Gatty Lecture Series

Join us for a talk by Brad Simpson from the University of Connecticut, who will discuss Indonesian politics and policies surrounding the New International Economic Order.

This Gatty Lecture will take place at the The Kahin Center, 640 Stewart Ave. Lunch will be served. For questions, contact seapgatty@cornell.edu.

Abstract

Historians writing about the 1970s movement for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) have focused most of their attention to its most radical proponents and bitter opponents. But Indonesia pursued a ‘middle path’ of moderate advocacy for an NIEO that attempted to accommodate the interests of both wealthy industrialized states like the US and Japan, and developing state members of the G-77 whose radical politics the anticommunist regime in Jakarta often opposed. While many Indonesian officials embraced some elements of the radical analysis of NIEO advocates, most believed that Indonesia’s needs were better served by a modest reform politics than by confrontation with the West.

About the Speaker

Brad Simpson is Professor of History and Asian Studies at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Economists with Guns: Authoritarian Development and US-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 and The First Right: Self-Determination and the Transformation of International Order, 1941-2000 (Oxford, August 2025). He is now working on an international history of Indonesia's engagement with the politics of human rights and developmental during the Suharto era (1966-1998).