Marcello Pera

An Italian philosopher, Senator, and former President of the Italian Senate, Marcello Pera is a Visiting Fellow at Hudson Institute. At Hudson, he is writing a book entitled Science and Religion, Politics and Faith: On the Origins and Foundations of Secularism. This volume follows his 2008 book, Perché dobbiamo dirci cristiani: Il liberalismo, l'Europa, l'etica (The English version — Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians: Liberalism, Europe, and Ethics — will be published by Encounter), which includes an introduction by Pope Benedict XVI.

Pera held the position of President of the Senate of the Italian Republic from 2001 to 2006. In addition, he was a member of the Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee, the Standing Committee on Education and Cultural Issues, the Standing Committee on the Judiciary, and the Joint Committee on Constitutional Reform.

Pera, who was born in Tuscany, studied philosophy at the University of Pisa, where he also began his career in academia in 1976. He went on to teach theoretical philosophy from 1989 to 1992 at the University of Catania and, in 1992, he became Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Pisa.

Outside of Italy, Pera has pursued numerous international research activities; he served as a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, 1984; a Visiting Fellow in Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT, 1990; and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences at the London School of Economics, 1995-96.

Pera's numerous publications include The Ambiguous Frog: The Galvani-Volta Controversy on Animal Electricity (Princeton University Press, 1991) and The Discourses of Science (University of Chicago Press, 1994).

Pera has written for newspapers, such as Corriere della Sera, Il Messaggero,and La Stampa, and news magazines, including L'Espresso and Panorama. In 2005, he co-authored a book with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) entitled Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, and wrote the foreword to the Holy Father's 2006 book, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures: The Europe of Benedict.