The Patron of the Berkeley Mafia
Several University of Indonesia students studied at the University of California, Berkeley. They later became the economic architects of the New Order, closely associated with the “Berkeley Mafia” label.
Aditya Budiman
June 1, 2026
NO one imagined that Emil Salim and several other students from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Indonesia (UI) could study abroad in the 1950s. In the early years of the young Republic, Emil and his peers—including Widjojo Nitisastro, Mohammad Sadli, Johannes Baptista Sumarlin, and Ali Wardhana—left for the United States to study at the University of California, Berkeley.
It was Sumitro Djojohadikusumo, then Dean of the
...