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Go south, young scholars
Young Indonesians have to leave their homeland to set the right coordinates for future careers.
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Young Indonesians have to leave their homeland to set the right coordinates for future careers. (Shutterstock/File)
W
hen Kristiarto Legowo stood to open an academic conference in the South Australian capital of Adelaide he must have wondered: have I really moved out of my homeland to take this posting?
For most of the hundred faces that the republic’s new ambassador to Australia could see were clearly Indonesian and young. The few Caucasians in the lecture theater were mainly middle aged and beyond, white shocks among dark mops.
Why had so many of his compatriots flown 4,600 kilometers south to the Indonesia Council’s Open Conference at Flinders University when the small cluster of Westerners could have traveled north to a similar event? With access to higher wages, paid leave, travel allowances, study grants and stipends their journey would have involved little hardship.
In his first official engagement in the Great South Land the ambassador told attendees that Indonesia should reverse the outflow and run similar conferences in the republic. His suggestion found wide acceptance, though wish and action don’t always cohabit well.
Getting them to come to us was also an attractive idea for those who had funded their travel, like Bintar Mupiza and his three colleagues from the Indonesian Islamic University (UII) in Yogyakarta. Although there was no registration fee the students paid Rp 15 million (US$1,120) each just to attend the two-day forum.
Many presenters were seasoned scholars keyboarding final references for their doctorates or post-docs and keen to defend findings before critics. However, the two women and two men from UII were undergraduates courageous enough to open up about venturing into research.
Their topics were equally challenging: Australia-Indonesia relations, the role of the media on foreign policy decision-making, and “Measuring West Papua independence activists’ rights in Indonesia’s democracy.”
