There are virtually no limits to former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s business endeavours. From a top publishing house and football teams to investment banking and a multinational media empire, the 85-year-old mogul is a man of many interests.
Yet Mr Berlusconi’s latest venture – one that has been years in the making – will come as a surprise to many.
He is teaming up with an online university to offer a training course in politics, which intends to mould the next generation of Italian lawmakers while also shaping and polishing existing members of the former PM’s Forza Italia party.
Universitas Libertatis – Latin for University of Liberty – is set to launch in March as a joint project between Mr Berlusconi and online university Niccolo Cusano. The course will be taught by lawyers, politicians, and even a sexologist – which might seem fitting for a man infamous for the “bunga bunga” sex parties he used to host.
Despite its name, Universitas Libertatis is not a university, but a training course, explained Giovanni Puoti, the deputy rector of Niccolo Cusano university. “The idea is to give the kind of political preparation that, unfortunately, doesn’t exist these days,” Mr Puoti told The Independent.
As with most things related to the media mogul, the announcement has been met with controversy. Among the professors hired to shape Italy’s right wing, one lecturer has raised Italian eyebrows: sexologist Sara Negrosini.
The 34-year-old psychotherapist, who has a background in clinical sexology for the treatment of sexual disorders, will be tasked with teaching body language in public communication and the art of communication in politics.
“I also specialise in humanistic and bioenergetic psychotherapy,” Ms Negrosini told Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “And I deal with psychosomatic body relaxation techniques.”
The irony of Berlusconi – who for decades has made headlines because of his public impropriety – offering this course is not lost on Italians.
While much of the course will be held online, some of it will take place in Villa Gernetto, an 18th-century palace set on 350,000 square metres of land in northern Italy. The building was purchased in 2007 for €34m (£28.5m) by the Berlusconi family’s holding company Fininvest, and has remained largely unused, until now.
The idea of a university was first floated by the former prime minister soon after buying the imposing building. In 2010 he even suggested that Russian president Vladimir Putin would be their first hire.
Mr Putin “could be invited to speak at one of our conferences,” said Mr Puoti. “Perhaps not right now, though,” he added, hours before the Russian president officially recognised two breakaway states in eastern Ukraine and elevated the current crisis to new heights.
But the dream of an educational facility that could produce Forza Italia devotees soon took a back seat to sex scandals, “bunga bunga” parties, and criminal convictions, including one for tax fraud. For more than a decade, news of Mr Berlusconi largely focused on his transgressions.
Yet his ultimately failed attempt last month at becoming Italian president gave new impetus to the project – and analysts believe it could give a boost to Forza Italia.
“Electorally Forza Italia is losing ground, squeezed between the League and Fratelli d’Italia,” said Simona Guerra, a senior lecturer in comparative politics at the University of Surrey. “A university, or the building of a network around the party, can create an embedded core that remains distinctive from both Salvini’s and Meloni’s parties, which is becoming more and more challenging,” she added.
Italian lawmaker Giuditta Pini, of the Democratic Party, criticised the course for being elitist and being accessible only to the few who could afford it. Mario Baccini, a former government minister who will teach finance on the course, told The Times that enrolment will cost in the region of €1,000.
But perhaps surprisingly, in a political arena marred by deep divisions, some of Berlusconi’s usual adversaries are not opposed to him dabbling in education.
“It’s part of the development process of thought, culture, society and politics of any advanced democracy,” Democratic Party senator Monica Cirinna told The Independent. “For me, Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s phrase is always valid: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
As of Tuesday, the online university’s website remained under construction, but offered visitors a promise: “Site will be available soon. Thank you for your patience!”
