Menchik Offers Insight on Indonesian Presidential Candidate
Jeremy Menchik, Associate Professor of International Relations at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, was interviewed by Asia Times on Jakarta, Indonesia‘s former governor Anies Baswedan, his political career, and what that tells us about his bid for president.
The article, titled “Baswedan’s rise stoking Indonesia election flames,” breaks down the candidates in Indonesia’s 2024 democratic presidential elections, specifically Baswedan. Analysts are paying greater attention to where the country is headed given the lack of genuine parliamentary opposition. Baswedan has been criticized for being opportunistic, especially in using faith to his advantage when observers, including Menchik, say he is using the mantle of “defending Islam in order to win political power.” As Menchik states, “there is cause for alarm when a pedigreed intellectual like Baswedan deploys a craven election strategy…he knows better.”
The full article can be read on Asia Times‘ website.
Jeremy Menchik is an Associate Professor in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and a faculty affiliate in Political Science and Religious Studies. His first book, Islam and Democracy in Indonesia: Tolerance without Liberalism (Cambridge University Press, 2016) explains the meaning of tolerance to the world’s largest Islamic organizations and was the co-winner of the 2017 International Studies Association award for the best book on religion and international relations. His work has appeared in the academic journals Comparative Studies in Society and History, Comparative Politics, International Studies Review, Politics and Religion, Asian Studies Review and South East Asia Research as well as in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. His recent research focuses on social movements, the politics of modern religious authority, and the origins of the missionary impulse. Read more about Professor Menchik on his faculty profile.