Curated playlist
City College of New York alumni
- Hans L. TrefousseHans Trefousse once argued for eleven hours to make a Nazi commander surrender in Leipzig.
- Stanley KubrickAfter copycat crimes and death threats, Stanley Kubrick pulled A Clockwork Orange from release in the United Kingdom.
- Colin PowellOn the 5th of February 2003, Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council. He told the council: "there can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." The…
- Leon FestingerPsychologist Leon Festinger joined a doomsday group to see what believers do when the prophecy fails.
- Henry KissingerHenry Kissinger made a secret trip to China in July 1971. It helped end 23 years of diplomatic isolation.
- David LandesBefore he taught at Harvard, David Landes decoded Japanese messages.
- William Barrett (philosopher)William Barrett started college at City College of New York at fifteen. He later wrote philosophy for general readers.
- Upton SinclairUpton Sinclair aimed his novel The Jungle at the public's heart and hit its stomach instead. Meat sales fell by half.
- Jonas SalkJonas Salk, the American virologist who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines, was once asked a simple question by the television personality Ed Murrow: who owns the patent? Salk answered, "Well, the people I would say.…
- Stanley WolpertStanley Wolpert quit engineering after landing in Bombay two weeks after Gandhi was shot.
- Assata ShakurCuba's Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that a woman died in Havana on the 25th of September 2025. She was 78 years old. For 45 of her years, she had been a fugitive from the United States. American authorities knew her as Joanne…
- Fergus BordewichFergus Bordewich toured Native American reservations as a boy with his mother. She led a Native American advocacy group.
- Lewis MumfordLewis Mumford argued the clock, not the steam engine, drove the Industrial Revolution. He never finished college.
- Bernard BaruchBernard Baruch refused a 1929 pool to prop up the falling stock market. He had already moved into bonds, cash and gold.
- Daniel Patrick MoynihanDaniel Patrick Moynihan once shined shoes in Penn Station, which now has a train hall named for him.