Following a student demonstration, a debate on “Role of culture in the context of a contested Mediterranean» at the Federico II University of Naples with the director of the Repubblica Maurizio Molinari and the rector Matteo Lorito. The event was canceled due to the tension created at the Faculty of Engineering, Polytechnic and Fundamental Sciences, in the Fuorigrotta district, where a group of students protested, among other things, against the universities' relations with Israel Italian. The police pushed the students, but entry to the faculty was then guaranteed. The group displayed a banner in front of the headquarters: “Zionists out of universities.” “In Palestine there are 30,000 dead killed by Israel – the students explain to Il Mattino – How can the director of La Repubblica and rector Lorito talk about the Mediterranean when at the heart of it a genocide is taking place ? Above all, how is it possible to invite the director of one of the openly Zionist Italian newspapers, La Repubblica, in such a situation?”
Call from President Mattarella
“The President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella called by telephone the director of La Repubblica, Maurizio Molinari, who was prevented this morning from holding a conference at a university, to express his solidarity. The President added that what must be banned from Universities is intolerance, because anyone who claims to impose their ideas and prevents those who think differently from expressing them is incompatible with the University,” we can read in a press release of the Quirinale.
Political solidarity
“Preventing Repubblica director Maurizio Molinari from speaking at the university is technically a fascist gesture. This is what Pasolini called the fascism of the anti-fascists. Using the argument of defining Repubblica as a Zionist newspaper is sordid. Universities must be places of dialogue and not spaces for the construction of a single and violent ideological thought. Because those who prevent others from speaking use violence, not culture. Solidarity with Maurizio Molinari.” So on “There is a dangerous and growing climate of anti-Semitism in the country, often accompanied by complicit silence. We cannot and must not act as if nothing had happened,” added Democrat Pina Picierno.
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