Michael Bérubé (born 1961 in New York City, New York) is the Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches cultural studies and American literature. He is the author of several books on cultural studies, disability rights, liberal politics, and debates in higher education, and since 2004 has been a blogger on these and other topics. In 2010 he was elected second vice president of the Modern Language Association, and will assume the presidency in 2012. He also serves on the National Council of the American Association of University Professors, as well as on the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure.
Bérubé's blog, which he began in January 2004, mixed his perspective on these professional and political issues with a variety of other subjects, ranging from his family life to music to professional hockey. His academic pursuits include American literature, African-American literature, cultural studies, critical theory, and disability studies, the last of which stems partly from his experience with his son Jamie, who has Down Syndrome; Michael's life with Jamie is the subject of the father's book Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child (1996). Bérubé went on extended hiatus from his blog on January 8, 2007, and on March 22, joined Crooked Timber, a political blog jointly run by a number of academics. In 2007–08 he also blogged occasionally at TPM Cafe. He restarted his own blog on September 29, 2008, and maintained it until October 15, 2010.
Bérubé earned his B.A. from Columbia University in 1982 and his Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1989. He also attended Regis High School, in the same graduating class with U.S. Attorney & Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Before taking his position at Penn State, Bérubé held a professorship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Bérubé lives in State College, Pennsylvania with wife Janet Lyon. Together they have two sons, Nick and Jamie, mentioned above.