English professor John Halperin will retire at the end of this semester after 24 years at Vanderbilt.

Halperin's main area of focus has been 18th and 19th century literature. He has published numerous books, the most notable being an extensive and revealing biography of Jane Austen that garnered him a Nobel Prize nomination.

At Vanderbilt, Halperin has won both the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award and the Outstanding Educator Award. Currently, he teaches classes on the 19th century novel, major figures of the nineteenth century and aspects of Victorian culture.

Before he finishing his time here, he chatted with student and Hustler columnist Andrew Soloman and reflected on the changing culture of the English department and university governance.

Vanderbilt Hustler: So how did you get started at Vandy?
John Halperin: I was teaching at Southern Cal and then got offered more money to come here. Plus they promised me more vacation time.

VH: I hear the hazing rituals in the English department were tough back then.
JH: Vanderbilt was behind a lot of the rest of the country in terms of acknowledging the idea that it was time to hire a faculty that didn't look all alike. But since then we've come a long way. I love the fact that I have a diversified faculty to work with and that the student body is headed in the same direction.

VH: Do you think that since '83 we've come to a place where we need to be?
JH: I feel we've actually gone past the place we need to be. We've gone so overboard for multiculturalism and curriculum changes so that we can seem fashionable to the rest of the country. For example, look at the literature courses offered next semester. There are no courses in 18th or 19th century literature. Period. Except for several Shakespeare courses and a few modern lit offerings, there's no focus on what is undeniably one of the most important eras of human literature. What do we get? We have film courses, Black Multiculturalism, Islam in Literature, America the First Empire, Pacific Island Literature, Women of the U.S. So where are the courses in Medieval Lit, Shakespeare or Renaissance Drama? We're catering to political correctness, and the students are the ones that suffer.

VH: But I love Nancy Drew.
JH: I'm not saying we shouldn't have courses about women novelists. My main work focuses on Jane Austen. And I'm glad there are courses focused on writing of different cultures. I'm just in favor of literature. What is being taught now is politics. These political attitudes have taken over and pushed out the courses that anyone else would offer as a given.

VH: So what can we learn from these classic lit studies?
JH: Literature is not just a way to learn but a way to understand life. Through the greatest minds history has yet to produce, we can learn so much. For example, when I was your age, I was petrified of death. And now, after all these years of teaching, reading and learning, I'm not scared of dying anymore. Something about reading has taught me that there is nothing to be afraid of. Death itself holds no terror for me. And it's my reading that has taught this to me. Reading good literature prepares you to live your life.

VH: How could we take what we learn from literature and bring Vandy to a place where students, alumni and the administration can be satisfied with what we are?
JH: Forty years ago, faculties ran universities. They hired administrators, set curriculum, everything. But now, raising money has become the most important focus of the campus. Nowadays, the average faculty member has almost no say about university policy. The administrators run the universities, not just Vanderbilt. And because of their job description, they are less concerned with educations than the bottom line. We've become plantations. The administrators run things, and the people below them just come and go.

VH: Is the faculty anywhere to blame for this?
JH: Yes. We have given up far too easily. We LET them make the decisions, and we're not a collected political force here. And nothing is happening. We let the administration deal with the day-to-day running of the institution, and this is what has happened.

VH: You feel like we're misguided.
JH: When professors come up for tenure, the quality of your teaching is of no interest to anyone. Vanderbilt will say they reward teaching, but whether or not you get a raise is solely dependent on how much you've published in the previous year. Not even the quality of publication is taken into account. It's all volume. They won't admit it, but I know. I can't complain, because I publish a lot. But, I put a lot of energy into teaching. And none of us are ever rewarded for it.

VH: But the deans won't be able to pay for the Dom and the $400 haircuts if there is no money.
JH: That's how universities are rated. It's not about the teaching; it's about the endowment, how many Nobel Prize winners you have. They look for stars, not teaching. If your Nobel Prize winner drools in front of your class for an hour, no one cares.

VH: How could we go about fixing the problem?
JH: We would have to force deans to pay attention to the teaching quality of professors up for raises. And, quite frankly, I don't see how that's going to happen.