Thirty students from 13 universities from West, Central, and East Java and Jakarta participated in the second Akademi Merdeka Indonesia in a Bogor resort on the outskirts of Jakarta.

Getting to know and understanding an idea is an important endeavour for a society, especially for its youth and students, and particularly for the young people in Indonesia, a country in the process of transition to democracy. The ideas of freedom, free society and liberalism are more or less new ideas for many students, after the words gained negative association during the dictatorship era before 1998 in Indonesia.

On the other hand, the slogan “closer to the people” has attracted students more to socialism as an idea of change. In order to create a balanced discourse on the ideologies existing in the world, and as an effort to create a better understanding of Liberalism to the students, the Freedom Institute organised a series of courses on Liberalism.

This four-day residential programme was initiated under a platform under the Atlas Global Initiative for Free Trade, Peace and Prosperity. During the opening session Mr. Rainer Heufers, FNF Project Director in Indonesia, who is also a Senior Atlas Fellow, introduced the participants to the power of ideas and why they matter. He introduced a liberty movement that started with the founding of the Institute for Economic Affairs (UK) and the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (US) by Anthony Fischer. He told a story of Mr. Fischer who once met and consulted Friedrich von Hayek on whether or not he should enter politics to fight for the liberty ideas, which were so eloquently defended by Hayek in his book, The Road to Serfdom. Then Hayek advised him to support think tanks and reach out to intellectuals, people whom he believed will change the course of politics through ideas.

Other speakers in this programme include Freedom Institute's intellectuals Luthfi Assyaukanie and Ulil Abshar Abdalla. Indonesia's leading libertarian economist Arianto Patunru spent a day engaging the students with a lecture and a very active discussion on the ideas of property rights, freedom, free trade, the rule of law, and several other more practical economic policy issues. Facilitators Mr. M. Husni Thamrin (Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Liberty) and Ms. Adinda Muchtar (The Indonesian Institute) made sure the participants got their chance to share their thoughts through working groups and presentations, a role play game, and movie screening and discussion.

The first two occasions of the Akademi have drawn a wide interest among university students, as seen from the number of applications received. Almost 200 (191) students have applied. Due to the limited resources and resolved to ensure quality group interaction, however, the Akademi selected, respectively 28 (two canceled in the last minute) for the first Akademi last February and 30 for the most recent programme.

EFN Asia’s members and partners supported this academy as its contribution for introducing ideology to the political discourse among the students and beyond. As one participant put it in his report after attending the academy: “what is most important and touching, behind this course, I could sense a high spirit to start a change: building a free society.”

Contact(s): FNF Indonesia