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Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies
ISSN: 0007-4918 (Print) 1472-7234 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cbie20
John (‘Jack’) Bresnan, 1927–2006
Ann Marie Murphy & Hadi Soesastro
To cite this article: Ann Marie Murphy & Hadi Soesastro (2006) John (‘Jack’)
Bresnan, 1927–2006, Bulletin of Indonesian Economic Studies, 42:2, 173-176, DOI: 10.1080/00074910600873641
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00074910600873641
Published online: 20 Aug 2006.
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ISSN 0007-4918 print/ISSN 1472-7234 online/06/020173-4 © 2006 Indonesia Project ANU DOI: 10.1080/00074910600873641
JOHN (‘JACK’) BRESNAN, 1927–2006
Ann Marie Murphy* Hadi Soesastro
Seton Hall University, Centre for Strategic and New Jersey International Studies, Jakarta
Indonesia lost one of its closest international friends when John (‘Jack’) Bresnan passed away on 24 May 2006. In a relationship that spanned almost half a century, Jack worked in Indonesia as a foundation executive, wrote books that introduced Indonesian issues to an American audience, and helped to train a new genera-tion of American scholars committed to working on Indonesia in particular and Southeast Asia more generally.
Jack fi rst came to Indonesia in November 1961 as the Assistant Representative
of the Ford Foundation (hereafter ‘Ford’ or ‘the foundation’). Sukarno’s militant anti-Westernism, however, meant that the foundation and its work were often viewed with suspicion. By 1965, Indonesia had told the US to go to hell with its aid and had withdrawn from the United Nations, and the US Agency for Interna-tional Development (USAID) had left the country. In short, the late Sukarno years were a diffi cult time to embark upon the type of capacity-building programs that
are at the heart of the foundation’s mission.
One of the few things that the Ford Foundation could do during this period was to send Indonesian students abroad for advanced graduate work. It sent econom-ics graduates to Berkeley, education professors to Teachers College at Columbia, and mathematics and science professors to SUNY (the State University of New York) at Stony Brook. Even this became more diffi cult in 1965, when the leftist
foreign minister, Subandrio, decreed that no Indonesian student would receive government permission to travel to the US. At the time, Ford had 13 students who were scheduled to leave Indonesia to begin their studies. The only way to override Subandrio’s regulation was to obtain Sukarno’s signature. Jack and his boss made repeated visits to the palace, and fi nally secured permission for all 13
students to leave Indonesia. Among them was Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-Jakti, who would later become Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Indo-nesia, Ambassador to the US, and Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs.
As the political situation became more chaotic in 1965, demonstrators protested the presence of Ford-funded American lecturers at the Institute for Teaching and Education in Malang. Coming on the heels of violent attacks against British and American interests, this led Ford executives in New York to order the closure of the Jakarta offi ce, a move Jack protested vigorously to no avail. Jack was aware
*1 Assistant Professor, Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Seton
Hall University.
174 Ann Marie Murphy and Hadi Soesastro
that the homes of other Westerners who had left Indonesia were immediately com-mandeered by military offi cers. Determined to thwart the military, Jack invited
Ali Wardhana and his family over for lunch on the day he was to leave Indonesia. When the Bresnan family left for the airport, the Wardhana family were in place and have lived in the house ever since.
Ford re-opened its Jakarta offi ce in 1967, and Jack returned as its
Representa-tive in 1969. By then, Soeharto had taken power from Sukarno. Lacking Sukarno’s nationalist credentials, Soeharto was determined to legitimate his regime through economic development. Many of those who had received economics degrees on Ford Foundation fellowships, such as Widjojo Nitisastro, Ali Wardhana, Emil Salim and Mohammad Sadli, now assumed roles as economic advisers to the president, and would later serve in top economic cabinet positions.
At the time it funded their studies, the foundation thought it was helping to create an independent university faculty, but it ended up assisting in the crea-tion of something more powerful: a group of economic technocrats who would steer Indonesian development for the next three decades. Many members of what would become known as the ‘Berkeley mafi a’ viewed Jack as its prime
benefactor.
The context in which the Ford Foundation and Jack operated during his second tour of duty was radically different from his fi rst. There was a group of policy
makers who trusted Ford and were happy to discuss their problems and work with it on possible solutions. Ford provided technical assistance on numerous poverty reduction programs. In Java, it worked with the Ministry of Agricul-ture to transfer new technologies that replaced the hand-pounding of rice with machinery, freeing women who had traditionally performed this task for other economic activities. To facilitate this transition, Indonesia developed one of the world’s fi rst micro-fi nance programs, with Ford’s assistance.
To help strengthen Indonesian social sciences, Jack hired renowned anthro-pologist Clifford Geertz to travel throughout Indonesia, survey the current state of social science faculties, and recommend how best to improve the training of Indonesian social scientists in areas other than economics. Based on Geertz’s recommendations, Ford created a series of research stations throughout Indo-nesia, headed jointly by a team of Indonesian and foreign social scientists, which would eventually train over 300 local university professors. In addition, during Jack’s term as Representative, Ford would send over 70 social scientists abroad for doctoral degrees in fi elds such as political science, psychology and
anthropology.
Ford, which had helped create the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, funded a major project to have IRRI train Indonesian scientists and create institutions to conduct research on the diseases and insects that affected rice production in the country. Aware of the very different growing conditions throughout the archipelago, Jack made sure that IRRI conducted its research in numerous sites throughout Indonesia. The pioneering work performed by IRRI with Ford funding was eventually supported by foreign aid from the US, Austral-ian and Dutch governments, and helped bring the green revolution to Indonesia. Jack considered his work with IRRI, which helped a country long subject to peri-odic famine to achieve rice self-suffi ciency in the 1980s, as his most signifi cant
contribution to Indonesia.
Jack returned to New York City in 1973 to become head of Ford’s Asia Pacifi c
Division. Over the next decade, he would continue to work on the issues of eco-nomic and social development in Asia. On his recommendation, the prominent Indonesian thinker Soedjatmoko became the fi rst Indonesian to serve on the
Board of Directors of the Ford Foundation.
Upon retiring from the foundation in 1982, Jack became a consultant to the Asia Society and a Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute of Columbia Uni-versity. At the Asia Society, he worked with former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance for eight years to organise the annual Williamsburg conferences, which brought together US and Asian policy makers, intellectuals, and business leaders to dis-cuss issues of common concern to the region. The Williamsburg conference series was one of the fi rst Pacifi c-wide series in which government offi cials participated
in their private capacity. This formula would later be copied in the meetings of PECC (the Pacifi c Economic Cooperation Council) in the context of APEC, and the
Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacifi c (CSCAP) in the context of the
ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and in other regional Track-II dialogues.
At Columbia, Jack became Director of the Pacifi c Basin Studies Program, and
worked to broaden the study of Asia beyond Japan and China. He introduced the fi rst courses on contemporary Southeast Asia, and invited scholars from the
region to teach them. One of the fi rst was Juwono Sudarsono, an Indonesian
polit-ical scientist who had earned his PhD at the London School of Economics on a Ford Foundation Fellowship, and who is currently serving as Indonesian Minister of Defence. Hadi Soesastro, economist and Executive Director of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, served two tours of duty as a visit-ing professor, most recently in the fall of 2005. Through Jack’s efforts, he helped train a new generation of American scholars and policy makers committed to Southeast Asia.
During his years at Columbia, Jack became a scholar himself. Of greatest interest to the readers of BIES is Jack’s 1993 book, Managing Indonesia. Thisis a comprehen-sive account of the political economy of development under Soeharto, in which Jack drew on his own experience and inside knowledge of the topic. It is still the best book on the subject, and should perhaps be made available to the wider Indonesian public by being translated into Indonesian. When the Council on Foreign Relations wanted to publish a book on US relations with Southeast Asia, it turned to Jack.
From Dominoes to Dynamos was published in 1994.
When the Asian fi nancial crisis hit Indonesia and brought an end to the
Soe-harto era, Jack spearheaded what became known as the Transition Indonesia project. This was a joint US–Japanese–Australian effort to determine how these three key external supporters of Indonesia could help promote the country’s eco-nomic recovery and transition to democracy. From 1999 to 2002 Jack helped lead four study tours to Indonesia, helped convene fi ve conferences, and helped draft fi ve policy briefi ng reports that were widely distributed to American policy
mak-ers and opinion makmak-ers.
In November 2005, Jack’s last academic effort—an edited volume entitled Indo-nesia: The Great Transition—was published. To coincide with the book’s publication, Columbia University organised a conference in Jack’s honour entitled ‘Legacies of Change in Southeast Asia’, which brought together many of his former students and colleagues. Speakers included Dorie Friend, Ambassador Edward Masters,
176 Ann Marie Murphy and Hadi Soesastro
Hadi Soeasastro, Hugh Patrick, Don Emmerson, Don Weatherbee, Annette Clear, Sidney Jones, Bridget Welsh and Ann Marie Murphy. A volume of essays from the conference is currently in preparation.
At the time of his death Jack had just fi nished the fi nal edits on a manuscript
about his experience with the Ford Foundation in Indonesia. The book will be published by Equinox in Jakarta. At his funeral, many of us commented how typi-cal it was of Jack—who was always the epitome of a courteous gentleman—not to leave until he had completed all of his writings, so as not to impose a burden on those left behind.
Jack was awarded one of Indonesia’s most distinguished civilian honours, the Bintang Jasa Pratama, by President Megawati in 2003, for contributions to educa-tion and research in Indonesia. Only two other Americans had previously been honoured in this way: the late George McT. Kahin of Cornell University and Clif-ford Geertz of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. The founder of BIES, Professor Heinz Arndt of Australia, also received the Bintang Jasa Pratama.
After the award ceremony, when walking out towards the stairs of the presi-dential palace, Jack said to President Megawati that he considered that he was receiving the award as a representative of all the men and women, Americans, Indonesians and other nationalities, who had worked at the Ford Foundation in Jakarta since the fi rst grant was made in 1953. Jack’s original sentence was much
longer, as in his own notes he admitted that he was out of breath when fi nishing
it. He also remembered that for a while the president did not say a word, but was full of smiles. Then she said that the fi rst time she heard about the Ford
Founda-tion was in the 1950s from her father, President Sukarno. Jack was awarded the Bintang, she said, in recognition of the good things the American people had done for Indonesians.
Indeed, in addition to his signifi cant contributions to Indonesia’s economic,
social and scholarly development, Jack worked tirelessly to improve Americans’ understanding of Indonesia and to strengthen US–Indonesia relations. He hosted the fi rst meeting of the advisory board of USINDO (the United States–Indonesia
Society) at Columbia in 1993, served on the board from its founding until his death, and was an active participant in the society’s programs. He was a passion-ate advocpassion-ate of the US–Indonesia relationship with government leaders and in international forums.
In all the years since Jack fi rst set foot in the country his heart had been with
Indonesia, but his critical eyes remained wide open when assessing and analysing developments there. He was an insightful observer of, and wise commentator on, Indonesia.
Jack is survived by his wife of 55 years, Barbara, four children and six grand-children.
