Professor's Podium for Indonesian Education
By Dr. Suwendi, M.A.
(Lecturer at UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta)
In May 2025, precisely on Monday, May 19, 2025, the Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teacher Training Sciences (FITK) of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, through the Islamic Religious Education Study Program, for the first time held the "Mimbar Guru Besar" (Professor's Podium) event. This event is a strategic academic endeavor to accommodate the thoughts and ideas of lecturers who have achieved the highest academic rank regarding education, especially Islamic Religious Education (PAI). Of course, these thoughts and ideas are very important to be expressed, discussed, and conveyed in the right forum, so that they can then be carefully reconstructed in the context of academic development, social improvement, or educational politics or policy itself.
In a number of prestigious academic forums in the international arena, this tradition actually occurred regularly in the 1990s. One of them was formerly initiated by the great scholar Prof. Dr. Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas at the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), Malaysia, under the name Al-Ghazali Chair. The Al-Ghazali Chair forum featured figures from various parts of the world to become an academic space that brought together classical Islamic scholarly traditions with the challenges of modernity. From that forum, a number of research and scientific works were born that were published internationally.
In the context of Islamic religious higher education institutions, including UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta, this Professor's Podium is important to implement. Especially after the issuance of PMA Number 7 of 2021 and KMA Number 856 of 2021, Islamic religious higher education institutions (PTKI) have experienced a surge in the number of professors. According to the data obtained, the Ministry of Religious Affairs has produced 959 professors from the end of 2021 to December 2023. A total of 461 are professors in the religious sciences cluster and 498 others are professors for the general sciences cluster. At UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta itself, there are currently at least 121 professors or 9.77% of the total 1,238 lecturers. In this context, the academic contribution of professors is highly expected; and the UIN Jakarta campus is also seen as needing to provide these academic development spaces.
On the other hand, there are academic demands for PTKI institutions that seem to have not been fully answered. The mandate of PP 49 of 2019 concerning Religious Higher Education which emphasizes that the distinction of PTKI compared to other higher education institutions is the integration of knowledge, namely the occurrence of productive relationships, both in ontological, epistemological, and axiological aspects between science and Islam. The relationship between general science and Islamic sciences must be based on a conceptual framework and implemented well. Although there have been a number of regulations such as the Decree of the Director General of Islamic Education Number 2498 of 2019 concerning Guidelines for the Implementation of Knowledge Integration in PTKI and the Decree of the Rector of UIN Jakarta Number 864 of 2017 concerning Guidelines for the Integration of Knowledge at UIN Jakarta, it was found based on a number of studies, that the integration of knowledge in PTKI has not been fully implemented well.
The Faculty of Tarbiyah and Teacher Training Sciences (FITK) UIN Jakarta, through the Islamic Religious Education (PAI) Study Program, is taking that strategic space. This Professor's Podium is expected to become an intellectual node that bridges the treasury of Islamic thought with the complexity of today's world of education. It is not just a ceremonial forum, but an institution of ideas, a place for the germination of thought and the sowing of the vision of Islamic educational civilization and will give birth to academic dialogue on how Islamic education issues are viewed from various cross-disciplinary scientific perspectives.
The accentuation of the Professor's Podium on PAI has a significant rational basis, both in academic and practical aspects. In the academic aspect, PAI is actually not only related to didactics or the teaching and learning process in educational institutions that have a normative-religious nuance, but also how PAI issues intersect with various other disciplines such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, pedagogy, economics, law, communication science, and others. PAI is not a scientific discipline that stands alone without having a relationship with other scientific disciplines. However, it is precisely formed due to the correlation and linkage with these various scientific disciplines. In this context, the Professor's Podium is expected to become a space for deeper and multidisciplinary academic study so that PAI can make a real contribution to the intellectual and spiritual development of the nation.
Practically, PAI has a very real space for service and social contribution. PAI lecturers, students, and graduates will color how students, especially in school educational institutions, such as Kindergarten/Elementary/Junior High/Senior High/Vocational School which currently number around 53.17 million and students in madrasahs, namely RA/MI/MTs/MA) which number around 10.3 million, have Islamic knowledge, understanding, and skills. This means that the role of PAI for students in schools and madrasahs is around 63.47 million or 22.53% of the entire Indonesian population of around 281.6 million people. Of course, such a large contribution needs to be well prepared, including PAI study programs in PTKI which are expected to continue to improve their quality and capabilities so that their graduates are contributive to the state and nation.
By understanding the background and meaning of this Professor's Podium, it is hoped that it can inspire the academic world and PTKI campuses in the country to continue to encourage and at the same time utilize the capabilities and contributions of lecturers, especially those who have achieved professorship, for better scholarship and civilization. Hopefully. (zm)