Jennie M. Xue

An education in life

 by Jennie S. Bev 

In Indonesia, I went to a top-tier high school in Jakarta and the best university in the nation. In the United States, I didn’t go to an Ivy League school, instead I went to a state university and a so-so private university. Still, I did my master’s and doctorate-level studies and am now assisting a think tank at a posh private university in San Diego as a short-term fellow, writing on the subject of peace.

To some people, I’ve had an elite education and live an elite lifestyle. But for those educated at Ivy League schools, like Harvard, Princeton and Yale, I’m just a second-tier intellectual.

When a fatwa is not necessarily a "fatwa"

 by Jennie S. Bev

In five short years, Facebook’s members have reached 200 million worldwide. If it were a country, it would be ranked fifth in size after China, India, the United States and Indonesia. It is the fourth largest democracy by far.

No wonder it has been receiving the attention of Indonesian Muslim clerics as well. In late May, 700 religious students and clerics from East Java attended a public forum on young women’s Islamic boarding schools, and ultimately determined that overusing Facebook and other social networking sites was haram, or forbidden.

In search of radical public intellectuals

by Jennie S. Bev

Contrary to popular belief, academics are intellectuals but not all intellectuals are academics. Additionally, not all intellectuals are known to the public, and not all public intellectuals are radical.

Radical intellectuals can be found somewhere between university classes and writing and research gigs. They might even be unemployed and possess no Harvard or University of Indonesia PhDs. They are usually those who possess strong opinions but stay on the sidelines. They are iconoclasts, critics and polemicists.

Here's to punditocracy

by Jennie S. Bev

We all live in an interesting time today. All kinds of forces have been affecting long and short-term policies, as well as macro, meso, and micro ones. There are thousands of causes to fight for, starting from the bottom of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy --food, fuel, environment and health-- to enlightenment, self actualization and heightening quality of life. More than ever before, we live in a confusing time.

Indonesia is no exception. It can be sensed from regional and national media coverage what the collective national biases are toward the West and "the others" in term of country origins, religions, ideals and ideologies. Any coverage by the foreign press and non-Indonesian entities resonate differently among readers.