Italian Gay Porn Star Turned Professor Outraged at School for Shutting Down HIV Event

The Italian college professor who made headlines in October when students discovered his gay porn past is making news again, this time because he's outraged at his university for shutting down an HIV/AIDS awareness event on World AIDS Day, Gay Star News reports.

Dr. Ruggero Freddi, a math professor at Rome's prestigious La Sapienza University, said he planned to hold a talk about HIV/AIDS with his engineering class where he'd discuss preventative treatment like PrEP. He explained to Gay Star News he had been planning the event for a month and had the support of people from the school, including the head of the faculty of pharmacy and medicine. Even own faculty showed support for the event, he said.

"The event was in collaboration with ANLAIDS, PLUS Onlus and the Faculty of Medicine but at the last second the dean of the faculty didn't wanna give permission, despite the fact that at the beginning he told me he supported the event," Dr. Freddi, 41, told Gay Star News.

He goes on to say that faculty head, professor Antonio D'Andrea, said HIV is not an issue relevant for discussion by a math professor in an engineering class and that the talk would be a better fit in the faculty of medicine.

After learning about the cancelation, a small LGBT rights group staged a protest, revealing a banner at the university that reads, "Do not believe that HIV is not your concern." Dr. Freddi posed in front of the banner and shared the photo on Facebook, writing that the school "missed an important opportunity."

"When I told them that D'Andrea decided to cancel the event they were very upset," he told Gay Star News. "I just wanted to leave it and forget about the whole story but I couldn't turn my back on a group of young and hopeful students so I decided I would have been there during the protest, where condoms where distributed inside the university."

He goes on to question why the event was canceled, saying "HIV is a universal problem."

"...informing and forming people should be done in any institution and always but especially in an important day such as the 1st of December," he added.

Dr. Freddi said he cares passionately about HIV awareness and not just because he was in porn.

"I have lost friends to this disease way before I did porn and I have had HIV-positive partners more than once in my life, so I have grown up pretty sensitive about this issue," he told Gay Star News.

In October, Dr. Freddi went viral after his engineering students discovered he was once a gay porn star under the name Carlo Masi. Responding to the news, he told local news publication Repubblica: "To be honest, it wasn't exactly a secret."

"I didn't expect something so big to happen," he told Gay Star News at the time. "I thought someone would publish something and my students would talk about it for a while, but I wasn't expecting the entire country to actually speak about it."

He also explained why he entered the adult film industry.

"Then I was offered to do a film in the USA. I thought, 'Why not?' A job that helps me earn more and is a more entertaining career," he said. TheLocal.it writes he was "visibly unaffected by the news of his previous career going viral."

It was reported at the time Dr. Freddi worked in gay porn until 2013, when he quit to do his doctoral thesis.