#Professor claims Brooklyn College unfairly gave him the boot

A former Brooklyn College professor who started teaching Italian studies at the school in 1977 has filed a multimillion-dollar discrimination suit against the institution after it canceled the Italian major, federal court papers show.

Professor Luigi Bonaffini, 73, who has published over 40 books and garnered several awards, claims he was forced into retirement at the beginning of 2020 due to his age, nation of origin, and hearing disability, which the suit contends did not impact his ability to instruct his popular classes.

Bonaffini charges Brooklyn College phased out Italian instruction completely in the most Italian place in America — there are an estimated 800,000 Italians and Italian-Americans living in the five boroughs — to get rid of him and his aging department colleagues, the youngest of whom was 65.

The professor, who hails from Italy and resides in Park Slope, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the defendants in April and was issued a right to sue notice on July 29, court papers show.

The professor “received excellent reviews from the students” and for the last several years was teaching courses “fully online” because of his hearing disability, court documents show.

“I found it intolerable and insulting, after teaching Italian for 43 years, to be told I could no longer teach what I had always been teaching, simply because the administration had made it impossible for me to do so by canceling all Italian classes without any reason,” Bonaffini said in his EEOC complaint.

But there was a reason the school ditched the Italian major, according to Brooklyn College spokesman Rich Pietras.

“In terms of Italian Studies at Brooklyn College, last fall the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures decided that its Italian major and minor needed to be revitalized due to declining enrollment,” he told The Post. “Both the major and minor had only one student each at the time.”

Additionally, the suit alleges Brooklyn College Provost Anne Lopes notified the professors at the September 2019 meeting that instead of teaching Italian, the plaintiff and other members of the Italian faculty would have to teach general educational courses, courses in other departments, or be placed on administrative leave.

The Brooklyn federal court suit seeks at least $12 million in damages and names Brooklyn College, CUNY and Provost Anne Lopes as defendants. “We do not comment on pending litigation or on individual personnel matters,” Pietras said.

Bonaffini’s attorney, Marshall Bellovin, said, “For some reason, be it political or otherwise, they’ve targeted a significant substantial minority student population and according to the allegations in the complaint, my client had absolutely no alternative but to retire.”

Currently, some elementary Italian classes have been scheduled, taught by an adjunct, however the major and minor in Italian have been abolished, sources said.