The university said withdrawing the award could lead critics to believe it wanted to erase the past.
The university said withdrawing the award could lead critics to believe it wanted to erase the past.
A commission in the case said the honorary doctorate awarded by a Swiss university to former Italian dictator Benito Mussolini would not be revoked, despite a “serious mistake”.
The University of Lausanne (UNIL) honored the fascist leader in 1937 “for conceiving and realizing in his homeland a social organization … that would leave a deep mark on history.”
The university has been asked several times to withdraw a controversial honor to a recipient who had been an ally of Adolf Hitler during World War Two.
A panel of experts appointed to investigate the matter concluded that the decision to award the doctorate was “a serious mistake on the part of the academic and political authorities” at the time.
“The title constitutes a criminal regime and the legalization of its ideology,” he said in a report published on Friday.
The panel did not recommend withdrawal of the degree, saying it would give the false impression that the original decision to award the doctorate could be “corrected today”.
The university said withdrawing the award could lead critics to believe it wanted to erase the past.
“Instead of denying or eradicating this phenomenon, which is part of its history, UNIL management wants it to serve as a permanent warning,” it said in a statement on Friday.
Mussolini, who lived in Switzerland from 1902 to 1904, was executed by partisans in April 1945.