FROM REVOLUTIONARY ACTIVISM TO ACADEMIC EXCELLENCEThe nomination of Jose Manuel Durao Barroso to the presidency of the European Commission was regarded as a major surprise by many commentators. unexpected nomination by the council of the European Union emerged out of the need to agree on a candidate who would be accepted by all member-states.This young politician was born on 23 March 1956 in Lisbon. He is married to Margarida Sousa Uva and is the father of three children: Luis, Guilherme, and Francisco, who are 21, 18 and 16 years old respectively. He spent his childhood and school years under one of the last authoritarian regimes of western Europe. regime of Antonio Salazar and, later on, of Marcelo Caetano shaped the commitment of Barroso to democratic values and freedom. Indeed, as a reaction to the maltreatment of one of his teachers by the regime in his last years of high school, he joined the illegal antifascist Revolutionary Movement of the Party of the Proletariate (Movimento Revolucionario do Partido do Proletariado, MRPP), which was founded in 1970 as a Maoist-Leninist splinter group of the Portuguese Communist Party (Partido Comunista Portugues, PCP]. MRPP was inspired by the Chinese cultural revolution.The coup d'etat of the Movement of Armed Forces (Movimento das Forcas Armadas, MFA) on 25 April 1974 against the authoritarian regime led to the spontaneous bloodless support of the population, a movement that became known as the of the carnations. When the revolution broke out, Barroso was merely 18 years of age. He, like many other young Portuguese of this generation, such as Fernando Rosas and Jose Pacheco Pereira, joined the wave of revolutionary spirit that found its expression in spontaneous action by the population with the support of a multiplicity of extreme leftwing parties. At that time, he was reading for a licenciatura in law (a five-year first degree) at the prestigious faculty of law of the University of Lisbon, where the MRPP had one of its strongholds through its Marxist-Leninist Student Federation (Federacao Estudantil Marxista Leninista, FEML). He soon became one of the leaders of the FEML and was elected to the presidency of the student union during 197576. In 1977, after the return of normalcy to Portuguese universities, Barroso concentrated his energies in completing his law degree, which he achieved with honours in 1978.After a public competition, he became an assistant professor in the department of legal-political sciences in the law faculty. Between 1978 and 1985 he pursued a distinguished academic career in Portugal. In 1981, he completed his master's degree with honours at the prestigious department of political science of the University of Geneva. His dissertation was on The impact of the European Community on the Portuguese political One year later, he also completed a certificate in European studies at the University of Geneva. Afterwards he embarked on a doctorate leading to short research visits and postgraduate courses in several prestigious institutions such as Columbia University in New York, the University of Amsterdam, the European University Institute, and the University Institute of Luxembourg.Barroso can be regarded as one of the founders of modern Portuguese political science. Indeed, his first book published with his long-time friend Pedro Santana Lopes was called Government and Party System, a collection of studies and newspaper articles on the possibilities of improving the young Portuguese democracy, which was quite unstable until 1985. Indeed, their book included excellent scientific essays on the problems of the Portuguese political system. They regarded the book as a contribution to a revision of the constitution, which at that time carried many features influenced by the revolutionary process such as Marxist-Leninist language, the monitoring of democracy by the military through the Council of the Revolution, and the strong position of the president in the political system. …