Francesca Cernia Slovin was born on March 14, 1952 in Terni, Italy, to the late Elena and Enrico Cernia. She was an older sister to the late Paola and Michele, whose memories she carried tightly. Francesca earned a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Rome and explored a wide range of subjects through her passionate writing and teaching, most notably on the lives of Aby Warburg and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Israeli history, and radical politics. She taught philosophy, literature, visual art, and culture at The New School and at Cornell University, and was a Senior Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.