{"id":172816,"date":"2020-11-16T12:02:15","date_gmt":"2020-11-16T12:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=172816"},"modified":"2020-11-16T06:55:54","modified_gmt":"2020-11-16T06:55:54","slug":"richard-falk-a-citizen-pilgrim-in-search-of-justice-and-peace-turns-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/11\/richard-falk-a-citizen-pilgrim-in-search-of-justice-and-peace-turns-90\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Falk, a Citizen Pilgrim in Search of Justice and Peace, Turns 90"},"content":{"rendered":"

13 Nov 2020 – <\/em>We are blessed by having a number of peace and future scholars, world-leading in their professions, who have followed world events over many decades and continue to be committed to world order change and public education.<\/p>\n

I say \u201cblessed\u201d because I assume that the reader share my reverence for high age and the sharing of long life experience as well as the wisdom that may accompany it in the midst of the youth-worshiping which characterises the ageing and increasingly grumpy West itself \u2013 also sometimes called age discrimination.<\/p>\n

Last month we celebrated Johan Galtung<\/em> at 90. And today, Richard Falk<\/em> at 90 \u2013 both world-renowned mega-productive scholars restlessly seeking ways to make the world a more peaceful place. And both TFF Associates, mentors and friends of the founders even before we set up TFF in 1985.<\/p>\n

As a student of sociology, peace and world affairs in the 1970s, I had been drawn to Falk\u2019s pioneering writings and textbooks \u2013 and the \u201crelevantly utopian\u201d World Order Models Project, WOMP,<\/a> that he participated in. I then met him in Lisbon for that project\u2019s meeting in 1980 and have benefited ever since from his academic\/law perspectives, peace thinking as well as from his sophisticated, elegantly complex style of writing.<\/p>\n

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Richard Falk with some of his many books,
\nMarch 2018, at TFF\u2019s headquarters<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

To write this heart- and brain-felt homage<\/em>, I went back first to TFF Associate\u2019s \u201cTreasures\u201d section 1998-2005<\/a> and found 43 articles by Richard. Then on to TFF\u2019s homepage \u2013 2006-2012<\/a> and found 46 articles by him. Continuing to TFF Associates\u2019 blog 2012-2017<\/a>, I find that we published no less than 243 articles by Richard during those five years. And finally to our present site, The Transnational<\/a> from 2018 where there are some 50.<\/p>\n

In sum, more than 380 pieces of theory, visions, commentaries, analyses and debate articles. Although this is only a fraction of his total production, I allow myself to interpret this publication result as a modest token of my deep gratitude and my joy of paying back a little of what he has so generously given TFF and me personally during all these years \u2013 not the least, I may add, by reading and editing all these articles before I posted them!<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t easy, perhaps actually impossible, to pin down who Richard Falk is, incessantly writing and speaking around the world, over so many years. But it suffices here to just celebrate the incredible diversity. Richard\u2019s lifelong engagement with the Palestinian people stands out \u2013 as do critical analyses of USand NATO militarism and interventionism; Middle Eastern developments and wars, of course; international law and the UN in particular \u2013 we share a big heart for its basic idea and role in the world \u2013 as well as nonviolence and peace and analysis of topical issues such as this from just a couple of days ago. . .<\/p>\n

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