Colin Powell and City College: Warring Legacies
Words & Illustrations Chosen by Luca GoldMansour
Edited by Kazi Maisha and Fabliha Hussain
Hardly a moment after the news of General Colin Powell’s death spread, memorials began pouring out for the general whose impact on military and foreign policy as the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor, and Secretary of State cannot be exaggerated. The son of Jamaican immigrants, Powell grew up in Harlem and the Bronx before attending City College. At CCNY, Powell joined the ROTC program, one of the largest in the United States at the time. From there, Powell climbed the ranks of the United States military, earning accolades and appointments unprecedented for a black soldier. General Powell’s record earned him enormous respect within national politics and among many Americans. In the 1990s, Powell contemplated a run for the Presidency, being actively recruited by both Republicans and Democrats. On Friday, November 5th, a funeral was held for General Powell at the Washington National Cathedral with attendance from President Biden and former Presidents Obama and Bush Jr.
Once established as a military leader and national figure, Powell returned to City College to begin the philanthropic work that many at City College know him for. Andrew Rich, dean of the Colin Powell School at City College, paid tribute to the general in an email to the school: “He went on to greatness, but he never left this College behind. The Colin Powell School reflects his vision, his passion, and his never-ending belief in the essential nature of this place.” But if Powell’s rags to riches origin story symbolizes CUNY’s legacy of providing social mobility for New York’s immigrant poor and working-class, then his disastrous and oppressive legacy throughout the Middle East, Latin America, and South-East Asia must represent the forty-year assault on CUNY’s status as ‘The People’s University.’
Powell’s willingness to implement the United States’ violent agenda began in Vietnam, where, as a major, Powell was appointed to head an investigation into a U.S. soldier’s grievance regarding the My Lai massacre. The massacre took place when two separate companies in the U.S. Army murdered between 347 and 504 unarmed people, including women and children. Despite the extensive brutality of the massacre, Major Powell’s investigation failed to conclude that the incident evidenced widespread unnecessary killings. Instead, Powell’s investigation stated that, “In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.”
Colin Powell served as Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor from 1987 to 1989. Photo: Public Domain
Before being appointed National Security Advisor during the Reagan administration, Powell served as assistant to Reagan’s Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who, enlisting Powell’s help, needed to drum up fear and hostility among the American people after a demoralizing defeat in Vietnam. Consciously and cynically selling the public on a new, multiracial vision of American interventionism, Weinberger led Reagan’s dirty wars in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Here, Powell began to make his most notable impact on Defense Department policy, where he and his boss formulated the Powell-Weinberger Doctrine. The doctrine stresses that if diplomatic efforts have reached their limits, the military should use “overwhelming force,” restricted by clear objectives and exit strategies to maintain vital national security interests.
When Bush Sr. was elected President, Powell was promoted to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he got his first chance to test the doctrine for himself, spearheading the U.S. invasion of Panama. Clarence Lusane, a professor at Howard University, who visited Panama shortly after the invasion, recently recounted what he saw on Democracy Now!: “There were mass graves. There was the total destruction of neighborhoods. They bombed — these were poor neighborhoods, we should be clear. So, there were wealthy neighborhoods that were surgically missed, while they bombed neighborhoods that had not only been active, but had been — you know, very much embodied people who live there. So, it was a horrific invasion. And Powell said nothing about it.” “And these were Afro-Panamanians.” Despite appeals to diplomacy, clear objectives, and exit strategies, Powell’s doctrine is one extreme deadly force meant to advance America’s imperial aims.
Powell proved in the following years that he would violate his own doctrine if ordered to do so. No proof was more infamous than when he sold lies about Sadam Hussein’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction to the American public and the international community, drumming up support for the invasion of Iraq, a quagmire of a conflict for which the United States did not have attainable objectives nor a clear exit strategy. Here lies the heart of Colin Powell’s lasting legacy in the world. The incalculably horrendous endeavor, which, by the lowest estimates, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, was enabled by the very man whose name lines the halls of City College. No words can do justice to the pure devastation, which the United States wrought on the people of Iraq, and no convoluted excuses concerning CIA director David Tenet’s last-minute introduction of false intelligence to Powell, nor apologies well past due, would stand up to the Geneva Conventions or the International Criminal Court. Colin Powell, reservations and all, went in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations and lent his credibility to the illegal invasion of Iraq. He never paid the price for it. He lived out the rest of his days peacefully, earning praise for his philanthropy. If only the people of Iraq were so lucky.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
As Powell took on more personal responsibility in America’s ever growing military endeavors and expenditures, victimizing much of the developing world, so too did CUNY fall victim, to indebtedness and austerity. In 1975, when the Ford administration infamously told New York to “drop dead,” in the words of the Daily News, and when a group of bankers led by Walter Wriston from Citicorp refused to finance the city to pay off the interest on its debts, the New York Emergency Financial Control Board took direct control of municipal spending and, among other structural adjustments, imposed tuition on the previously free CUNY. Decades later, while the nation spends almost half of its discretionary budget on the military, CUNY is still subject to a debt crisis, which has forced its colleges to cut corners, raise tuition, and seek out private investment. For decades, Powell represented the bipartisan consensus of militarism and ever-increasing military budgets. The connection between inflated military budgets and decreased social spending should be obvious, but there is empirical evidence for those who need it. CUNY should not have to rely on the generosity of its alumni network to make up for a lack of state and federal spending, especially if those alumni had a hand in the United States’ prioritization of imperial conflict over social spending.
In her recent article “American Universities Do Not Care About Social Justice,” Colin Powell School alumni Hebh Jamal blamed the imposition of market logic in higher education for her contradictory experience at CCNY. “How is it that I learned about America’s military industrial complex only to go downstairs and see ROTC recruitment tables? Or learned about the invasion of Vietnam and Iraq, only to see the president advertising events with Colin Powell and Henry Kissinger?” She queried. Asked in an interview to elaborate on the connection between CUNY’s privatization and its embrace of war criminals, Jamal responded, “It’s a business. In order to get more money we have to appeal to powerful people. Isn’t that sad? When CCNY says things like ‘diversity is good’ and ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and ‘all immigrants are welcome here,’ and then boasts about ROTC, or police recruitment, or joining the military, it has me scratching my head. The same military or police that these struggles are advocating against? It makes no sense.”
I myself am a major in Political Science in the Colin Powell school. I can vouch that my education has not been censored, but it is dismaying to see the college implement measures, which are antithetical to social justice initiatives. Jamal agreed by saying, “We both went to the Colin Powell school. We received an education in part due to his philanthropy and I have to be honest I don’t feel very good about that. At the same time, I believe we were both in an educational environment that forced us to be critical, and that’s what I’m doing now. I’m being critical of not just Powell but our institutions that are pushing us into thinking this type of ‘civil service’ is okay. It’s not okay. There’s nothing okay about being a key actor in a war that killed millions of Muslims, and manufactured the war on terror at home that harmed people who look like me. What kind of civil service is that?”
As a Muslim, Jamal feels a particular sensitivity to the praise Powell received upon his death and reports that many Muslim students at City College feel the same way. I, too, feel the same way as an Arab American and as someone who has personally felt the ground tremble beneath me as bombs rained from the sky. “When CCNY puts out statements about how he was our leader and hero, it makes me think ‘wow, they don’t give a shit about Muslims at all huh?’ Because I promise you, many Muslims who heard that Powell died did not think, ‘what an inspiration.’ We immediately remembered how his actions impacted our lives every day. I think Colin Powell’s legacy should not be separated from the Iraq War. In fact, I’m not sure how you could think about the manufacturers of war without thinking of Powell. He was a key player in deceiving the American people into a war under false pretenses. There were no weapons of mass destruction, yet there was Powell fully aware of this, convincing us this was a ‘good war.’ One in five Iraqis had someone in their family die because of the invasion of Iraq. I cannot think of Powell’s legacy, without thinking of the millions in Iraq dead. Powell died without facing his crimes, and I think that’s the saddest part of his death,” said Jamal.
When asked, “What should be done to give CCNY back to the people it is meant to serve?”, Jamal replied, “A lot, but at the bare minimum let’s not entertain war criminals.” Jamal is not the only one willing to go on record about their discomfort with the way Colin Powell has been memorialized at City College. Teresa Mettela, a current student at CCNY believes that although Colin Powell broke many glass ceilings during his lifetime, the school must acknowledge his negative impacts as well. “Colin Powell has notable achievements that should be recognized with an understanding of historical context. Although he claimed many ‘firsts’ in this country, his accolades should not be praised without the caveat that his legacy was not spotless. It is a little ironic and very passive of this school to accept his name based on his establishment of JROTC on campus. CCNY is one of the most diverse CUNYs in NYC and I don't think Colin Powell accurately reflects the ideals of our student body. His involvement in the Bush administration and the prolonged negative effects that that has caused for POC in NYC is incredibly significant. I do not honor Colin Powell and I don't think he should be the face of our school. CCNY can nod to Colin Powell's involvement and contribution to the school without holding him on a pedestal that minimizes the hurt he has caused a great subset of the student body.”
Aya Abdul, also a current student at City College, stated, “I understand wanting to honor the impact of philanthropy and the accomplishments of POC, but doing x, y, or z good things doesn't cancel out the pain that a person causes others. It’s a harsh truth, but Colin Powell is undeniably a war criminal, who knowingly caused and ignored suffering, disability, and death to countless innocent people. Donating money you already have too much of does not make up for that. Re-writing history to make him a more palatable figure for our school’s admiration feels disrespectful and insanely hypocritical coming from people who claim school values to be those of kindness, diversity, acceptance, etc.”
In a Powell School conversation with the general, moderated by his daughter Linda just weeks before his death, a visibly moved Powell remarked on how proud he was of the students of City College. This institution is beloved because it promises to improve the lives of all who step foot within the grand halls of Shepard or the oddly segmented corridors of the NAC. City College, which, by some accounts ranks first in the nation for value, has and will continue to serve as a beacon for social uplift for New York’s most marginalized. It certainly did this for General Powell. But Powell’s real legacy is at war with CUNY’s. His philanthropic giving came in a context of decreased social spending, which he had a larger hand than most in creating. What’s more, the choices that Powell made after the halls of Shepard sprung him into the highest corridors of power brought complete and utter devastation to the very people City College is meant to serve: “the wretched of the earth.” Colin Powell’s redeeming qualities do not make up for his misdeeds. Students impacted by his legacy should not have to be confronted by it as they train to be the change-makers of tomorrow. To truly restore CUNY’s legacy as “The People’s University,” CUNY must be fully funded by the state, tuition must once again be free for all, and we must not embrace war criminals.
