1977

November 16, Florence
Emilio Perondi, 60 years old, professor of mathematical analysis

After 34 years of death and ten of battle by family members, it was recognized that Professor Perondi, who refused to give the 18 politician to his students because ‘if you are not prepared then the bridges collapse’, is a victim of terrorism. Threatened, assaulted, beaten, subject to various attacks against him and his home, the professor had died of cancer in the hospital of Camerata. On the walls of the faculty, in the days before his death, a caricature had appeared with the inscription ‘Perondi dies’. And, on March 4, 1978, the newspaper Il Giornale published the article ‘The death of a teacher from cancer was claimed as a political victory’. Ten years of intimidation beginning in April 1968 had undermined the health of a lecturer who was daily forced to read on the walls of the university threats against him. Interrupted lessons, Molotov cocktails, sequests in the professor’s classroom with summary trials by students, intimidation of various kinds, assaults that force him several times to hospitalizations. Among these, the aggression of November 16, 1977, when he was beaten to death by six hooded subjects, inside the faculty of architecture in Piazza Brunelleschi in Florence. And a long trail of threats also to the professor’s colleagues: ‘Student failed professor massacred’, we continue to read on the walls of the university after his death. And again, against Professor Cavallo: ‘Horse, careful, Perondi teaches’.