Bandung, Saco-Indonesia.com - Hermain Tjiknang (91) mengikuti prosesi wisuda menggunakan kursi roda di Graha Sanusi Universitas Padjadjaran, Jalan Dipati Ukur, Bandung, Selasa (4/2/2014) lalu. Peraih gelar doktor Ilmu Hukum kelahiran Muntok, Bangka, 26 Juni 1922 ini tercatat sebagai wisudawan tertua.

Tentu, sosok Hermain Tjiknang menjadi sorotan dan tidak sedikit hadirin yang berdecak kagum untuk wisudawan lulusan gelombang II Unpad Tahun Akademik 2013/2014 itu.

Bukan karena saat wisuda Hermain menggunakan kursi roda, tapi ketika tahu bahwa usia Hermain sudah mencapai 91 tahun lebih 7 bulan.

Ya, Hermain memang menjadi wisudawan paling tua, namun semangatnya terlihat saat ia ditanya oleh wisudawan lain.
Sebelumnya tercatat, Mooryati Soedibyo adalah peraih gelar doktor tertua di Indonesia menurut Museum Rekor Dunia-Indonesia (Muri) ketika lulus S3 dari Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Indonesia pada tahun 2007.

Di Unpad, pada wisuda tahun 2010, Siti Maryam Salahuddin juga meraih gelar doktor pada usia 83 tahun. Melihat catatan tersebut, bisa jadi Hermain adalah peraih gelar doktor tertua di Indonesia saat ini.

Bukanlah hal mudah bagi Hermain yang di usia 90 tahun harus menyelesaikan disertasi. Bahkan disertasinya yang berjudul "Perlindungan Hukum Atas Pekerja Alih Daya (Outsourcing) Berdasarkan Keadilan dalam Perselisihan Hubungan Industrial Akibat Pemutusan Hubungan Kerja Sepihak", sampai tujuh kali direvisi oleh promotornya.

Namun karena semangatnya, dia berhasil menyelesaikan program Doktornya dalam waktu lima tahun.

"Sebenarnya banyak kendala, tapi karena saya memang ingin mempertahankan disertasi ini, akhirnya selesai juga," katanya ditemui seusai wisuda.

Tak terbatas usiaMenurut lelaki yang masih aktif bertugas sebagai dosen di STIH Pertiba, Pangkalpinang ini, menuntut ilmu tidak terbatas usia. Selagi keinginan masih ada, usia bukanlah halangan untuk memperdalam ilmu.

Terlebih sebagai dosen, ia merasa sudah kewajibannya untuk mendapatkan ilmu lebih banyak untuk dibagi kepada mahasiswanya.

"Usia boleh tua, tapi belajar tidak ada batasan," kata lelaki yang meraih gelar Doktor pada Sidang Terbuka Promosi Doktor pada 17 Januari 2014 lalu ini.

Karena masih ingin membagi ilmu inilah, Hermain masih menyempatkan datang ke kampus untuk mengajar Ilmu Hukum untuk mahasiswa sarjana dan magister. Tiga kali dalam seminggu, ia mengajar di perguruan tinggi yang juga didirikan oleh Hermain bersama rekan-rekannya di tahun 1982 tersebut.

Merasakan masih haus akan ilmu jugalah, yang membulatkan tekadnya untuk mengambil doktor Ilmu Hukum di Unpad. Ia harus berkuliah hingga menyeberang pulau karena ia bersama keluarga telah menetap di Bangka.

"Saya sudah cinta dengan dunia pendidikan," kata lelaki asal Palembang ini.

Stres
Sakit jantung yang dialaminya itu sempat pula membuatnya harus  masuk intensive care unit (ICU) rumah sakit saat dia tengah menyusun disertasi. "Gara-gara stres karena flash disk naskahnya dikira hilang," kata putri sulungnya, Suzanna Indrawati.

Beruntung, ternyata data itu ternyata berada di tangan asistennya.

Kecintaannya terhadap dunia pendidikan sudah ditunjukkan saat masa penjajahan Belanda. Ia sempat mengajar pejuang-pejuang. Bagi Hermain, dengan pendidikan, Indonesia bisa menjadi negara merdeka dan maju.

"Pendidikan, mencari ilmu itu harus. Apalagi buat generasi muda, agar Indonesia maju," kata suami dari Federika Henderika dan ayah dari lima anak ini.

Ia mengaku sedih bila ada generasi muda yang tidak semangat bersekolah. Karena saat ini ia melihat menuntut ilmu jauh lebih baik dan lebih mudah. Dengan kemajuan teknologi, seharusnya generasi muda semakin bersemangat.

BanggaYashinta, anak Hermain yang menemani wisuda ayahnya mengaku bangga. Meski terkadang ia tidak tega melihat ayahnya menyusun disertasi hingga larut malam.

"Ayah saya sudah tua, tapi sampai malam masih nyusun disertasinya, kadang suruh istirahat, nanti dulu katanya, karena pengen cepat selesai," katanya. 

Ia juga tidak bisa menahan keinginan ayahnya yang masih ingin terus mengajar. Karena ia sudah memahami karakter ayahnya yang sudah mencintai dunia pendidikan.

Sumber :kompas.com

Editor : Maulana Lee

As he reflected on the festering wounds deepened by race and grievance that have been on painful display in America’s cities lately, President Obama on Monday found himself thinking about a young man he had just met named Malachi.

A few minutes before, in a closed-door round-table discussion at Lehman College in the Bronx, Mr. Obama had asked a group of black and Hispanic students from disadvantaged backgrounds what could be done to help them reach their goals. Several talked about counseling and guidance programs.

“Malachi, he just talked about — we should talk about love,” Mr. Obama told a crowd afterward, drifting away from his prepared remarks. “Because Malachi and I shared the fact that our dad wasn’t around and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn’t around and what had happened. But really, that’s what this comes down to is: Do we love these kids?”

Many presidents have governed during times of racial tension, but Mr. Obama is the first to see in the mirror a face that looks like those on the other side of history’s ledger. While his first term was consumed with the economy, war and health care, his second keeps coming back to the societal divide that was not bridged by his election. A president who eschewed focusing on race now seems to have found his voice again as he thinks about how to use his remaining time in office and beyond.

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Obama Speaks of a ‘Sense of Unfairness’

In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.

“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”

Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.

Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.

The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.

“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”

The alliance was in the works before the disturbances last week after the death of Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, but it reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s presidency. For him, in a way, it is coming back to issues that animated him as a young community organizer and politician. It was his own struggle with race and identity, captured in his youthful memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that stood him apart from other presidential aspirants.

But that was a side of him that he kept largely to himself through the first years of his presidency while he focused on other priorities like turning the economy around, expanding government-subsidized health care and avoiding electoral land mines en route to re-election.

After securing a second term, Mr. Obama appeared more emboldened. Just a month after his 2013 inauguration, he talked passionately about opportunity and race with a group of teenage boys in Chicago, a moment aides point to as perhaps the first time he had spoken about these issues in such a personal, powerful way as president. A few months later, he publicly lamented the death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, saying that “could have been me 35 years ago.”

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That case, along with public ruptures of anger over police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have pushed the issue of race and law enforcement onto the public agenda. Aides said they imagined that with his presidency in its final stages, Mr. Obama might be thinking more about what comes next and causes he can advance as a private citizen.

That is not to say that his public discussion of these issues has been universally welcomed. Some conservatives said he had made matters worse by seeming in their view to blame police officers in some of the disputed cases.

“President Obama, when he was elected, could have been a unifying leader,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, said at a forum last week. “He has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions.”

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, some liberal African-American activists have complained that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help downtrodden communities. While he is speaking out more, these critics argue, he has hardly used the power of the presidency to make the sort of radical change they say is necessary.

The line Mr. Obama has tried to straddle has been a serrated one. He condemns police brutality as he defends most officers as honorable. He condemns “criminals and thugs” who looted in Baltimore while expressing empathy with those trapped in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

In the Bronx on Monday, Mr. Obama bemoaned the death of Brian Moore, a plainclothes New York police officer who had died earlier in the day after being shot in the head Saturday on a Queens street. Most police officers are “good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities,” even as they put their lives on the line, Mr. Obama said.

“Which is why in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that if we’re just looking at policing, we’re looking at it too narrowly,” he added. “If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that’s not fair to the communities, it’s not fair to the police.”

Moreover, if society writes off some people, he said, “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in; that’s not what America is about.”

His message to young men like Malachi Hernandez, who attends Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts, is not to give up.

“I want you to know you matter,” he said. “You matter to us.”