Halpern prepares his final lecture before retirement 
After 25 years of service to Henderson State University, Dr. Martin Halpern, professor of history, will deliver his final lecture – Reflections on Twenty-Five Years of Personal and Political History – at 3 p.m. April 21 in the Garrison Center Banquet Room. The lecture will be followed by a reception.
Halpern’s lecture will focus on what he has learned during his teaching and research and also on how the university, the nation, and the world have changed in the last quarter century. The lecture is open to the public.
“Dr. Martin Halpern has excelled as a teacher and a scholar during his 25 years at Henderson State University,” said Dr. John Hardee, dean of the Ellis College of Arts and Sciences. “As a scholar, his books, essays, and publications have brought acclaim to the Department of Social Sciences and the University.”
Henderson State works to connect excellence in teaching with each of its students, Hardee said, as a part of its core focus on students and student success.
“As a teacher, Dr. Halpern challenged his students to think in new ways about history and politics,” Hardee added. “I respect him greatly for the high standards he has set for himself and his students over the years.”
Halpern is author of two books, UAW Politics in the Cold War Era and Unions, Radicals and Democratic Presidents: Seeking Social Change in the Twentieth Century, numerous journal articles, book chapters, essays in references volumes, and opinion pieces in newspapers ranging from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette to the Japan Times.
He is the only Henderson faculty member thus far to be awarded a full-year Fulbright
Scholarship. In 1997-98, he was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan. In 2012-13 he served as a Fulbright Senior Lecturer at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany.
Halpern’s classes helped students recognize the transformative power of liberal arts education, developing in each student critical and creative skills including problem solving, analytical thinking, and effective communication. Many of these students are today teaching social studies or history at the high school and college levels.
Halpern’s service to Henderson includes 20 years as the faculty advisor to the Alpha Chi Honor Society. He has served as a speaker for the Henderson Martin Luther King program, the Women’s History Organization, and taught a Henderson community class. Halpern also took the initiatives in organizing a program on the Columbus Quincentary in 1992, two teach-ins on the Iraq War, and in 2011 a symposium on the Employee Free Choice Act. He was also instrumental in bringing historians Marilyn Young and Sandy Polishuk to Henderson State to speak.
About Henderson
Influenced by its distinctive history, the mission of Henderson State University is to provide a learning environment that prepares students for a lifetime of intellectual and personal growth in a global society. The Henderson experience bridges students’ academic aspirations to career success by integrating professional studies and the liberal arts.