Richard Falk - Public Intellectual: The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim

This intimate and penetrating account of a remarkable life is rich in insights about topics ranging from the academic world to global affairs to prospects for a 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 decadent times. This wise and powerful memoir is a gift that bestows us with a tear-soaked truth and blood-stained hope.

DR. CORNEL WEST

Richard Falks Public Intellectual is a citizen pilgrims journey across the world, over nearly a century, contributing to peace in Vietnam, Iran, Palestine . Through his life and ideas he invites us to imagine and shape the politics of impossibility to heal our endangered planet and our fractured societies. Whether you are a peace activist or researcher, or you care about the earth and fellow human beings, Public Intellectual will enrich you intellectually and politically.

DR. VANDANA SHIVA

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 or even livable futurea necessary utopiaevokes with current urgency the slogan of Paris, May 1968: Be realistic: demand the impossible.

DANIEL ELLSBERG

The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim

Richard Falk

Clarity Press, Inc.

2021 Richard Falk

ISBN: 9781-949762-32-7

EBOOK ISBN: 9781-949762-33-4

In-house editor: Diana G. Collier

Cover design: R. Jordan Santos

Cover photo: Dantes Lantern by el grillo

As one who, walking by night
carries a light behind him and not for his own benefit
But to make wise those who come after him

DANTE, Purgatorio, Divine Comedy

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: Except for purposes of review, this book may not be copied, or stored in any information retrieval system, in whole or in part, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020952167

Clarity Press, Inc.

2625 Piedmont Rd. NE, Ste. 56

Atlanta, GA 30324, USA

https://www.claritypress.com

For Hilal

More than with earlier writing, I have leaned on others in the course of writing this memoir. It is not only that I know less about my life than about my researched intellectual pursuits. I am also inevitably biased, and so sought readers who saw aspects of my experiences and character with different eyes. Beyond this, I touched on many areas of public concern, and wanted to do my best to avoid mistakes of fact and distorted remembrances.

No one I approached declined, and many gave me valuable feedback that I did my best to incorporate in a seemingly never-ending series of revisions that have made my life miserable well before the COVID pandemic elevated my private woes to a planetary level.

I needed encouragement early on, and received it from several trusted, cherished friends, including Victoria Brittain, David and Carolee Krieger, Tom Plate, James Kavanagh, Avery Gordon, Nora Gallagher, Maivan Lam, Mark Bruzonsky, Lisa Hajjar, Phyllis Bennis, Radmila Nakarada, and Virginia Tilley. Our Geneva lunch group, a source of unrelenting stimulation over the last decade, consisting of Eugene Shulman, Daniel Warner, and Matthew Stevenson, administered constant injections of self-belief when I needed them most to get this wingless project off the ground. It is with sadness that I note the death of Gene, who provided much of the glue that kept us together over the years, and although championing a cynical worldview, he was always emphatically and lovingly supportive in personal relations.

Our lovely adopted daughter, Huyen Giap Mitchell, and my longtime anti-war collaborator, Cora Weiss, helped me with the Vietnam chapters, as did Vida Samiaan, Sasan Fayazmanesh, Nader Hashemi, and Behrooz Ghamari with the Iran chapter, and Hilal Elver with the Turkish chapter. It seems odd that the only chapter for which I was willing to rely solely on myself was the most controversial one, on Israel/Palestine.

I am particularly grateful to Susan Abulhawa, Rich Appelbaum, Ceylan Orhun, and Paul Wapner for detailed comments on early chapters that saved me, especially, from overly long sentences, some snide reflections on friends who chose differently on sensitive issues, and kept my spirits high enough to keep from abandoning the project midway. I owe Vincent Stanley a special debt of gratitude for stealing time from his own busy schedule to read and comment constructively on the whole manuscript when it was much longer than the present version, and hope he recognizes the impact that his feedback had on this final version.

I was touched by the willingness of our children, Dimitri Falk and Zeynep Zileli, to read parts of the manuscript, and not only read, but make important helpful suggestions that are incorporated in the final text. This was also true for Hilal who relied on her gifts of generosity to overlook aspects of my blemished past, and offered valuable ideas about structuring my unruly life in more palatable forms.

Above all, I owe heaps of gratitude to Diana Collier who went far beyond the normal role of editor/publisher to offer criticism, commentary, and indispensable encouragement. I have published many books during the last 60 or so years, but have never previously had such a benevolent interactive publishing experience as with Clarity Press.

My longtime intellectual comrade, friend, and talented digital artist, el grillo, contributed the mysteriously appropriate cover, and endured unanticipated technical obstacles while arranging the complicated transition from computer print to book. If I had known in advance that such difficulties were present, I would have lacked the courage to approach him. Indeed, ignorance can be bliss, allowing me the special pleasure of having el grillo so closely associated with this rendering of my life.

Martha Hughes, a skilled professional editor, did her best to improve an early draft, and helped me persist against my better judgment. Every author should be so lucky as to have such expert advice.

Hilal, my life partner for more than the past 25 years, not only kept our life together and flourishing in Santa Barbara, Yalikavak, and Istanbul, but also took her own challenging journey to new heights by serving with such dedication and skill as UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food during the entire ordeal of producing this memoir. Her love, and that of our children, Noah, Dimitri, and Zeynep, and our amazing granddaughter Juliet, helped sustain us, bringing us the joys and challenges of intimacy through good times and bad. There are many others who helped make my life what it became, and I would mention particularly my previous wife, Florence Falk, the mother of Noah and Dimitri, a warm friend to Hilal and myself.

This is the first time I have leaned so heavily on friends in the course of producing a book, and not surprisingly, I turned to others because of my feelings of falling short in expressing my life experience in a readable way that compromises with truthfulness as little as possible. It was not only a matter of appealing for help, but I have come to admit, pleas for reassurance. So often during the last three years I have been ready to discard the project as beyond my capabilities, but somehow, I had just enough belief and support to keep me going until I staggered across the finish line.