Yesterday Bologna, with clashes between police and students. First it was the turn of the University of Turin, the first to block, through the Academic Senate, the call for collaboration with Israeli universities, accepting a request from student collectives and a signed letter by 1,700 people, including teachers and researchers. Tension is rising in Italian universities, increasingly agitated by the situation in Gaza, with controversial positions taken. “Let's listen to what the minister will say, it's a tense moment, we hope to resolve it. In Milan, the calls for tenders with Israel were discussed in the Academic Senate, but we already decided three months ago.” Arriving at the headquarters of Crui, the Conference of Italian Rectors, Elio Franzini, rector of the university of Milan, said. “In a university like mine we cannot think of limiting access, we have more than 40 premises, it is technically impossible,” he told journalists , responding to the hypothesis, mentioned in certain newspapers, of limiting access during debates considered to be more at risk. “I am here to listen and share the best solutions to prevent episodes like those of recent days from happening. are happening again. We are not worried, we protect the free expression of thought with a single insurmountable barrier: violence,” declared University Minister Anna Maria Bernini upon her arrival at the Crui headquarters.
The tense situation in Italian universities
In Bologna, the Academic Senate did not follow in the same footsteps as its colleagues in Turin. And it was precisely this that triggered the protest of more than 300 students who tried to go to the Manzoni Theater, where the opening ceremony of the academic year took place with Minister Bernini. It is inevitable that the theme of the Middle East will also be addressed at the Conference of Italian Rectors. Proposals to end projects with Israeli universities were also made at the Pisa Normal, where the rector was clear and reiterated that “stopping relations with Israel is not under discussion.” In Trieste the Baciocchi room was occupied, after the meeting with the more than eloquent title “The right to boycott Israel“. In the classroom, as Corriere della Sera reports today, there is a banner with the words “Zionist government complicit in genocide.” Free Palestine.” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described the choice of the University of Turin as “serious and worrying.” “If institutions comply with these methods, we risk having a lot of problems,” she said. II. Minister Bernini was saddened: “It is sad that a similar choice (that of Turin, editor's note) coincides with the first National University Day entitled: 'Open Doors'. And it is disconcerting that we can think of close them. I consider that any form of boycott is bad and foreign to the tradition and culture of our universities, which have always been inspired by inclusion.”
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