Zohran Mamdani, the New York City Democratic socialist mayoral nominee and current New York State assemblyman, identified himself as both “Black or African American” and “Asian” on college application forms, according to admissions data leaked from Columbia University.
The disclosure follows a major hack that exposed millions of student records and reignited debate over race-based college admissions practices.
The information, obtained by The New York Times, shows Mamdani selected multiple racial categories when applying to Columbia University in 2009.
His father, Professor Mahmood Mamdani, has served on the faculty at Columbia for years and continues to teach there.
Mamdani was not accepted to the Ivy League institution and later attended Bowdoin College in Maine.
Now 33, Mamdani told the Times that he chose those identity markers due to the limited options available on college application forms.
“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” he said.
He added that where possible, he also wrote in “Ugandan.”
“The identity boxes are constraining,” he said.
Mamdani was born in Uganda to Indian parents and came to the United States at the age of 7, as previously reported by Resist the Mainstream.
He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018.
Though his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, has publicly described him as “a total desi”—a common term for South Asians—Mamdani told the Times that he now sees himself as “an American who was born in Africa.”
In a 2013 interview, Nair described her son’s upbringing and identity.
“He is very much us,” she said, according to The Post Millennial. “He is not an Uhmericcan (American) at all.”
“He was born in Uganda, raised between India and America. He thinks of himself as a Ugandan and as an Indian.”
Mamdani told the Times that his college applications were the only time he ever identified as “Black or African American.”
He said his intent was not to gain preferential treatment during the admissions process, but rather to represent what he viewed as a complex racial and ethnic identity.
The leak was part of a broader digital probe into whether Columbia University continued to use race in its admissions process, as RTM highlighted earlier.
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling has barred the use of racial classifications in college admissions, deeming the practice unconstitutional.
While in high school at Bronx Science, Mamdani ran unsuccessfully for student government on a platform that included free juice in the cafeteria, according to TPM.
He later entered politics, representing Queens in the New York State Assembly and aligning himself with far-left identitarian causes.
Mamdani has frequently invoked his South Asian identity throughout his political campaigns and has been vocal in his support for Palestinians in the Middle East.
He has cited the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as one of the reasons he chose to enter public life.
Mamdani is running against incumbent New York City Mayor Eric Adams in the upcoming election. Adams, a Democrat turned independent, is a former NYPD officer and lifelong Brooklyn resident.
The leaked records have sparked renewed discussion about identity politics, college admissions and the boundaries of racial self-identification in political and academic institutions.
The post Zohran Mamdani, NYC Mayoral Candidate, Listed Himself as ‘Black’ and ‘Asian’ on College Applications, Data Leak Shows appeared first on Resist the Mainstream.
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Author: Gloriel Howard
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