The reaction, from the political world and the ‘fourth estate’ to the decision of 67 Academics at La Sapienza University to protest the invitation to Pope Benedict XVI to address students at the start of the Academic year has been vicious. As already documented in this blog, most mainstream commentators ranging from the President Napolitano, and Prime minister Romano Prodi through to newspapers like the Corriere della Sera, have framed the scuffle at La Sapienza very much along the lines established by the Vatican Press office – i.e it was a shameful display of illiberal intollerance to ‘prevent’ the Pope from speaking last week at the University.
The protest has largely been misrepresented, and its authors maligned, attacked, and written off variously as ‘cretins’ (Philosophy professor and Mayor of Venice Massimo Cacciari), and fundamentalists, while Alleanza Nazionale’s former minister of communications, Maurizio Gasparri described the original author of the protest, Professor Cini as a ‘liar and formentor of violence’.
That’s what you get for daring to say that in your opinion the ‘infallible’ leader of a religious denomination has no place setting the tone for the Academic year in a secular state-run University.
While Ratzinger did get to have his speech read out at the university – and protesters were not allowed into the University, stopped by Police at the gates (while militant catholic students did get a p.r protest inside the auditorium, standing gagged for the drooling t.v cameras), the results for at least one of the signatories of the protest have not been so positive.
Physicist Luciano Maiani has had his appointment as President of the National Research Council boycotted by a vote in the Senate. The physicist was nominated by the council for the position on the basis of his academic qualifications. The nomination was, though, in an unprecedented move voted down by the Italian Senate, where Forza Italia senator Franco Asciutti remarked that the scientist had shown himself to be incompatible with balanced and ‘laico’ attitude” that the position required. Laico I have left untranslated, as it is a particularly problematic term. It’s sense conveys something of the ‘secular’ but it’s not an exact fit. What that has to do with his scientific credentials, though, is anybody’s guess.
Meanwhile, though the press has been quick to point out that it was a ‘mere’ 67 of La Sapienza’s teaching staff who signed the protest against the ‘holy father’, they’ve been less quick to point out the growing number of academic signatories to a statement of solidarity for those original 67 who have been the subject of such a ferocious backlash. The petition is online at Historia Magistra (http://www.historiamagistra.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.41), and can be signed only by academics. As of the time of writing up to 970 academics from different faculties and universities throughout Italy (and abroad) have signed.
Ruffians, fundamentalists, and illiberal formentors of violence the lot of them!