Who Is Fakhri Fauzi?

Fakhri Fauzi is a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) currently teaching Bahasa Indonesia at Harvard University. Back home, he is a BIPA (Bahasa Indonesia untuk Penutur Asing — Indonesian for Foreign Speakers) lecturer at UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, with eight years of BIPA teaching experience and four years teaching English. He holds a master's degree in linguistics from Universitas Indonesia and a bachelor's degree from UIN Jakarta.  He started his Harvard appointment on August 15, 2025.

What Does Fakhri Fauzi Actually Do at Harvard Kennedy School?

Through the Indonesia Program at the Rajawali Foundation Institute for Asia, Fakhri leads a not-for-credit Bahasa Indonesia and culture course open to Harvard students, faculty, fellows, staff, and scholars from across the greater Boston area. The curriculum covers all proficiency levels — beginner, intermediate, and advanced. 

Picture the scene: a seminar room in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the air thick with the hum of ambition. Future diplomats, policy analysts, and global leaders are — syllable by syllable — learning to say terima kasih and apa kabar. Fakhri is the one guiding them there.

The class covers basic grammar for both formal and informal contexts, alongside Indonesian culture — because language without culture is just vocabulary.

Why This Is Bigger Than One Classroom

Here is the counterintuitive part: most people assume Harvard shapes the world through economics or law. But soft power runs on language. When a future U.S. policymaker can hold a basic conversation in Bahasa Indonesia, the entire dynamic of Indonesia-U.S. relations shifts — even slightly. That slight shift, multiplied across careers and decades, adds up to something real.

UIN Jakarta's leadership framed Fakhri's appointment in exactly these terms — as a form of cultural diplomacy, evidence that Indonesia's educators can compete on the global stage, and a strategic expansion of the country's international academic network. 

The Man Who Speaks Seven Languages

Fakhri speaks seven languages, including Khmer, French, and Korean — a detail that says everything about his philosophy. He doesn't just teach language; he collects perspectives. He's brought that same curiosity to students across five continents, from military officers in India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka to university students in Cambodia.

"This success not only brings honor to PPB and UIN Jakarta but also strengthens Indonesian cultural diplomacy through language." — UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta official statement, 2025

What Is the Fulbright FLTA Program?

The Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant program places Indonesian educators at U.S. universities, where they teach Bahasa Indonesia while deepening their own cultural and academic understanding of the United States. It is one of the most competitive international exchange programs administered by the U.S. government, funded through the American Indonesian Exchange Foundation (AMINEF). Selection is rigorous — and landing a placement at Harvard Kennedy School, specifically, is exceptionally rare.

Indonesia's Language on the World Map
Bahasa Indonesia is spoken by over 270 million people, making it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world — yet it remains largely absent from elite Western academic curricula. Fakhri's presence at Harvard is a small but deliberate correction to that gap. Every class session is, quietly, an act of national representation.