Michael Bérubé
michael-berube.bsky.social
Michael Bérubé
@michael-berube.bsky.social

Writer, teacher, ex-hockey player, occasional golfer, drummer, actor. All the opinions here are mine. Mine, I say!

Michael Bérubé is an Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature at Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches American literature, disability studies, and cultural studies. He is the author of several books on cultural studies, disability rights, liberal and conservative politics, and debates in higher education. From 2010 to 2017, he was the director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Penn State; from 1997 to 2001 he was the founding director of the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. He was the 2012 president of the Modern Language Association, and served as vice president from 2010 to 2011. He served two terms on the National Council of the American Association of University Professors from 2005 to 2011, and three terms on the AAUP's Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure from 2009 to 2018. He was a member of the International Advisory Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes for two terms, 2011–2017. Bérubé was named a University Scholar for research at the University of Illinois in 1995 and was awarded the Faculty Scholar medal for research from Penn State in 2012. .. more

Political science 41%
Art 17%
Pinned
Fie on me for forgetting to tell all you Blue Sky people that Jamie has an Etsy shop and lots of artwork for sale! This is really the most important thing in the world right now.

www.etsy.com/shop/JamieBe...
www.etsy.com

Absolutely staggering lack of self-awareness is his defining quality

Then very suddenly, the bottom fell out. In 1992, 40 PhDs from UVA got 36 interviews. (I asked Paul Cantor, then the department's placement advisor.) By 1994 Cary Nelson and I were writing about what this meant for the future of graduate education. It's been bad ever since, extra bad since 2008. 2/2

It's a little weirder than that. In 1988 and 1989 the market was briefly, amazingly, unexpectedly GREAT. My cohort of 25 PhDs at UVA got 175 interviews-- an average of seven each! Even medievalists! :) The Bowen-Sosa report predicted a faculty shortage in the 90s. 1/2

I'm sure there's a perfectly good, innocent reason for this
🚨BREAKING: The Department of Justice will fail to publicly release all of its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by a Friday deadline, violating a new federal law explicitly mandating that the trove of documents be turned over for public scrutiny. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
DOJ Chickens Out on Epstein Files Release in Violation of New Law
Read more here.
www.democracydocket.com
🚨BREAKING: The Department of Justice will fail to publicly release all of its files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein by a Friday deadline, violating a new federal law explicitly mandating that the trove of documents be turned over for public scrutiny. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...
DOJ Chickens Out on Epstein Files Release in Violation of New Law
Read more here.
www.democracydocket.com

In which I argued that Althusser's account of it is contradictory and incoherent! :)

Katie Miller is OK with the president calling for the death of US senators but is outraged, outraged at an entirely accurate rendering of her husband illustrating @gregsargent.bsky.social's entirely accurate account of her husband's vision of an ethnically cleansed United States

tiny.cc/wgiw001
Inside Stephen Miller’s Dark Plot to Build a MAGA Terror State
He is descended from Russian Jews—you know, the kind of people who were once denounced as alien and unassimilable. Today, his project is to unleash government persecution of those he deems alien and u...
newrepublic.com

I'm holding out for an AM car radio and big-ass antenna on the hood

From now on every discussion of the Epstein files should start with the story of the young girl who tried to escape the island *by swimming to St. Thomas* and was caught by these vile motherf*ckers

My email system has been changed so often by Penn State that I don't have emails from 2008. Would you be so kind as to forward the exchange to me? I'm totally curious!

I remember Matt from the early blogosphere and did not realize that he was actually pro-Love Canal
If there’s no shale gas then there’s no shale gas, but I still think environmentalism is basically bad and politicians should focus more on material prosperity.

This is objectively true and requires no viewpoint diversity
Few things bug me more than higher ed leaders saying that we lost our mission and lost the trust of the public, when we have actually been the target of a decades-long smear campaign by the right wing that worked. The moment we’re losing our mission is right now, in capitulation.
Few things bug me more than higher ed leaders saying that we lost our mission and lost the trust of the public, when we have actually been the target of a decades-long smear campaign by the right wing that worked. The moment we’re losing our mission is right now, in capitulation.
If there’s no shale gas then there’s no shale gas, but I still think environmentalism is basically bad and politicians should focus more on material prosperity.

OK but it would be even better if, on their way out, they told the president something like "your soul is an appalling dump heap overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable"

I did say it was the "single worst response" to #MeToo, fwiw

Legit

Oh I don't remember that. For the record, the only songs on which he totally metronomes are "Satisfaction" and "Jumping Jack Flash." Otherwise I think he's tasteful and always attuned to playing the song rather than playing fills for the sake of fills. Like Ringo. Chops aren't everything :)

!! Refresh my failing memory? I think the only thing I've said about Charlie Watts is that his work on slower songs like "Angie" is way underrated. (Quelle coincidence, I was listening to "Exile on Main St" last night while cooking and thoroughly enjoying the way he carries "Loving Cup.")

And let's not forget Sinema and Manchin. Biden's not responsible for their multiple varieties of f*ckery.

A lot of people don't know that the Heritage Foundation isn't actually a politically-minded organization but rather an association of guys who get together to watch sports.
The president of the Heritage Foundation, the think tank that oversaw Project 2025, claims that when he defended Tucker Carlson's softball interview with anti-semite Nick Fuentes, he didn't know who Fuentes was, because he doesn't watch much news but instead consumes “a lot of sports.”
Under Fire for Tucker Carlson Remarks, Think Tank Chief Pleads Ignorance
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Michael Bérubé

The president of the Heritage Foundation, the think tank that oversaw Project 2025, claims that when he defended Tucker Carlson's softball interview with anti-semite Nick Fuentes, he didn't know who Fuentes was, because he doesn't watch much news but instead consumes “a lot of sports.”
Under Fire for Tucker Carlson Remarks, Think Tank Chief Pleads Ignorance
www.nytimes.com

Reposted by Mark Rice

The cows are not what they seem

IKR? That progressive blacklist maintained by the authoritarian left did SO much damage.

World record holder for single worst response to #MeToo is still David Bromwich imho. Harper's, 2020.

Oh no! Not the filibuster! That would so totally own the libs that we would never be unowned again!

They cheered even more ecstatically when New York and Los Angeles were blown to smithereens.

That's because those Republicans are still so angry that Obama spent $1.7 trillion of their tax dollars to build a blackety black black basketball court and to paint the entire White House black, just like George Clinton told him to do.
Most Americans oppose the obliteration of a third of the White House. But most Republicans support it … and are more likely to support it if they’ve seen photos and videos of the destruction. www.pbump.net/o/yes-most-a...
Yes, most Americans oppose the East Wing demolition. But…
It's one of those sentences one can write about the second Trump administration that would have seemed ludicrously hyperbolic one year ago, but it is nonetheless true: The president of the United Stat...
www.pbump.net