In November, Sigrid M. killed herself.

She taught German at the University of Trieste. She, like I, was a member of a small group of about 1,400 foreigners who teach languages at Italian universities.

When I taught in Italy, every non-Italian language lecturer in the country was on a fixed-term contract. Then, a few years ago, the Italian government summarily reclassified all of the non-Italian foreign language lecturers as language technicians. The legislature did this in response to a lawsuit brought by a lecturer named Pillar Allué. She sued the Italian government for issuing native Italian foreign language lecturers open-ended contracts while forcing non-natives to accept fixed-term contracts. Thanks to the reclassification, foreign lecturers’ pay (already low) was slashed and their earned seniority disappeared, among other humiliations.

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