Hamilton, NY — Colgate University Peace Studies film series will show the BBC documentary ‘The Trials of Henry Kissinger’ on Thursday, March 6 at 7 p.m. in Golden Auditorium, Little Hall. Professor of History Andrew Rotter will introduce the film and lead an optional discussion afterward asking whether the former National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, Nobel Laureate, and the most famous diplomat of his generation was a peacemaker or a war criminal.
This film explores the possible reasons for the lawsuit currently under way in Washington D.C., in which Kissinger is charged with having authorized the assassination of a Chilean general in 1970, with having engineered the secret bombing of Cambodia without the knowledge of the U.S. Congress in 1969, and with having participated in the sale of U.S. weapons to Indonesian President Suharto for use in the massacre of one-third of the population of East Timor in 1975.
These and several other recent charges have cast a haunting shadow on the reputation of a man long seen as the most famous diplomat of his age, the Nobel Laureate who secured peace in Vietnam, who secretly opened relations between the U.S. and China, and who now, more than a quarter-century out of office, remains a central player on the world stage, only recently voted the number one public intellectual of the 20th century.
Featuring previously unseen footage, newly declassified U.S. government documents, and revealing interviews with key insiders to the events in question, ‘The Trials of Henry Kissinger’ examines the charges facing him, shedding light on a career long shrouded in secrecy. In part, it explores how a young boy who fled Nazi Germany grew up to become one of the most powerful men in U.S. history and now, in the autumn of his life, one of its most disputed figures.
It is at once an unauthorized biography and a look at the sparks that fly when an honored American statesman is charged with war crimes. The film tackles the question of whether principals of international law applied by Americans to their enemies are applicable to Americans, or whether these laws are only written for the losers of conflicts.
Jonathan Foreman at the New York Post calls ‘The Trials of Henry Kissinger,’ ‘Enjoyably fast-moving, hard-hitting… [Kissinger’s] foreign policies were marked by indifference to human life… inspired by pessimistic cynicism, a love of deception, a lust for power and profound contempt for democracy,’ while Jack Mathews of The Daily News calls it ‘A damning new documentary [that] parades credible high-level witnesses [and] indicts Kissinger on at least four counts of mass murder, providing convincing evidence.’
Founded in 1819, Colgate University is a highly selective, residential, liberal arts college enrolling nearly 2,750 undergraduates. Situated on a rolling 515-acre campus in central New York State, Colgate University attracts motivated students with diverse backgrounds, interests and talents.
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