Transgender professor Petra Gardella sues Manhattanville College over ban

The Bobster

Senior News Editor since 2004

Transgender professor Petra Gardella sues Manhattanville College over ban​



By
Kathianne Boniello


January 14, 2023 1:33pm
Updated





Petra Gardella has taught at Manhattanville College since 1983, and came out in 2019.
Petra Gardella has taught at Manhattanville College since 1983, and came out in 2019. Twitter @gardellap





A longtime Manhattanville College professor was banned from campus activities following an “awkward” transition from male to female — which included polling colleagues on what color wig to wear, according to a lawsuit.
The professor, who began at the Westchester liberal arts school in 1983 as Peter Gardella, now goes by the name Petra Gardella and uses they/them pronouns.
“Happy New Year to all, as I turn my back on lectures about Western history! #Manhattanville college banned me from community events for coming out awkwardly, and I resigned in protest,” Gardella announced in a Jan. 1 tweet, alongside a picture of themselves in a sweater dress.
Gardella, 71, came out at Manhattanville in December 2019, and at later school meetings, wore different colored wigs and changed their name, prompting laughter from others, according to the Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit.
Gardella subsequently asked coworkers which wig was better, prompting an admonishment from superiors who said the message was “inappropriate” and made other faculty “uncomfortable,” the professor alleged.
Petra Gardella in purple skirtPetra Gardella “resigned in protest because they wouldn’t even let me communicate with my immediate supervisor,” the educator told The Post.Twitter @gardellap
Around the same time, students began complaining that Gardella’s “Sexuality and Religion” class, which Gardella taught since 1984, was explicit — and some griped online about the prof’s woke agenda.
“If you don’t agree with his far left political views he makes you feel like you are stupid and that his views are always better,” one wrote.
The school later claimed Gardella’s messages were sexual harassment and instituted the ban.
“I am talking to people who I’d known for 3 1/2 decades. I thought of them as friends,” Gardella, an author of four books, said of the messages shared with faculty.
Petra Gardella in the classromGardella announced their resignation via Twitter.Twitter @gardellap
“I resigned in protest because they wouldn’t even let me communicate with my immediate supervisor,” the married educator told The Post. “It’s very hard to do your job when you can’t go to any meetings. … It’s been very difficult. I’ve been crushed.”
“It’s frightening but thrilling at the same time, to be free, to be myself,” Gardella added.
The school’s discipline made it impossible for Gardella to work, said their lawyer, Nathaniel Charny.
“For Manhattanville it was too weird, so they shut it down,” Charny contended of Gardella’s transition.
Manhattanville College has not received the law
 
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