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John Bresnan: At Home Abroad
By Terence H. Hull
When John (Jack) Bresnan died aged 79 on 24 May 2006 he left a substantial legacy
of scholarship and development assistance related to Southeast Asia, and Indonesia
in particular. At Home Abroad links these two interests, being at once an
insider’s refl ections on the purpose and impact of international philanthropy and
a source of historical insight into the lives of key actors in the story of the fi rst halfcentury
of Indonesian independence.
Bresnan sets out in his introduction (p. 2) the questions he wants to answer:
’Why has the Ford Foundation invested in Indonesia over so many years? Why
has it maintained a resident staff there? . . . Was it worth doing? Would I do it
again?’ In the following 200 pages he tells the stories and introduces the people
that provide evidence for his forceful answers to these questions.
For Indonesianists all the 30 short chapters are gems to be appreciated. There is
a useful index, but no glossary to help with the acronyms. Anecdotes and quotes
from the Ford Foundation archives form a compatible mix to drive home some
of Bresnan’s long-held concerns about the Indonesian–American relationship.
The famous 18-month hiatus after the Ford Jakarta offi ce was closed in March
1965 was long attributed to attacks against Ford-funded teachers at the Malang
technical college. Bresnan combed the archives, and delights in revealing that the
timing of the various memos between the State Department and the Ford New
York offi ce does not support that explanation. Instead he looks to the attitudes
held by senior Ford offi cials and their wives. The particular incident that typifi es
these occurred in 1964 when, after being the subject of Sukarno’s womanising at
a palace function, a Ford offi cial’s wife declared, ‘this country is in the hands of
a seventeen year old boy’ (Bresnan quoting the offi cial’s memoirs on p. 56). Similarly,
Rockefeller Foundation offi cers refused to support agricultural research in ’a
country that had Sukarno as its leader’. Bresnan implies that lechery rather than
ideology was a key factor in shaping such attitudes (p. 132).
Bresnan’s own attitudes about Indonesia were set by other Indonesians who
always displayed impeccable grace, goodwill and humour, including Widjojo
Nitisastro, Ali Wardhana, Selo Soemardjan and Soedjatmoko. These are the people
he remembers with warmth and about whom he writes with the greatest respect.
By contrast, some of the patricians of New York earn his gentle rebuke for confusing
a country with its leader.
For readers of BIES, his assessment of the contributions Ford made to training
the ’Berkeley Mafi a‘ is instructive, and is set out in several chapters. Looking at
the whole experience, he says, ’the irony of the University of Indonesia economics
project was that it failed to create a strong academic institution, but succeeded
in creating a group of economic policy makers who for a quarter-century were
to have a powerful impact on the entire population of the country‘ (p. 111). This
sounds surprising given the very high reputation that the University of Indonesia,
Gadjah Mada University and other large government-supported universities have
in Indonesia. What it refl ects is Bresnan’s clear-eyed perception that inadequate
staff salaries and a lack of incentives to devote suffi cient time to teaching still hold
back the Indonesian higher education system even in the famous faculties.
So was the Ford program in Indonesia worth it? Yes, he declares, the Foundation
can be very proud of the impact its half-century of investments has had on the
promotion of economic development, rice production, social science research and
family planning. But would he do it again if he had known about all the disruption
he would deal with during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s? ’In a New York minute‘
is his reply. Despite the diffi culties faced by his family when his older children had
to return to the US for schooling, leaving only the youngest daughter to accompany
the parents to Jakarta, he and the family would certainly do it all again.
The Bresnans loved Indonesia and, in the quarter of a century following
his departure as Ford Representative, Jack maintained his links to the country
through his work as the head of Ford’s Offi ce of Asian Affairs, and later at Columbia
University where he was a Senior Researcher from 1982 until 2005. This book
represents an important chronicle of the New Order period, and particularly the
crucial formative years, when the Ford Foundation played a decisive role. It is not
a sourcebook for economics or politics, but it is the sort of book every Indonesianist
should have who wants to gain some insights into the context of Indonesian
development, and a privileged look at Indonesian leaders.
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