paul Caruana Galizia and myself, however there publications are nowhere to be seen in the reading list of the history department. Instead, the department is exclusively promoting the works of their own lecturers and other works which have been published thirty, fifty years ago.

Effectively, students are not being exposed to the latest research and the University of Malta has censored the research and works of a whole generation of historians.

This infantile and spiteful behaviour is not manly and neither honest – this is behaviour of children and the demented. My works have also been excluded from a course about Malta’s cultural history which is bizarre since my work contains a very deep study and analysis of Malta’s cultural changes along with its economic transformation.

Due to these restrictions and blatant censorship, I’m declaring that I will be making my history books and all publications by Dar Camilleri available to students of history at the University of Malta free of charge. If you would like copies get in touch with me here markcamilleri@autistici.org

Dominic Fenech can get away with this because he has excessive power at the Faculty which cannot be contested, and any promotions, employment or funding necessarily have to go through him. Most people at the Faculty ingratiate themselves with him because they feel that they have no other choice. The half-man, half-child has destroyed decades of potential historiographic research with his infantile and spiteful behaviour.

Professor at the University of Malta have just been awarded six figure salaries by the Labour government.