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Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, father of NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, criticizes university over antisemitism and protests
Mahmood Mamdani, a longtime Columbia University professor and father of New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, sharply criticized the school’s leadership and its creation of a task force to address allegations of antisemitism in a recent interview with progressive writer Peter Beinart.
Students who hold pro-Palestinian views are “terrified” and “terrorized,” Mamdani said in a Zoom call for Beinart’s Substack on Friday. “The smallest move they make, they are targeted, they are expelled, they are suspended and they are warned. Which means we have less and less of an idea of what they think and how they might respond to their situation.” Beinart is editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, which co-hosted the webinar.
Mamdani, who has been on medical leave since September, refused to discuss his son’s views or how his son was raised, a condition for participating in the conversation, he said. Though he briefly acknowledged the election’s broader significance as an immigrant was elected to the city’s highest office.
Mamdani, who has been critical of Israel and teaches about the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, said the school’s leadership is in a “vindictive mood” since it entered a settlement with the Trump administration and created a task force to address complaints of harassment and allegations of antisemitism by Jews on campus.
Pro-Palestinian protests intensified in April 2024 after a House hearing highlighted antisemitism at Columbia and the school’s police crackdown on students.
Mamdani, a faculty senator at Columbia, said he was planning to suggest at a Senate meeting convened on Friday a “healing process” through an alternative, broad-based commission on discrimination, rather than separate initiatives for specific groups to address concerns about Islamophobia or other forms of discrimination.
“Can’t you resist turning anti-discrimination into a device to set up one group of students against another group of students, like a divide and rule policy under British colonialism that I grew up under,” he said about the university’s approach.
“I think these people have lost a sense of what it means to govern,” Mamdani said, pointing to the Board of Trustees’ struggle to find a new president.
Mamdani said that Minouche Shafik, a former World Bank official who resigned in the summer of 2024 after being accused of exacerbating the turmoil on campus, was ill-equipped to handle the student encampments that erupted shortly after she took on the top post. “To her credit, when she realized that, she resigned,” Mamdani said.
Columbia has struggled to install permanent leadership since Shafik’s departure. Katrina Armstrong, a medical school executive, stepped down from her interim post in March after the university agreed to a list of demands from the White House. Claire Shipman is the current acting president. The Columbia Spectator, the student newspaper, reported that this is the longest the university has gone without a permanent president since 1948.
Mamdani on the U.S.-Israel relationship
In Friday’s interview, Mamdani also spoke about comparative scholarship on settler colonialism, including his work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and South Africa. He said that U.S. policy toward Israel differs fundamentally from its past approach to apartheid South Africa because Israel is an “internal issue” in American politics. “To face up to Israel will require some significant changes inside the U.S.,” Mamdani said.
The Mayor-elect is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, and faced fierce backlash for refusing to outright condemn the use of the slogan “‘globalize the intifada”’ at some of the protests for Palestinian rights and against the war in Gaza. His victory in the Democratic primary was attributed to a surge among young and new voters who agreed with his views. In the general election, Mamdani swept progressive Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan on his way to a citywide win. He recently met with Jewish leaders to discuss his positions.
Mamdani did talk about his son’s election and stance on Israel in an interview with Democracy Now. “His refusal to budge, to soften his critique of the state of Israel, even in the face of millions of dollars being pumped against him, even in the face of big personalities, including the president of the United States, coming out against him, his refusal to change his stand, convinced the electorate that this was a man of principle,” Mamdani said.
In the webinar with Beinart, the senior Mamdani said that meaningful political change will come from younger Jews and Palestinians in the diaspora rather than from within Israel itself. “Jewish children in New York City have become increasingly skeptical of the direction in which Israel has been moving,” he said, “and increasingly disillusioned with both the moral and the political efficacy of that route and are increasingly open to exploring an alternative.”
This week, Mamdani released his 12th book, Slow Poison, a political history of Uganda under the dictators Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni. His next book is about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The post Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani, father of NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, criticizes university over antisemitism and protests appeared first on The Forward.
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Some Tankers Cross Strait of Hormuz Before Shots Fired, Ship-Tracking Data Shows
A satellite image shows the ship movement at the Strait of Hormuz on April 17, 2026, in Space. EUROPEAN UNION/COPERNICUS SENTINEL-2/Handout via REUTERS
More than a dozen tankers, including three sanctioned vessels, passed through the Strait of Hormuz after a 50-day blockade was lifted on Friday, shipping data showed, before Iran reimposed restrictions on Saturday and fired at some vessels.
Reopening the strait is key for Gulf producers to resume full oil and gas supplies to the world, and end what the International Energy Agency has called the worst-ever supply disruption.
US President Donald Trump said on Friday Iran had agreed to open the strait, while Iranian officials said they wanted the US to fully lift its blockade of Iranian tankers.
Western shipping companies cautiously welcomed the announcements but said more clarity was needed, including on the presence of sea mines, before their vessels could transit.
IRAN RESUMES RESTRICTIONS
The ships that passed through the strait on Friday and Saturday via Iranian waters south of Larak island were mainly older, non-Western-owned vessels and included four sanctioned ships, according to ship-tracking data.
Iran arranged passage for a limited number of oil tankers and commercial ships following prior agreements in negotiations, a spokesperson for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said.
Other ships have been seen approaching the strait and turning back as Iran said it would maintain strict controls as long as the US continues its blockade of Iranian ports.
The UK Navy reported on Saturday that Iranian gunboats fired at some ships attempting to cross the strait.
Some merchant vessels received radio messages from Iran’s navy saying the strait was shut again and that no ships were allowed to pass, shipping sources said on Saturday.
Ship-tracking data showed five vessels loaded with liquefied natural gas from Ras Laffan in Qatar approaching the strait on Saturday morning.
No LNG cargoes have transited the waterway since the US-Israeli war with Iran began on February 28.
Hundreds of ships have been stuck in the Gulf since the conflict started and Tehran closed the strait, forcing Gulf oil and gas producers to sharply cut production.
Top producers such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq and Kuwait say they need steady tanker flows and unrestricted passage through the strait to resume normal export operations.
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Trump Greenlights Russian Oil to Ease Strain on Global Markets After War with Iran
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in Washington, DC, US, March 27, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
i24 News – The Trump administration has authorized a 30-day emergency waiver allowing the maritime purchase of Russian oil, reversing a hardline stance in an effort to stabilize skyrocketing global energy prices.
The Treasury Department announced Friday that the license for crude and petroleum products will remain in effect until May 16, 2026, responding to intense pressure from international partners struggling with the fallout of the war with Iran.
This policy pivot comes as a surprise after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested earlier this week that no further exemptions would be granted:
“As negotiations with Iran accelerate, the administration seeks to ensure oil availability for those who need it most. We must prevent a total price collapse for consumers while the geopolitical situation remains volatile.”
Ensuring global oil availability is paramount for the US as over 80 energy facilities in the Middle East have been damaged by recent war with Iran. With the November midterm elections approaching, record-high fuel prices at the pump remain a primary vulnerability for the Republican party. By allowing Russian oil back into the maritime flow, the administration hopes to neutralize “pain at the pump” before voters head to the polls.
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UK: Islamist Group Claims to Attack Israeli Embassy with ‘Drones Carrying Radioactive, Carcinogenic Materials’
A UK man has been arrested for allegedly threatening a group of Jews while wielding an ax on Rosh Hashanah. Photo: Tony Webster / Wikimedia Commons.
i24 News – British police officers in protective clothing were seen investigating a “security incident” near the Israeli embassy in London on Friday, after a jihadist group put out a video showing it launching two drones allegedly carrying radioactive and carcinogenic materials toward the embassy.
“There is an increased police presence in Kensington Gardens and officers are assessing a number of discarded items. As a precaution, some of the officers who have been deployed are wearing protective clothing. We recognize this may concern local residents and the wider public,” police said in a statement.
“Counter Terrorism Policing London are aware of a video shared online overnight in which a group claims to have targeted the nearby embassy of Israel with drones carrying dangerous substances,” the statement further read. “While we can confirm that the embassy has not been attacked, we are carrying out urgent inquiries to determine the authenticity of the video and to identify any potential link between it and the items discarded in Kensington Gardens.”
The incident comes amid a steep hike in antisemitic attacks in Britain targeting Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions.
The group that released the video was identified as Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, a shadowy entity with suspected ties to Iran. It has already claimed seven attacks against Jewish institutions, including an arson attack in London where four ambulances owned by the Hatzolah charity were torched.