Fernando Henrique Cardoso - Personal and Professional Life

Personal and Professional Life

Cardoso descends from wealthy Portuguese immigrants. Some of his ancestors were politicians during the Empire of Brazil. He is also of Black African descent, through a Black great-great-grandmother and a mulatto great-grandmother. Cardoso described himself as "slightly mulatto" and allegedly said he has "a foot in the kitchen" (a nod to 19th century Brazilian domestic slavery).

Born in Rio de Janeiro, he has lived in São Paulo for most of his life. Cardoso is a widower (he was married to Ruth Vilaça Correia Leite Cardoso until her death June 24, 2008) and has four children. Educated as a sociologist, he was a Professor of Political Science and Sociology at the Universidade de São Paulo. He was President of the International Sociological Association (ISA), from 1982 to 1986. He is a member of the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has penned several books.

He was also Associate Director of Studies in the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and then visiting professor at the Collège de France and later at the Paris-Nanterre University. He later lectured at United Kingdom and United States' universities including Cambridge University, Stanford University, Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is fluent in four languages: Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish.

After his presidency, he was appointed to a five-year term (2003–2008) as professor-at-large at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, where he is now on the board of overseers. Cardoso is a founding member of the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy's Advisory Board. In February 2005, he gave the fourth annual Kissinger Lecture on Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, Washington DC on "Dependency and Development in Latin America. In 2005, Cardoso was selected by the British magazine Prospect as being one of the world's top one hundred living intellectuals.