[Prefatory Note: With some embarrassment, and a bit of pride, I publish Margaret Crane’s interview in two sessions. I was intrigued by her newsletter on ageing, and thought that being asked about what it means to be this old I would learn something about my current state of mind and of being-in-the-world. My embarrassment stems from my realization that this is something in the order of what prompted Norman Mailer to title his 1959 book, Advertisements for Myself. I suppose this is a way of hiding self-consciousness by being ‘up front’ about it.]
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He Calls Himself a Citizen Pilgrim. I Call Him a Moral and Intellectual Hero.
Nonagenarian Richard Falk’s Long, Fruitful Post-Retirement
Jan 04, 2025
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At 94, Richard Falk is busier than at any other point in his life.
If you’re already familiar with Falk’s singular achievements, you’ll recognize the towering figure you know and admire—or profoundly disagree with. No matter which way you lean on Falk and the causes he has championed over the years, the following overview of his life, based on two interviews I conducted with him this past December, may offer new insights, along with a sense of what’s possible in very old age.
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Having taught international law and international relations at Princeton for four decades, Falk became an activist during the Vietnam War period, and he hasn’t stopped fighting for human rights, social justice, and the health of the planet since then.
Our paths crossed briefly during the early 1990s. I was an environmental activist myself, driven by outrage at the harm our species was inflicting on the systems that sustain life on Earth. Looking back at my younger self, I realize that I was long on passion and short on knowledge. At the behest of a fellow activist, I read a few articles by Falk, Murray Bookchin, and other prominent ecology-minded thinkers. They helped me understand what was at stake and embrace a more holistic view of the world: the ways in which war, poverty, the ecological crisis, capitalism, and geopolitics were interconnected.
I was stunned by Falk’s moral and intellectual force and humbled by his principled analysis of world affairs. And I still am.
As a prominent academic at an elite institution who dared to voice a radical critique of the West, and the U.S. in particular, he was as courageous as they come. His critique started with the Vietnam War and culminated in his opposition to Zionism and support for Palestinian rights. “I received plenty of pushback from Princeton alumni,” he told me. They, along with many in the human rights establishment, charged him—a secular Jew from New York City—with antisemitism. Their denunciation only grew sharper after he retired from Princeton in 2001, especially once he became the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine, a position he held from 2008 to 2014.
He also made me aware of reports issued this December by two major human rights organizations—Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Both have called Israel’s military campaign in Gaza genocide. That view is no longer the exclusive province of American college students across the nation’s campuses. Now, it’s being promulgated by the very establishment that viewed Falk as an outlier and possibly an extremist a short time ago. After all, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the international courts were originally conceived to denounce the human rights practices of the enemies of the West—not the West itself—so it’s significant that Israel’s actions have prompted them to such strong criticism of Israeli policy and, by implication, Western arms shipments.
Back to the Future
From Gandhi to Thoreau, and from Martin Luther King, Jr. to John Lewis and Wangari Maathai (the late Kenyan environmental activist and recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize), men and women of principle are often vilified by those whose interests are tied up with the established order. As I see it, one thing these men and women have in common is a kind of prescience—an ability to see the world as it could and should be, before the basis for such a world has become visible to sufficient numbers of people to effect change in the present.
Falk is one of those utopian thinkers.
In 1971, he authored his first book: This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival, which was selected by the magazine Foreign Affairs as one of the six most influential books published in the 20th century on global issues. The environmental crisis was barely on anyone’s radar, if memory serves, much less climate change. Pure prescience.
Falk has also formulated a critique of the nation-state, one that isn’t “realistic” but, once again, peers into a future that isn’t discernible to the pragmatically minded, which is most of us.
In a 2018 interview with Patrick Lawrence published in The Nation, he contrasted the relative weakness of the UN with the kind of globalism he believes is urgently needed.
If the human species is to thrive in the future, he told Lawrence, “you need mechanisms for protecting the global interest and the human interest, as distinct from the national interest”—especially in light of climate change, nuclear weapons, and other global threats.
He continues, “We’ve relied on the notion that leading states are surrogates for the promotion of the global public good, but that clearly doesn’t work when either geopolitical security interests are at stake, as they are with nuclear weapons, or large economic interests are at stake, as is the case with climate change.” I’d like to add AI as yet another threat that needs to be defanged and opposed outright, difficult and challenging as that may be. In adding this dreaded technology to Falk’s list of global threats, I hereby join the ranks of utopian thinkers as a citizen who still believes that a better world is possible.
Top Achievements
My purpose here is not to replicate Falk’s CV, and anyway, that would be impossible and, in a way, purposeless. If you’re interested in learning more about his long history of achievement, take a look at the video taken when he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in 2023.
Here are just a few. He has written 75 books. He has garnered umpteen honorary degrees, along with a doctorate from Harvard and a law degree from Yale. And he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times.
During our first interview, he mentioned these in passing, and only when I pressed him for examples. He was much prouder of the pilgrimages he made to North Vietnam in 1968 and to Iran (with former US attorney general Ramsey Clark) shortly after the ouster of the shah. The point was to start a process of dialogue and unofficial diplomacy, and to show that alternatives to war, and war-mongering, were possible.
As we delved into his past, he surprised me by saying that his proudest moment ever was the opportunity to try out for the New York Giants at age 17. (He would have preferred the Dodgers, his favorite baseball team.) Falk was quite the athlete, obviously. He continued to engage in sports, including tennis and squash, even through his 80s.
The Poem
On his 94th birthday, Falk posted a poem on his blog, Global Justice in the 21st Century. I’ve been one of his subscribers for several years, but (she said shamefaced) I don’t always read it. However, I couldn’t resist reading his birthday poem.
Here are a few lines from the first stanza:
For these last years I felt
It was strange to be still alive
When so many around me were dead.
Stranger to receive and give love
While the planet burns
And untamed demons prowl.
Here are a few from stanza II:
Yet despite the carnage
Roses bloom guarded by thorns
Gardenias retain their addictive aroma…
…The joys of loving and being loved never age. (Italics mine.)
And here’s stanza IV in its entirety:
When slaves break their chains
And patriots of the earth become
Warriors gardeners poets engaging
In a fight worth winning for the sake
Of those we love and learn from
So long as the trusted soul breathes its light
While the body is busy with the work of dying
Life remains a precious gift of god.
In tears and fully aware that he might not remember me, I decided to write to him and request an interview. And, mirabile dictu, he said yes.
Old Age
When we spoke, he described the tension he experiences between “personal contentment and public gloom.” While not exactly content, I’ve decided to borrow that formulation as I, along with many people I know, grapple with how to live our lives while finding the best ways to deal with the demons who now dominate our institutions, as well as some of those who voted for them (the ones who are prone to violence).
He mentioned another source of tension, implied in his poem: the relatively rapid ageing of the body vs. the much slower ageing of the spirit. That may be why so many older adults say they feel young. Our spirits are indeed much younger than our hearing loss and arthritic joints may indicate.
Falk is also a winner of the genetic lottery, what with his robust health, athletic prowess, and stunning intelligence. While most of us may never be able to match these qualities or receive these gifts of god, we can find hope and inspiration in his story.
The Inglorious Present
Falk said he could never have imagined that Netanyahu’s speech before the US Congress would receive 59 standing ovations. Nor could he have imagined the second coming of Trump. Trump and Musk represent “exploitative capitalism, leading to a personalist politics of dictatorship,” he said. With the help of social media, “they have also stoked a politics of resentment” among a large swath of an alienated electorate.
It disturbs him to ponder our country’s low tolerance for self-scrutiny and claims of American innocence and exceptionalism.
Not that Biden gets a free pass. Falk finds the outgoing president’s remarks about America’s supposed greatness banal and unfounded.
His Life Goes on in Endless Song
Not literally, of course, but gloriously.
Mainly, Falk enjoys working. Work—perhaps better framed as purposeful activity—has helped him live better and longer, he believes.
His younger friends and former students have kept him involved in the kinds of projects he has always favored. He’s president of The Gaza Tribunal—“a people’s tribunal to document what has been happening for more than 15 months and galvanize global efforts to stop the genocide.”
He’s also one of three conveners of Saving Humanity and Planet Earth. (Did I mention that he’s a big-picture, utopian thinker?)
And he co-edited a book, just published, titled Genocide in Gaza: Voices of Global Conscience, which includes essays by a distinguished group of contributors.
How is it possible for a 94-year-old to take on so many projects? How can he claim to be busier than at any other time in his life? And how has he managed to avoid the physical and mental setbacks that plague so many people 10, 20, and sometimes even 30 years younger than he is? There’s something mysterious at work here, and one day, biologists will be able to unveil at least some of its underlying aspects.
In the meantime, I’m delighted to have connected with him, back in the early 1990s and this past December. Thanks to his example, I’ll never downplay this phase of my life again.
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Global Justice in the 21st Century 
Way to go, Richard! Such an excellent report from the Interview.
Richard,
I loved your essay and your confrontation with yourself- or rather with your age-less self.
It may not confirm your view, but in my mind and in my life, you are perpetually unchanging.
Somehow the numbers don’t really mean anything – they remain a required identification, but what they identify has nothing to do with who you are.
So please remain as ou wish to be- only be present so that I can enjoy your presence!!
irene
>
You give me hope and the strength to persevere no matter how dark the skies. Wishing you mundane joys and transcendent moments
as 2025 unfolds, and the country tested by the second coming of Trump.
To Be Young Is to Be Healthy ForeverHEALTH, 31 May 2021By Surya Nath Prasad –TRANSCEND Media Servicehttps://www.transcend.org/tms/2021/05/to-be-young-is-to-be-healthy-foreve
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