13/01/2017
[Obituary] Prof. Jeff A. Hadler, UC Berkeley
AMINEF learned today of the death of Prof. Jeff A. Hadler, associate professor and Head of the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Jeff was a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad awardee in 1994, doing research for a dissertation on a “Minangkabau community in the 19th and early 20th centuries that examines the resilience of matrifocal custom and matrilineal inheritance in the face of attacks from neo-Wahhabi jihad, Dutch colonialism, and ‘modernity’” submitted for a doctorate in history at Cornell University.
He then returned to Indonesia with a Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship in 2000, where he taught courses on “historical theory and methodology, and on violence and memory in Indonesia at the State Islamic University Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, while continuing his own research on anti-minority discourse and violence in colonial and modern Indonesia.” He was a superb and productive scholar, with a long list of publications (see his profile at the UC Berkeley website, http://sseas.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/jeffrey-hadler), and he mentored many Indonesianists and Southeast Asianists from various countries while teaching at Berkeley since 2009, including a few current Fulbrighter now in Indonesia.
He was also a funny, generous, committed person. His death came far too soon in his young life, and he will be sorely missed and remembered by the many around the world who knew him. We extend our condolences to his family.
Photo Courtesy: berkeley.edu
