Abstract
The aim of the research is to give an account of the cultural and scientific background that favoured the acceptance of the racial laws at the University of Padova. Before becoming mainstream in the Twenties and Thirties, indeed, racist theories and tendencies had already come up in several scientific fields (at a hidden level, though) at the beginning of the twentieth century, due to the affirmation of nationalist ideas. Through a thorough archival research, carried out especially at the Central State Archive and the General Archive of the University of Padova, this article intends to shed light on the origin, objectives and changes of the regime’s racial policy in the academia, in order to grasp if and to what extent the university system has represented an experimental ground for channelling racist ideologies in Italian society.
