Courtesy of Paola Agazzi
Trooping through streets alongside empty hearses, Italian postdoctoral researchers mark what they consider the death of their role in the country's universities. Others cover themselves under sheets as a symbol of their ghostly presence in the country's higher education world. They are joined by associate and ordinary professors who display unmistakable protest signs: "Good-bye, Moratti."
Letizia Brichetto Arnaboldi Moratti, Italian Minister of Education, University and Scientific and Technological Research, is at the center of this unprecedented protest, which threatens to paralyze Italian universities, stirring up reactions among usually quiet, urbane Italian academics. Moratti's draft law, which was approved by the Council of Ministers on Jan. 16, and will be discussed by the Parliament in time for the new academic year that begins in the fall, aims to radically change the legal status of researchers and professors in an attempt to make the university system "more flexible."1
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