Professor Marcia Pally teaches at New York University in Multilingual Multicultural Studies and is a permanent Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. Her latest book, Die Hintergründige Religion: Der Einfluss des Evangelikalismus auf Gewissensfreiheit, Pluralismus und die US-amerikanische Politik [Religion Behind the Scenes: The influence of evangelicalism on Freedom of Conscience, Pluralism and US politics] was published in October, 2008 by Berlin University Press.  Warnung vor dem Freunde: Tradition und zukunft amerikanischer Aussenpolitk [The Religion, Values and Foreign Policy of the Country with the Biggest Guns] was published in spring, 2008. Her book concerning the links between critical thinking and democracy, Critique Abandoned: The ceding of Democracy [Lob der Kritik. Warum die Demokratie nicht auf ihren Kern verzichten darf ], was published in 2003 (2005 second edition).

Prof. Pally was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in 2007. Her research interests include the intersection among culture, religion, and US politics, and the influences of culture on language use and learning.

In addition to her academic work, Prof. Pally has been a cultural and political columnist in the U.S. and Europe for the past 20 years, and is the author of two books on censorship and freedom of expression, Sex & Sensibility: Reflections on Forbidden Mirrors and the Will to Censor (1994) and Sense & Censorship: The Vanity of Bonfires (1991). She has written for The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Nation, Internationale Politik (German Council on Foreign Relations), Film Comment, Cinéaste, Index on Censorship, Z Papers, die Zeit, Suedduetsche Zeitung, Merkur, die Tageszeitung, Berliner Zeitung, Tagesspiegel, Frankfurter Rundschau, Cicero magazine and Weltwoche.

Prof. Pally has lectured widely at universities and professional associations, among, them Harvard, Columbia, The University of Chicago, Humboldt University (Berlin), The University of Zurich, The Cato Institute, and the Aspen Institute-Berlin. She is past vice president of The Freedom to Read Foundation, served on The Media and Communications Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In the field of language acquisition, Professor Pally has edited Sustained Content-Based Teaching in Academic ESL/EFL (2000, Houghton-Mifflin), for which she also wrote several chapters, and she is the author of Screening English: Studying Movies for Reading, Writing, and Critical Thinking (1997, Pearson Press). Her work has appeared in numerous academic journals including Language and Education, The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Journal of Second Language Writing, JBW, TESL-EJ, among others.