Interview with Noted Public Intellectual Richard Falk

In today's show I speak with Richard Falk about his recent autobiography—Public Intellectual:  The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim. Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University (1961-2001) and Chair of Global Law, Faculty of Law, Queen Mary University London. Since 2002 has been a Research Fellow at the Orfalea Center of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Between 2008 and 2014 he served as UN Special Rapporteur on Israeli Violations of Human Rights in Occupied Palestine.

Falk has advocated and written widely about ‘nations’ that are captive within existing states, including Palestine, Kashmir, Western Sahara, Catalonia, Dombas.

He is Senior Vice President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, having served for seven years as Chair of its Board. He is Chair of the Board of Trustees of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. He is co-director of the Centre of Climate Crime, QMUL.

Falk has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times since 2008.

His recent books include (Re)Imagining Humane Global Governance (2014), Power Shift: The New Global Order (2016), Palestine Horizon: Toward a Just Peace (2017), Revisiting the Vietnam War (ed. Stefan Andersson, 2017), On Nuclear Weapons: Denuclearization, Demilitarization and Disarmament (ed. Stefan Andersson & Curt Dahlgren, 2019.

Praise for his autobiography include:

“This intimate and penetrating account of a remarkable life is rich in insights about topping ranging from the academic world to global affairs to prospects for livable society. A gripping story, with many lessons for a troubled world.”--Noam Chomsky

“Richard Falk is one of the few great public intellectuals and citizen pilgrims who has preserved his integrity and consistency in our dark and deep content times period this wise and powerful memoir is a gift that bestows us with a tear-soaked truth and blood-stained hope.” --Cornel West 

“Richard Falk recounts a life well spent trying to bend the arc of international law toward global justice. A Don Quixote tilting nobly at real dragons. His culminating vision of a better and even livable future--a necessary utopia--evokes with urgent the slogan of Paris May 1968: ‘Be realistic: Demand the impossible’”--Daniel Ellsberg

While a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Falk wrote his prescient 1972 book, This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival.