New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani identified as both Asian and African American on his 2009 Columbia University application, the New York Times reported Thursday, prompting anger and ridicule from many as news spread Friday.
Some accused him of being a fraud while others suggested he was trying to abuse affirmative action.
The Democratic socialist and Muslim immigrant, when he was a senior in high school, identified as “Asian” and also “Black or African American” on his college application, according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University shared with the Times.
This stands in contrast to his political platform, in which he has made “his identity as a Muslim immigrant of South Asian descent a key part of his appeal,” the Times reported, adding:
Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani, 33, said he did not consider himself either Black or African American, but rather “an American who was born in Africa.” He said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process. (He was not accepted at Columbia.)
Mamdani’s father is an anthropology professor at Columbia. Zohran Mamdani is a member of the New York State Assembly. News of the application prompted anger and ridicule from his political opponents and some in the black community.
Gerard Kassar, chairman of the state Conservative Party, accused Mamdani of exploiting affirmative action, the New York Post reported.
“Mamdani has got a lot of explaining to do. This is part of the fraud he has perpetrated on New Yorkers throughout the primary campaign,” Kassar told the Post. “His focus was to get admitted to Columbia on affirmative action. It just didn’t work out. He was trying to get into a school by lying about his racial background. Race is a scientific specification, not the country you’re from,” Kassar said.
The Post also interviewed several black residents in the Bronx, Harlem and other areas who voiced frustration: “We don’t need a lying mayor or a mayor that says he’s black so he can get black people to vote for him,” one resident told the news outlet.
Zohran Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application https://t.co/fShJoQcbUS pic.twitter.com/DgVZpOjlte
— Eric Adams (@ericadamsfornyc) July 4, 2025
The current mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, joined the pile on, posting on X on July 3 a link to the New York Times report along with a cartoon mocking the situation.
But the New York Times “could find no speeches or interviews in which Mr. Mamdani referred to himself as Black or African American.”
MORE: The problem with affirmative action in one picture
IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Zohran Mamdani gives an interview to NPR / NPR YouTube screenshot