Arief Budiman pursues lonely intellectual road

Arief Budiman pursues lonely intellectual road

By Dewi Anggraeni

MELBOURNE (JP): Forty turbulent years after Indonesian was
first taught at the University of Melbourne, a native Indonesian
scholar and academic was appointed last year to chair the
Indonesian Studies Program.

Last Thursday, in his Professorial Inaugural Lecture, critical
scholar Arief Budiman thanked his wife Sitti Leila Chairani,
along with all the academics who had beaten the rocky path before
him.

To an audience of colleagues, students and friends, Arief gave
a brief account of his modest family background, of how he had to
struggle to find his way to university.

He did not forget the contribution his friends had made in
fulfilling his academic achievements.

"With the help of many people, I was able to get my first
university degree as a psychologist from the University of
Indonesia, and later on I was lucky enough to get a scholarship
to study at Harvard University in the United States of America,"
he said.

"All these achievements... have been the result of the help of
many people. It is a collective endeavor."

The lecture, titled The Lonely Road of the Intellectual:
Scholars in Indonesia, focused on democracy and scholarships in
Indonesia and sparked a number of questions from the audience.

Arief quoted the American poet Robert Frost in The Road not
Taken, in depicting the path taken by some intellectuals, who
refused to be seduced by power or surrender to pragmatism.

Professor Charles Coppel, under whose directorship the
Indonesian Studies Program fell victim to the unfortunate
university restructuring in 1987, gave an historical account of
the program.

The University of Melbourne was one of the first three
universities in Australia to offer Indonesian Studies. Coppel
said it began with a European senior lecturer and a native
speaker lecturer. So the program has come a long way and the
appointment of Professor Arief Budiman is clearly a watershed, he
said.

According to Arief, the lonely road of the intellectual in
Indonesia is gradually attracting more travelers.

"For the honest scholars, it is difficult to stay outside the
social problems, keep quiet and say nothing," he said.

Arief's lecture was both universal and Indonesia-related. He
mentioned three types of democracy. The first was "Top-down"
democracy, in which power is given to the people by the ruling
elite, but as soon as it becomes inconvenient for the ruling
elite, they can withdraw their power without any fuss.

The second was democracy born of the State-Elite Conflict,
which is genuine albeit temporary power inadvertently given to
the people because of the rift; while the third was Bottom-up
democracy, which genuinely empowers the people politically.

"The type of democracy found in Indonesia is mostly top-down,"
Arief added.

Arief is among a handful of scholars known for never shying
away from stating their stance over many political affairs. Arief
was the first Indonesian to openly declare himself a Golangan
Putih ("white" group) or nonvoter, out of lack of confidence in
the existing political situation.

In 1994, Arief lost his teaching position at the Satya Wacana
Christian University in Salatiga, Central Java, following his
protest over the election of the university's rector.

He won the ensuing legal battle, but quit anyway. At least 50
lecturers of the university then tendered their resignation in
support of Arief.