michele lancione's blog
Today I am going to take part in an online gathering, organised by Osvaldo Costantini, with a number of Italian anthropologists. The gist is to continue to discuss the role of the military sector in the Italian academy.
I will take part in this gathering with students from the Cambiare Rotta movement as well as a representative of the Osservatorio Contro la Militarizzazione delle Scuole e dell’Universitá.
All welcome at the link in the poster.
In Turin over the next few days, there will be three events continuing the debate on war, the military, universities and forms of resistance.
On Friday, 8 May, 3.30 pm, at the Ferdinando Rossi Forum, we will discuss militarisation and universities, building on and expanding the book I wrote for Eris Edizioni. Info: https://www.forumferdinandorossi.it/
On Saturday, 9 May, there are two events. At 3.30 pm, at the Festival della Casa del Popolo – Estella, with comrades from Potere al Popolo, we will discuss Europe and precariousness: https://poterealpopolo.org/notizie/dai-territori/piemonte/torino-costellazioni-quarta-edizione-festival-estella/
Finally, at 7.00 pm, I will have the pleasure of joining EMERGENCY in a series of talks against armed conflict at the Mercato Centrale in Turin: https://www.pressenza.com/it/2026/05/r1pud1a-torino-tre-giorni-di-eventi-iniziative-e-peace-therapy/
All welcome!
I am happy to take part in the Altrimodi/Altrimondi festival in Turin, which in previous years was hosted in the Askatasuna social centre – evicted by police in December 2025 (read here). This year, the Festival will take place in the neighbourhood’s militarised street, where Askatasuna is located, in Vanchiglia, Turin. It will centre conversations about social injustice, climate injustice, war and much more.
I will act as chair of a conversation on militarisation and securitisation, amongst Michele Di Giorgio, Enrico Gargiulo and Valeria Verdolini.
All welcome! Check the entire program here: https://www.altrimondialtrimodi.it/
We continue with public debates and mobilisation in Turin.
Tonight a public gathering on the relationship between our city, our universities, and the military. We will discuss the political economy of death and continue to build antimilitarist practice.
All welcome to join at 6pm CEST at the Sereno Regis cultural study centre.
The “Knowledge Doesn’t March” campaign is an initiative that brings together a network of organized entities from the world of schools and universities. Its goal is to provide a tool for severing the ties between public education and the military-industrial complex, and thus its complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people. It aims to reverse the tendency of our education system to be an instrument of war policies.
The campaign continues the work some of us have done in the past years to fight the constitution of an Academic-Military Industrial Complex in Italy and Europe. Much has been done in recent years on this front, including with the student movement against the genocide of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israel in Palestine. From my side, I began by examining the arrival of Frontex in my Department in 2021 (here, a recent publication on the matter in Antipode; here a post on how the story unfolded), and then I centred the problem of the relationship between the Italian University and the Military in this pamphlet.
The assembly is open to all; more info on how to join is here.
In preparation for the national strike on the 28th of November against the militarization of Italian society and for Palestine, this week I will contribute to two student-led self-training gatherings. In both, we will discuss the involvement of our Universities in the military-industrial complex and their relations to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
Today, 26th November, at 5 p.m. I will join online the collective @liberisapericritici in Venice — with Mjriam Abu Samra. Info, here.
Tomorrow, 27th November, at 4 p.m. I will join my friends and comrades of the Collettivo Autorganizzato Universitario in Turin, for a session that will see the online participation from CAU collectives in Naples, Padova and more. Info, here.
This is all in preparation of the national strike of the 28th – info, here.
The Polytechnic University where I work has missed another opportunity to do the right thing.
On July 15, 2025, the Academic Senate voted by a majority against the Motion for Gaza presented by a group of senators. The Motion called for two simple actions, expressing “deep outrage and condemnation of the ongoing massacre of the civilian population in Gaza”:
The negative Senate’s vote on these simple points is an expression of the technocratic, corporate, and essentially patriarchal approach with which the Polytechnic University of Turin operates.
Now, some colleagues are starting to say no. A petition has been started to express our individual ‘not in my name’ stance regarding this latest decision by the academic senate.
For me, it is important to emphasize that this ‘not in my name’ cannot be limited to the latest vote by the Senate, but must be traced back to the epistemic and material structures underpinning the Polytechnic University of Turin.
In my fourth month of work at this university, in 2021, very few of us said ‘not in my name’ regarding the agreement with Frontex. An agency working with the so-called Libyan coast guard and engaged in extensive pushback, ultimately killing asylum seekers at the border. Even then, the senate gave its best, with two votes that were as problematic as the one on Gaza today (here, or even earlier, here).
In 2023, before October 7, it was—for students and for very few of us—a ‘not in my name’ in relation to the direct collaboration agreements that bind this Polytechnic to producers of weapons and death such as Leonardo.
Then came years of encampments. Of occupations. Of demonstrations, assemblies, and public debates in every media outlet, where few of us continued to say NO and propose concrete alternatives to a certain kind of service-based research.
Now, in July 2025, there are a few more of us saying NO. Really good! But at this junction, all need to remember that saying ‘not in my name’ today cannot stop at a simple nominal dissociation related to the latest nefarious vote in the Senate. For the historical, material, and political reasons that link the genocide of the Palestinian people to the death industries some of us have been fighting for years, our collective NO today must also be a NO to those industries. A NO that changes the political and economic structure of the Politecnico. Otherwise, it will be nothing more than a mid-summer fling. A momentary lifting of our eyes from the Excel spreadsheet, rather than an honest collective raising of our heads.
We need to address the political economy that structures the academic-military-industrial complex in Italy and beyond. That is a form of radical change that is not required by history or that must be done for posterity, but rather must come from a simple respect for all human life here and now.
I am very happy to participate in this important debate organized by fellow Neapolitan comrades from the Banchi Nuovi Movement (historically one of the most important workers’ movements in and beyond Naples).
See you on Wednesday, July 2, at 5 p.m. to discuss militarization, universities, and Palestine. Special thanks to my dear friend and comrade Rosaria Cordone for organizing this event.
I’ll be in Palermo this Saturday, June 7, at 5 p.m., at the Festival Una Marina di Libri.
I will meet students from the university coordination group in revolt (CUIR) to discuss my book on the relationship between the university and the military (here) and many other related issues. I will also be in conversation with Giuliana Spera and Charlie Barnao.
Thanks to Chira Giubilaro for thinking up and working on all this!
Since I arrived in Italy in spring 2021, I have been participating in, co-organising and supporting student—and comrade-led struggles against the military and for Palestine. From Frontex to the fight against Leonardo and the vast mobilisation in support of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, no month has gone by without a rally, a public speech, an interview or a dozen assemblies.
In the last month only, I had the pleasure of thinking with organised groups such as the Collettivo Autorganizzato Universario in Naples, Cambiare Rotta in Bologna and Turin, Potere al Popolo in Turin, the dock workers of Genoa, the comrades of Radio Onda Rossa in Rome and Radio Blackout, students in various other cities including an event today in Parma, as well as the students of the Intifada in Turin.
I want to thank all these students and comrades. This is the university we fight for and re-construct everyday. A space to occupy with the joy of discovery and the generative anger of political struggle. Avanti!
PS: if interested, the short interview I gave to Radio Onda Rossa for the 25th of April is available online, here.
