Princeton University Must Fire Professor Richard Falk

It is time for Princeton University to fire Richard Falk, a Professor Emeritus of International Law & Politics who recently asserted that America is to blame for the terrorist attacks in Boston. Falk is also an United Nations Human Rights Council Special Ambassador. One might expect objectivity and more delicate diplomacy from him, particularly due to his representation of the Ivy League School.

Previously Falk wrote in his blog that “awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations” fuel suspicions that President George W. Bush and the United States staged the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Is a man who absurdly claims that the 9/11 World Trade Center attack was an American government conspiracy, someone who Princeton believes should be educating American youth?

Academic freedoms extend to teaching opposing and even controversial points of views, not fabricated theories intended to encourage tyranny and treason. In fact, Susan Rice, the American representative to the UN demanded that Falk be removed from his role as United Nations special Ambassador and said “In my view, Mr. [Richard] Falk’s latest commentary is so noxious that it should finally be plain to all that he should no longer continue in his position on behalf of the U.N.”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Falk stating “I want to tell you, clearly and directly. I condemn this sort of inflammatory rhetoric. It is preposterous — an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in that tragic terrorist attack.” Princeton University should, and indeed MUST have higher standards.

This week’s article in The Foreign Policy Journal entitled “A Commentary on The Marathon Murders” blames America and Israel for the Boston terrorist attacks. Falk called the victims of the Boston Bombings “canaries” and said "…the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks, and these may yet happen.”

And much as Israel is often blamed after terrorist attacks, Falk wrote “The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world.” And "…America’s military prowess and the abiding confidence of its leaders in hard power diplomacy makes the United States a menace to the world and to itself.”

Falk is no stranger to Anti-Semitism. He has written of a “Palestinian Holocaust”, and none other than Alan Dershowitz retorted, “Comparison between the Holocaust and Israel is simply beyond the pale of reasoned discourse. It belongs to that genre of hate speech that includes claims that blacks are racially inferior, that women enjoy being raped and that all gays are pedophiles.”

It is disgraceful that many of America’s elite universities are awash with Anti-American and Anti-Israel propaganda, and Princeton University must immediately fire Richard Falk for blaming America for the terrorist attacks in Boston. There are clearly certain lines of acceptability which cannot be passed.

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