Institutional Complicity and Legal Responsibility
The ReceptioGate Affair has exposed not only individual misconduct, but also the institutional complicity of certain academic societies. Among them, the Società Internazionale di Storia della Miniatura (Naples) played an active and documentable role in the orchestration and dissemination of defamatory content targeting a scholar whose research has challenged the manuscript dismemberment market.
Between December 2022 and April 2023, at least four defamatory emails were circulated using the Society’s official mailing list. Yet the president of the association, Prof. Alessandra Perriccioli Saggese—despite being repeatedly informed—took no legal or disciplinary measures to contain the damage. She failed to denounce the abuse of the mailing list, did not safeguard the personal data of members as required under EU Regulation 2016/679 (GDPR), and allowed further defamatory messages to circulate using the same system.
This qualifies not as mere negligence, but as complicity in aggravated defamation under both Italian and EU legal frameworks. These messages were circulated using the association’s official contact list, in clear violation of data protection norms and institutional neutrality. Far from being a one-time breach, this conduct was enabled by a persistent lack of oversight and by the continued failure to protect member data.
Despite being repeatedly informed, the society’s president took no concrete action. She failed to denounce the abuse, to protect the privacy of members, or to distance the institution from the defamatory content. By allowing the association’s internal tools to be used for reputational aggression—on more than one occasion—she effectively became complicit in the campaign.
Such conduct raises serious legal concerns, particularly in relation to:
– complicity in defamation (for knowingly facilitating repeated acts without intervening);
– data protection violations (for the unsecured distribution of members’ contact information);
– institutional liability (for allowing association resources to be used in bad faith).
The legal and ethical implications of this behaviour are addressed in Jordi Puig’s article:
📄 Institutional Complicity in the So-Called ReceptioGate Affair: 1. The Role of the Società Internazionale di Storia della Miniatura – Napoli
https://www.academia.edu/129268162/Institutional_Complicity_in_the_So_Called_ReceptioGate_Affair_1_The_Role_of_the_Societ%C3%A0_Internazionale_di_Storia_della_Miniatura_Napoli
Further documentation is provided in Puig’s open-access book:
📘 The ReceptioGate Affair: Truth, Defamation, and the Struggle Against Manuscript Dismemberment
https://books.google.ch/books?id=ek5ZEQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false
Academic societies have a duty to remain above commercial and defamatory dynamics. When they instead provide a platform for slander—either through negligence or connivance—they forfeit their legitimacy as scholarly institutions.