Bérubé to Edit AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom

The AAUP is pleased to announce that Michael Bérubé has agreed to serve as guest editor for the 2015 volume of the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom.

Bérubé is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Literature and the director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University, where he teaches American and contemporary literature, disability studies, and theory and cultural studies. He was awarded the Faculty Scholar medal for research from Penn State in 2012, and was previously named a University Scholar for research at the University of Illinois in 1995.

Bérubé, currently a member of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure, previously served on the AAUP’s governing Council from 2005 to 2011. He was the 2012 president of the Modern Language Association, and is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes.

Bérubé is the author of seven books and an editor of two other anthologies. His book Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 1996 and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio. Life as We Know It, Bérubé’s personal account of raising a child born with Down syndrome, explores issues of disability rights, health care, and societal and cultural responses to disability.

The AAUP Journal of Academic Freedom publishes scholarship on academic freedom and on its relation to shared governance, tenure, and collective bargaining. The Journal is published annually in an electronic format and focuses on the global analysis of academic freedom and related issues. Volume Six of the Journal is scheduled to be published in September 2015.