A student activist and political analyst before entering public service, he served as the Rector of Paramadina University before being appointed to be Minister of Education and Culture in Joko Widodo administration.

He is also the founder of Indonesia Mengajar, a program that selects, trains, and assigns university graduates to serve in a one-year teaching mission across the country.

[6] His paternal grandfather, Abdurrahman Baswedan, was a prominent Arab-Indonesian activist and diplomat who served as a cabinet minister during the Indonesian National Revolution.

[7][8][9] In 1978, when he was vacationing in Jakarta with his family, his sister Haifa died at Halim Perdanakusuma International Airport due to being crushed by a cupboard in the bathroom.

[9][10][11] Baswedan later referred the accident as the lowest point of his life and experienced a major psychological impact due to the fact that he would never see his sister again.

He succeeded Nurcholish Madjid (commonly referred to as Cak Nur), a prominent liberal Muslim intellectual and scholar who had served as rector since the university's founding in 1998.

[14] As rector, Anies established Paramadina Fellowship and included anti-corruption education in the core curriculum, first of its kind in the country.

Baswedan served as the official spokesperson for the so-called "Team of Eight", which was appointed by President Yudhoyono to oversee the infamous public feud between Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) and National Police (Polri), which saw two of the commissioners were criminally charged.

In 2010, alongside prominent figures like Sultan Hamengkubuwono X of Yogyakarta and former Muhammadiyah chairman, Ahmad Syafi'i Maarif, Anies co-founded Nasdem, a mass organization.

Joko Widodo, a fellow Gadjah Mada University graduate, was said to believe that his presence would gather votes from Indonesian youth voters, a demographic closely affiliated with Anies.

[22][23] In the reshuffle of the Working Cabinet on 27 July 2016, Anies was replaced by Muhadjir Effendy, Chancellor of the Muhammadiyah University of Malang.

[24] On 10 March 2017, he was reported to the Corruption Eradication Commission for allegedly misappropriating funds amounting to 146 billion rupiah at Frankfurt Book Fair in 2015 when he was still served as Ministry of Education.

[25] He was also suspected of having a dark agenda due to smuggled Amba by Laksmi Pamuntjak and Pulang by Leila S. Chudori, a two books which discussed about the 30 September Movement.

For the first time, Jakarta exported 19 tons of rice to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, through business-to-business cooperation between PT Food Station Tjipinang Jaya, namely a regionally-owned enterprise and Al Raqeeb Universal Group.

[40] In November 2017, he claimed that congestion in the Tanah Abang district was caused by pedestrians, instead of due to the street vendors conducting business on the area's sidewalks and roads.

[56] However, it had problems, ranging from the tariff, drivers' salaries, the distance requirements which was deemed too high at 190 kilometres, and concerns that it may violate Bank Indonesia regulations, the gubernatorial regulation, the contract with the Government Goods and Services Procurement Policy Institute (Lembaga Kebijakan Pengadaan Barang dan Jasa Pemerintah, LKPP).

[58] In September 2021, JakLingko officially announced its third generation payment card and a new mobility app, on limited trial since August 2021.

The leadership meeting was held with the Immigration Foreigner Supervision Team to discuss the COVID-19 disease to know and anticipate people who came from the place of origin of the outbreak.

This was followed by the abolition of learning activities at schools, cessation of office operations, entertainment venues, and tourist destinations which he also closed in March 2020.

On 16 March, MRT Jakarta, LRT and TransJakarta started to reduce number of trips, corridors and timetables (06.00 – 18.00), however, this policy was retracted due to long queue in many bus stops and train stations in morning.

[71] On 21 April, the local government prepared 136 schools as isolation areas for COVID-19 and the policy is currently still a proposal waiting for approval from the Education Office.

In 2018, then-candidates Prabowo Subianto asked Anies to become his running mate for the 2019 presidential election but refused due to his commitment as governor until 2022.

Starting from the background of his dismissal as minister, the issue of racism during his campaign, corruption cases regarding to hosting the Formula E, and his handling of flooding and air pollution problems in Jakarta.

While serving as Minister of Education and Culture, Anies Baswedan budgeted 10 million euros (around 146 billion rupiah) for the 2015 Frankfurt Book Fair.

[85] The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) cited the high commitment fee paid by the provincial government for the Jakarta ePrix event.

One member of the Jakarta Regional House of Representative, Gembong Warsono, accused the failure of deliberately doing so that PT Jakpro could choose the contractor directly.

[99] Despite assurances from his running mate, Muhaimin Iskandar, that there will be no identity politics used during the course of the campaign,[100] it became unavoidable to not associate Anies with ethnicity, religion, racial and intergroup (SARA) identity politics especially with the endorsement from Rizieq Shihab and the Islamic Defenders Front,[101][102] or convicted terrorist Abu Bakar Ba'asyir[103] in his presidential campaign.

[108][109] He also gained more controversy due to the mistake city officials made during the budgeting process, resulting in highly inflated prices such as Aibon glue that costs around 82 billion rupiah (around $6 million).

[111] On 11 November 2020, Baswedan met chairman of Islamic Defenders Front, Rizieq Shihab, who had returned to Indonesia and was criticized for violating health protocols which required people who have just arrived from abroad to quarantine for 14 days during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This declaration was considered by political observer and senior researcher at the Surabaya Survey Center, Surokim Abdussalam, to be "inappropriately apathetic" because the Indonesian people were still in a state of mourning due to the tragedy in Kanjuruhan.