Category: Uncategorized

This post was originally from May 28, 2018. As everyone has now seen, Malaysia made history this month by breaking the hold of the United Malay Nationalist Organization over parliament for the first time since independence. Of course, the new coalition that has come to power is led by a 92-year-old man (fellow blogger) who led UMNO (indeed, his name was almost synonymous with UMNO) for several decades. Rather than spend this blog post rejoicing with the Malaysian people over the exercise of democracy or digging through the full and fascinating history of Dr. M leading Malaysia, I thought it might be more interesting to look to Malaysia’s future by using an example from Indonesia’s past and present. Somewhat like UMNO, the Indonesian political party (or, initially, non-party / party alternative) Golkar emerged as an elite…

This post was originally from June 10, 2018. Two news items from the last week have me seriously concerned about academic freedom in Indonesia (again). This is unlikely to be a real issue in the upcoming provincial and local elections this month, or even in the national elections next year, but it is something that colleagues both inside and outside the country should be watching. Inside the country, the leading national university in Yogyakarta, Universitas Gadjah Mada, has apparently brought down sanctions on two lecturers in the Faculty of Engineering for their affiliation to the now-banned organization Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia. As Ed Aspinall noted recently, the banning of HTI itself was a cause for concern about authoritarian trends in the country, but the sanction of lecturers in this way echoes the excesses of Turkey and brings new…

This post was originally from June 28, 2018. In yesterday's Indonesian regional elections, there was a major landmark for Indonesian women, but it seems to have been largely unnoticed in the press (both foreign and domestic). Khofifah Indar Parawansa, who resigned as Minister of Social Affairs in January 2018 to make her third run at the East Java governor's mansion, was the first woman to come to power as an Indonesian governor by election. As you can see, I have chosen my words rather carefully there. Khofifah will not be the first female governor in Indonesian history; that honor goes to Ratu Atut Chosiyah, who was first elected Vice-Governor in Banten in 2002, then became governor three years later when her father arranged for the governor to be taken down on corruption charges.…

This post was originally from August 6, 2018. Many readers will know about my sabbatical research a year ago, looking into the history of mass Islamic organizations based outside of Java. I was particularly focused on three groups: Nahdlatul Wathan on Lombok; Alkhairaat based in Palu; and Jamiyatul Washliyah, founded in Medan. This week, as the Indonesian presidential candidates are set to finalize their running mates for next year's national elections, I am struck that all three organizations I was studying have a man still in the race (and yes, all the candidates on all the tickets look to be men) for the vice-presidency. From Nahdlatul Wathan, Muhammad Zainul Majdi (more commonly known as TGB, short for Tuan Guru Bajang) is a grandson of the founder and current head of (one of the…

This post was originally from August 8, 2018. As everyone interested in Indonesian politics (including me) waits on pins and needles for the announcement of presidential running-mates and the determination of whether there will be a third national ticket in the 2019 elections (see my previous post on vice-presidents here), I was thinking about the history of horse-trading to build coalitions in Indonesia. For years, there was not much of this involved in the presidency. Sukarno was chosen as president by parliamentary acclamation, and he theoretically stood above parties. Although Suharto had an unambiguous affiliation to Golkar—which was technically not billed as a party but as a “non-party vehicle”—by the 1992 round of national elections, it was PPP, not Golkar, that formally put him up for president in the national parliament.…

After my last internet hosting service was bought out by another company (and in the transition, I lost a decade worth of blog posts!), I have undertaken to redesign and relaunch this academic website. Much of the content remains the same, but with a fresh face (and an entirely new back-end). Thoughts and comments on the redesign are welcome, either here or via email.