The University of Michigan will welcome Dede Oetomo, one of the principal founders of Indonesia's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender queer and intersex rights movement, as a Martin Luther King – Cesar Chavez – Rosa Parks Visiting Professor on Sept. 22 – 24.
Oetomo will also give a public lecture on "The LGBTIQ Movement in Indonesia" at 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 22 at the International Institute at 1080 S. University. The event is free.
Oetomo is founder and trustee of GAYa NUSANTARA Foundation, and is Indonesia's premier gay rights activist. Beginning over 30 years ago as a U.S.-trained doctor in linguistics and co-author of the major text for teaching Indonesian language to Americans, Dede used his position within the Indonesian academy to begin advocating for the rights of gay and lesbian Indonesians, who at that time were almost an invisible group in any public sense. Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-majority nation, and in the late 1970s was also one of the world's largest authoritarian regimes. To publicly advocate for the rights of gay, lesbian and gender-variant Indonesians was, at the time, as it remains today, a daunting and courageous undertaking.
Founded in 1979, GAYa NUSANTARA was the first gay rights organization in southeast Asia, and remains one of its most vibrant and effective, particularly around issues of HIV/AIDS.
From 1984-2003, Oetomo was a lecturer at the faculty of Social and Political Sciences of Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya. He resigned when the faculty's Masters program in sexuality studies was blocked by management. Since that time, he has been working full-time within GAYa NUSANTARA and lecturing at Universitas Surabaya. He is now an organization trustee, undertaking research, training, advocacy and mentoring second- and third-generation Indonesian gay activists.
As a gay activist, Oetomo argues that in addition to community mobilizing and provision of safe space, it remains important to engage in contestation of knowledge with opponents of gay emancipation. To this end, he is a prolific publisher or articles for the print media in Indonesia.
Oetomo's public lecture on "The LGBTIQ Movement in Indonesia" will explore organizing based on gender identity since the late 1960s and on sexual orientation since the early 1980s in Indonesia. He will look at how emancipatory community development and the HIV program were the initial impetus to organizing, and how after the change of governments in 1998, the increasingly conducive conditions for democratization and human rights have facilitated the growth of a movement diversifying into film and arts, feminism, health and human rights.
Special consideration will be given to knowledge production and alliance building as strategies for strengthening the movement.
During his time in Ann Arbor, Oetomo will also lecture in classes at the university, and will meet with students and faculty in both Southeast Asian Studies and Gay-Lesbian-Queer Studies.
Oetomo's visit is sponsored by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Spectrum Center and the Lesbian-Gay-Queer Research Initiative, as well as by the Centers for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University and Ohio University.
