Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, identified as "Black or African American" on his 2009 Columbia University application even though he now says he does not consider himself Black, The New York Times reported Thursday.
According to The Times, the internal data came from a leaked database of past Columbia applications which was part of a recent hack targeting the Ivy League school.
Mamdani, then a high school senior, also checked "Asian" and reportedly wrote in "Ugandan" in the space for additional background. He was ultimately not accepted to Columbia even though his father is a professor at the elite school.
Now 33, Mamdani told The Times he identifies as "an American who was born in Africa," and said checking multiple boxes was an effort to reflect his "complex background," not to gain an edge in the competitive admissions process.
But at the time, Columbia, like many elite universities, used race-conscious admissions, a system the Supreme Court struck down in 2023.
"Even though these boxes are constraining," Mamdani said, "I wanted my college application to reflect who I was."
Mamdani told The Times that aside from those college forms, he doesn’t recall ever identifying as Black or African American.
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His parents are both of Indian descent. His father, Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, has lived in East Africa for generations, but Mamdani said there had been no intermarriage in the family with native African groups.Mamdani has leaned into his South Asian and Muslim identity on the campaign trail. During a June speech at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, he also stressed his African roots: "I was born in Kampala, Uganda... I was given my middle name, Kwame, by my father, who named me after the first Prime Minister of Ghana."
President Donald Trump brought up Mamdani at a rally Wednesday, saying if he interferes with immigration laws "we’ll have to arrest him."
"Look, we don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over them very carefully on behalf of the nation," Trump added.
Mamdani, a self-identified democratic socialist, dismissed the remarks, accusing Trump of "an attempt to send a message to every New Yorker who refuses to hide in the shadows: if you speak up, they will come for you. We will not accept this intimidation."
