Powell To Make Major Donation To CUNY Tomorrow
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A former secretary of state, Colin Powell, will make a major donation to the public policy program named after him at the City University of New York tomorrow.The announcement will coincide with the formation of an advisory board made up of “distinguished Americans” for the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies, according to a statement by CUNY.
A member of City College’s class of 1958, Mr. Powell has served on the center’s advisory board. He recently said he will work as a visiting professor at the center and be “deeply involved” in its ongoing development. The center was established in 1997 in northern Harlem.
A member of CUNY’s board of trustees, Jeffery Wiesenfeld, said Mr. Powell’s involvement in the university was far from ordinary.
“He has had a very big personal involvement in helping to give shape to this center since it began,” Mr. Wiesenfeld said. “It wasn’t just his name thrown in. He was personally involved in this.”
The trustee said he did not know how much Mr. Powell would give to the center. Unlike those who typically make large donations to university programs or buildings, Mr. Powell spent most of his career in public service. Since leaving his post as secretary of state after President Bush’s first term, Mr. Powell has become involved in several private sector ventures and is a regular on the highly lucrative public speaking circuit.
“Traditional naming opportunities involve big gifts to the university as a whole,” Mr. Wiesenfeld said. “This is akin in some ways to naming a building after a governor, senator, or president. He is a secretary of state, and an African American who attended City College. Those are pretty significant characteristics.”
Born to Jamaican parents in Harlem and raised in the South Bronx, Mr. Powell attended city public schools and studied geology at City College of New York,where tuition at the time was about $10 a year.His military career began in the ROTC program at the college, and Mr. Powell eventually rose to the rank of four-star general and was named the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Mr. Powell will likely be pressed tomorrow on his recent statements that as secretary of state he had pushed to send more troops to Iraq.
Starting this year, the Powell Center will begin a five-year project of organizing the private papers of a U.N. secretary-general, Kofi Annan, according to the center’s Web site.
