Preceded by Jo Anne Barnhart Role Poet | Name Michael Astrue Party Republican Party | |
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President George W. BushBarack Obama Alma mater Yale UniversityHarvard University Books The Secret Language of Women: Poems Education | ||
Michael James Astrue (born 1956) is an American lawyer and, under the pen name A. M. Juster, a poet and critic. He served as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration from 2007 to 2013.
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Career
After his secondary education at The Roxbury Latin School, Astrue earned a bachelor's degree from Yale University, where he served as President of the Yale Political Union, and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School.
Astrue, who previously served in the Social Security Administration as Counselor to the Commissioner, served in the US Department of Health and Human Services as General Counsel and as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislation. He also served as Associate Counsel to the President of the United States at the White House in the Reagan and George Bush Sr administrations. In the private sector, he practiced law and was as a senior executive at several biotechnology companies.
Astrue was nominated as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration by President George W. Bush on September 14, 2006 and confirmed by the US Senate on February 2, 2007. He was sworn in on February 12, 2007 to serve a six-year term that expired on January 19, 2013.
Poetry
In the June/July 2010 issue of First Things magazine, Astrue was profiled by poet Paul Mariani, who revealed him as the personage behind the pseudonym and anagram A. M. Juster, the poet and translator associated with New Formalism.
As Juster, Astrue has published a book of Petrarch translations, a translation of The Satires of Horace (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), Longing for Laura (Birch Brook Press, 2001), and a book of original poetry, The Secret Language of Women (University of Evansville 2002). Juster was also the first moderator for Eratosphere, the largest on-line site for formal poetry.