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Feith, Herbert
Positions summary
Lecturer, Reader and Professor and Chairman of the Department of Politics, 1962-1990.
Biography
Herbert Feith was born in Vienna in 1930. He emigrated to Australia with his family in 1939 and was naturalised in 1944. He was educated at Melbourne Boys High School and the University of Melbourne where he received a BA in History and Political Science. After a short period tutoring at Queen's College, he travelled to Indonesia and was employed as an English language assistant with the Department of Information in Djakarta.
From 1953-54 Feith worked as a Research Assistant at the University of Melbourne while completing his MA thesis "Political Developments in Indonesia in the Period of the Wilopo Cabinet, April 1952 - June 1953", for which he was awarded 1st Class Honours in 1955. He returned to Indonesia in 1954 with the Volunteer Graduate Scheme, to work with the Department of Information as a Research Assistant. Between 1957 and 1960 Feith studied for his PhD in the Department of Government, Cornell University. He graduated with a dissertation entitled "Indonesian Politics 1949-57: Representative Government and its decline". The next two years were spent as Research Fellow with the Department of Pacific History at the Australian National University, before taking up a post as Lecturer in the Department of Politics at Monash in June 1962. Over the following years Dr Feith was promoted to Senior Lecturer (1963-65), Reader (1966-68) and from 1968 Professor and Chairman of the Department. In 1975 Feith relinquished his Chair and assumed the Readership held previously. He continued in this position until retiring at the end of 1990. He then became an Associate of the Department of Politics and continued to supervise graduate students particularly those from Southeast Asia. During his years at Monash, Dr Feith spent frequent periods of fieldwork in Indonesia as well as travelling to India, Bangladesh and Mexico. He acted as Visiting Lecturer at the University of Indonesia in 1967 and at Cornell University in 1968.
Dr Feith was convenor of the Victorian Committee to Support Bangladesh, active during the 1970s, and was closely associated with the Volunteer Graduate Scheme, the Australian Student Christian Movement, the Australian Indonesian Association, Amnesty International, the World Order Models Project, the Victorian Association for Peace Studies, the Committee for a just World Peace and the Peace Research Centre at ANU. He is the author of numerous journal articles and his publications include: The Indonesian Elections of 1955 (1957) The Wilopo Cabinet (1958) The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia (1962) Indonesian Political Thinking (ed. with L. Castles) (1970) After his death, the Herb Feith Foundation was established by Monash's Centre for Southeast Asia Studies to commemorate Dr Feith's contribution to scholarship on Indonesia.
Papers
Correspondence and personal papers 1950-1985
A collection of personal and professional correspondence in several chronological and alpha runs
Research files 1948-1987
A collection of files chiefly related to Indonesia but including significant sections on Bangladesh and New Guinea. Files include memos and newspaper cuttings; impressions and ideas noted on small cards; and segments of correspondence with brief typed notes. Lecture notes from Dr Feith's years at the University of Melbourne are also included.
Teaching and departmental files 1958-1984
Files related to teaching and administrative matters within the department of Politics, chiefly between 1962 and the early 1980s. Also included are files related to the Student Christian Movement, the Overseas Service Bureau and Amnesty International.