Background and Education
He began his career as a government bureaucrat in Java, serving as a district head in a rural area outside Yogyakarta. The term Selo was actually not his name, but a title attributed to Soemardjan's occupation as scribe/secretary to the Yogyakarta government, when he worked as regent of Kulonprogo. However, the term became so embedded with his real name Soemardjan, hence Selo Soemardjan became his proper name.
During the revolutionary period 1945-1950, he was secretary to Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX, a major figure in the struggle for independence. In 1948, an American student named George McTurnan Kahin was doing research in Yogyakarta. Kahin asked Minister of Education Ali Sastroamidjojo to suggest a suitable candidate as a research assistant. Sastroamidjojo suggested Selo Soemardjan, who was a civil servant, secretary to Sultan Hamengkubuwono IX.
The situation became even more unstable. Social change that took place during Indonesia's struggle for independence compelled Soemardjan to study sociology. Kahin helped him to get the documents needed to study at Cornell, with sponsorship from the Ford Foundation, and, in February 1956, he went to Cornell, where he studied all the European theories of sociology. In 1959, Soemardjan returned to Yogyakarta to do the research on social change for his PhD, and after six months, he went back to Cornell to complete the thesis and sit for exams.
- HIS, Yogyakarta (1921–1928)
- MULO, Yogyakarta (1928–1931)
- MOSVIA, Magelang (1931–1934)
- Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, AS (PhD 1959)
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