Menchik Delivers Gatty Lecture at Cornell University
Jeremy Menchik, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Fredrick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, spoke as part of the the 2017-2018 Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture Series at Cornell University on March 29, 2018. The series is organized by the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell.
Menchik’s lecture, entitled “The Politics of the Fatwa,” focused on the Indonesian Council of Ulama (Majelis Ulama Indonesia, MUI), which over the past fifteen years has become as one of the most powerful actors in Indonesian politics. Menchik discussed what kind of authority fatwas embody and what the implications of fatwas are for politics in Indonesia and the broader Muslim world.
In his lecture, Menchik argued that in the contemporary Muslim world fatwas contain no innate authority nor do they have any inherent effects. According to Menchik, understanding the power of fatwas requires understanding the interests and values of a specific actor, at a specific time, in response to a specific set of events.
The Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) at Cornell was founded in 1950 to promote the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge about countries, cultures and languages of the region. Its twenty core and eight emeritus faculty members have collective knowledge of Southeast Asia, which amounts to one of the world’s greatest concentrations of expertise on this region. Six language lecturers teach 4 levels of study in Burmese, Indonesian, Khmer, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese.
Jeremy Menchik’s research interests include comparative politics, religion and politics, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. At Boston University he is a member of the graduate faculty of political science and coordinates the MAIA program with specialization in Religion and International Affairs.