Poetry, Terror, and Suppressed Memory--A Tribute to Peter Dale Scott

This episode features a surprise tribute to the great poet and scholar of deep politics, Professor Peter Dale Scott. The event took place in my Peace Studies of the American Century class.

 

The students had been studying the tragic 1965 massacre of 500,000 to 2,000,000 Indonesians. As part of their studies, the class read excerpts of Professor Scott’s poem Coming to Jakarta. The retired Berkeley professor, was scheduled to appear through Zoom, planning to give a reading and answer questions about his long form poem.

 

Professor Scott did some of the best early work on the massacre. He graciously agreed to speak to my students about Coming to Jakarta. This was just days after his 92nd birthday, so to surprise Peter, I invited his best friend to join us—the renowned Pentagon Papers whistleblower and peace activist, Daniel Ellsberg.

 

In addition to reading Coming to Jakarta, my students also watched The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated film about the 1965 massacre. On a whim, I decided to extend an invitation to Joshua as well, knowing that he had cited Peter's work as an inspiration for his films. I sent Joshua a DM on Twitter and amazingly, he got back to me. He also agreed to surprise Peter and my students.

 

Joshua Oppenheimer’s films changed Indonesian history. In this class meeting, he finally met Peter and paid him a most heartfelt tribute. 

 

And Daniel Ellsberg—himself the subject of an Oscar-nominated documentary—also gave a wonderful tribute to Joshua’s films and to Peter’s poetry and prose. This episode also features Freeman Ng and Ben Howard.

 

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