The College’s Committee on Appointments and Promotions (CAP) decided against hiring an Italian professor for the 2025–26 academic year, effectively rendering students unable to study Italian at the College. The decision prompted outcry from several students currently or previously enrolled in Italian courses, who will now have to enroll in an Italian course at MCLA through the Williams/Bennington/MCLA Cross-Enrollment Program if they would like to continue their study of the language.
In an email to the Record, Dean of the Faculty and Chair of CAP Lara Shore-Sheppard explained that the group came to the conclusion through its standard process for evaluating all departments’ position requests.
“Every year there are many more thoughtful, well-justified requests than there are open positions,” she wrote, adding that the number of such requests is often double that of openings. “CAP faces the difficult task of deciding which, among many compelling needs, are the most pressing.”
According to Shore-Sheppard, CAP considers whether a department needs a position to support its associated major or concentration or as a result of enrollment pressures. It also prioritizes staffing permanent faculty who can build long-term connections with students.
Students at the College currently cannot major or concentrate in Italian, and the program only has one visiting professor whose contract will end at the conclusion of this academic year. According to students, however, this limitation has not lessened interest in the program, and the news came as a shock to many enrolled in Italian courses.
“I genuinely am so heartbroken,” Katie Blanch ’27 told the Record in an interview. “[Visiting Assistant Professor of Romance Languages] Mario Sassi has been my favorite professor here at Williams. He consistently raises the bar for professors, and I don’t understand why Williams would let go of a program that has festivals, events, and Italian tables that are consistently attended with high numbers and great people.”
Bea De Monaco ’25 and Will Schnall ’25, the two teaching assistants for Italian at the College, were also surprised by this decision — especially because they found out about the change from people unaffiliated with the romance languages department.
“We had a big class last year — there’s always interest,” De Monaco told the Record. “The people who are in the 101 class within the first or second week already asked me what other classes they could take in the following years.”
CAP’s decision comes in the wake of former Professor of Italian Michele Monserrati’s departure from the College in 2023 after he was denied a tenure-track position. “The news is disheartening for me, as I dedicated six years to aligning the Italian program with the other modern languages on campus,” he wrote in an email to the Record.
“The consistently robust enrollment in Italian classes made a compelling case for its continuation at Williams. Therefore I’m really surprised by this decision,” he added.
“When Monserrati didn’t get [the tenure-track position], we all wrote to the administration,” Schnall said. “I wrote, like, the longest email, not only for him but for Italian at Williams.”
Monserrati wrote that, at the time of his departure from the College, President Maud S. Mandel “assured students of the future of Italians at the college.”
“Unfortunately, almost two years later, the decision to terminate the program seems a direct reversal of that promise,” he continued. “The President has historically been responsive to student voices, and their advocacy could lead to a change of heart.”
Following the decision, Bryan DiFebo-Byrne ’27, a student who takes Italian, has started to organize an attempt to convince CAP to reverse its decision.
“I’m confident that once they hear how many students this would negatively impact, both currently within the Italian program and in the future due to study away, they will reevaluate their decision,” DiFebo-Byrne told the Record.
