John MacDougall, a pioneer of using the Internet as a research tool for Indonesian studies, died in Maryland on May 16. Among his many services, he was editor and publisher of Indonesia Publications from 1984 to 2004; creator and moderator of a bilingual Indonesian and English “Apakabar Project” from 1990 to 2002 which attracted 250,000 readers from 96 countries, now a searchable database housed at Ohio University (http://www.indopubs.com/db.html) ; and creator of a research and learning site on Indonesia, Southeast Asia and the Islamic World, available at http://www.indopubs.com.
A native of New Jersey, he was a brilliant student. In graduate school at Harvard, he focused on social psychology and taught courses on American race and labor relations, just as the civil rights and anti- Vietnam War movements were reaching a crescendo. These movements left John with a belief that civil society advocacy was a path to political and social reform, a belief that stayed with him until the end. He taught at MIT, the National University of Singapore, Cornell, and other universities before joining the U.S. government as a Southeast Asia specialist from 1977 to 1984. It was in 1984 that he decided to strike out on his own as a chronicler of Indonesia and became an invaluable friend and resource to generations of Indonesian and American researchers.
John used the online bulletin “Inside Indonesia” to publish many of his lists of useful websites by theme: “Justice on the Net”, “Labour on the Net”, “Aceh on the Net”, “Sulawesi on the Net” and so on. Most of these appeared in 2004, 2005, and 2006.
Most of John’s thousands of online friends never met him. He worked quietly out of his home, shunning self-publicity, accolades, or any public expressions of gratitude from the many Indonesians and non- Indonesians he helped over the years. He did more for Indonesian studies over the years than many much better-known figures. He was an early fan of Facebook but became one of those quickly disillusioned by issues of invasion of privacy for profit. The explosion of social media and search sites meant that much of John’s pioneering work faded into obscurity. For anyone researching the end of the New Order, however, John’s archives remain invaluable. And as a champion of justice and human rights, he will always be a model of how to use information for anti-authoritarian ends.
Obituary prepared by Sidney Jones (Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict)
On behalf of AIFIS we share our deepest condolences to John’s family at this time. The following are some additional comments from our board members about about John’s impact:
“John Macdougall was a tireless archivist who made available a daily mass of briefings and news reports from around the world on Indonesia from the 1990s to 2004. I used his free service every day, and could not have written most that I did in the 1990s without John’s selfless work. He was an institution in his own right, and one without peer. His passing is a reminder to us of how Indonesian studies ‘at the grassroots’ worked in pre-internet days.”
- Bob Hefner (Boston University)
“I have so much gratitude for his contribution to Indonesian Studies. I archived printed copies of his reports—they were a lifeline during my first decade in Montana, and in the tradition of Ben Anderson’s reports on the military in issues of Indonesia.”
- G.G. Weix (University of Montana)