There is apparently something about a Terrorist attack that impels Liberal Intellectual Academics to exercise their moral superiority. After 9/11/2001 Ward Churchill opined that the people who had died in the Twin Towers were “Little Eichmanns”. This produced enough sustained outrage that Churchill’s academic record was closely examined and he was ultimately terminated for academic behavior that would have disgraced a Big Ten quarterback, much less a Professor. One might think that such a high profile object lesson would discourage similar impolitic outbursts from academia in future. But one would be wrong.
Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton, and panjandrum of the U.N. Human Rights Council, is on record as thinking that the people who died in the Boston Marathon attacks “deserved it”. I am glad that my late Father, a Princeton alumnus and an Academic (though not Liberal), passed before this fool could come to his attention; I believe that dying of apoplexy is both painful and embarrassing.
In addition to his ‘thoughts’ on the Boston attack, Falk is a public embarrassment regarding 9/11. He is what is known as a “Truther”; that is to say, he believes that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated by the Bush administration. For absolute imbecility, the “Truther” narratives are on a par with the people who think FDR orchestrated Pearl Harbor, or that the military is hiding a fully functioning flying saucer in Area 51. I suppose that it is theoretically possible to assemble a “Truther” narrative that doesn’t fall apart the minute it is exposed to critical thought, but I have never read one.
It is, of course, too much to hope that Princeton will terminate Falk over his remarks. Princeton is a hotbed of Liberal Academic ‘Thought’, and is probably proud of the pillock. But I think it might pay somebody with a distaste for Academic Idiocy to examine Falk’s scholarship and academic behavior. There may be nothing to find. Noam Chomsky’s scholarship is said to be above reproach, though how his expertise in Linguistics qualifies him to comment on Politics is beyond me. But Falk’s support of the “Truther” narrative shows that he is quite prepared to manufacture ‘facts’ to support his politics. It might pay to see if he has done so elsewhere. Falk may be above reproach, but Ward Churchill certainly wasn’t.
Let somebody shake Falk’s scholastic tree, and see what falls out.
Views of a Crank 