Hefner Presents Invited Lecture: The 1965-1966 Killings in Indonesia: A Re-analysis
Photo by Melissa Ostrow for Boston University Photography.
On March 4, 2024, Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology and of International Relations at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and Director of the School’s Center for the Study of Asia presented an invited lecture in the Department of International Relations at Michigan State University. The lecture was on, “The 1965-1966 Killings in Indonesia: A Re-analysis.” In the 1965-1966 period, Indonesia witnessed one of the bloodiest outbreaks of civil violence in modern Southeast Asian history. Some 500,000 people died in the aftermath of a failed left-wing officers coup, as the armed forces mobilized against the country’s then-powerful Communist Party. Drawing on his years of research, as well as recent studies on the killings from other parts of Indonesia, Hefner presented a reanalysis of the violence’s causes and consequences. He also explained one of Indonesia’s most unusual distnctions: the fact that a country that in 1965-1966 appeared on the threshold of being a “failed” state rebounded in decades to come to become one of Asia’s most successful and prosperous new democracies.
Robert Hefner has directed 19 research projects and organized 18 international conferences, and authored or edited nineteen books. He is the former president of the Association for Asian Studies. At CURA, he directed the program on Islam and civil society since 1991; coordinated interdisciplinary research and public policy programs on religion, pluralism, and world affairs; and is currently involved in two research projects: “The New Western Plurality and Civic Coexistence: Muslims, Catholics, and Secularists in North America and Western Europe”; and “Sharia Transitions: Islamic Law and Ethical Plurality in the Contemporary World.” Read more about Professor Hefner on his faculty profile.