Zohran Mamdani is caught in controversy after a report by the New York Times said that he identified himself as both “Asian” and “African-American/Black” in his application for admission to Columbia University in 2009.
A Democratic nominee for the post of mayor in New York, Mamdani was born in Uganda, and his parents are Indian.
Commenting on the issue, he said that the college applications had no option for candidates with both Indian and Ugandan ethnicity.
A new controversy surfaces?
Mamdani, whose father is a Columbia professor, has since clarified that he never claimed to be African American outside of college applications.
He further added that he is an African-born “American” and is not Black.
However, this new controversy does not end here. A leaked SAT score shows that Mamdani scored 2140 out of a maximum of 2400.
Interestingly, Columbia University had a median range of 2110 to 2300 for students who got admission that particular year.
The current mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has said Columbia must reveal the application data of Mamdani.
Calling the incident “deeply offensive,” he said that Mamdani’s admission was an “insult.”
How Does This Affect Mamdani’s Chances?
Supporting Adams for his statement, former Governor Andrew Cuomo called for an investigation and accused Mamdani of faking his identity to capitalize on the admission process, despite the rejection of his application.
The leaked information, derived from a hack of Columbia’s systems, has fueled public outrage, with some Black voters calling Mamdani a “fraud.
But amid a spate of criticism, Mamdani found support from his followers, who claimed that the issue is “overblown.”
They added that he was a high school senior navigating through rigid racial categories.
The New York Times too bore the brunt of criticism for going ahead with the story.
Mamdani’s supporters cast doubt over the newsworthiness of the story and questioned the source, who reportedly is a white supremacist hacker.
However, the newspaper said it had verified the information independently.
The scandal now threatens to derail Mamdani’s campaigns as a South Asian Muslim nominee and his insistence on focusing on economic issues.
