Metro

An author they can refuse

Whassamatta U?

A group of prominent Italian families has filed suit against Columbia University, saying the school has allowed its Italian-studies program to go “off track” and focus on “stereotypical subsets of Italian-American culture.”

The group, the Italic Institute of America, is particularly upset about a talk by CUNY prof and author Fred Gardaphe that was scheduled for La Casa Italiana last November titled, “What’ya Mean I’m Funny? Ball-Busting Humor and Italian American Masculinities.”

“The Italic Institute views the current work of the Academy as elitist and detached, European and international (not uniquely Italian), and failing to encompass any serious scholarship in Italian-American history, consciousness or concerns,” the suit says.

It also complains that 20,000 volumes of Italian literature that had been stored at La Casa Italiana are now “collecting dust in the basement of the Butler Library.”

It says that’s far from what their families intended in 1927, when they donated time and money to establish La Casa Italiana — the Italian House — and two endowments for the school.

The suit seeks an accounting for how the money is being spent, and for the school to “honor the original intent of the donating families.”

A rep for the school said, “We do not comment on pending litigation.”