Hacker leak shows Zohran Mamdani once checked “Asian” and “African-American” on college app—supporters say it’s a non-issue

Zohran Mamdani faced scrutiny after a hacker tipped The New York Times about his college application choices. Critics like Eric Adams say he used his identity for personal gain on college applications but Mamdani’s supporters say it reveals the complexity of identity.

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, recently made headlines for once marking ‘South Asian’ and ‘African American’ on an application.

While applying to Columbia University as a high school senior in 2009, Mamdani completed a portion of the application by checking boxes to self-identify as both South Asian and African American.

“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” said Mamdani in an interview with The New York Times.

Mamdani, who was born in Uganda to parents of Indian descent, has spoken out about immigrating to the United States at the age of seven with his family for his father’s work.

Though he does not identify as Black, Mamdani has said he wanted to show his entire background in his college applications. He then added that these applications were the only time in his life when he could remember referring to himself as African American.

“Even though these boxes are constraining, I wanted my college application to reflect who I was,” said Mamdani.

Mamdani’s personal information, along with that of other applicants, was first sent to The New York Times when a white supremacist hacked Columbia’s internal records of student applications.

According to The Times, the hacker intended to verify whether the university continued to use affirmative action in its admissions process after the Supreme Court ruled against the practice in 2023.

Since the release of this information, critics and supporters of Mamdani have shared their opinions online.

New York City mayoral candidates Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo have called out the Democratic nominee for claiming an identity for personal gain and for not being properly vetted during his campaign.

“The African American identity is not a check-box of convenience,” Adams said in a written statement. “It’s a history, a struggle, and a lived experience. For someone to exploit that for personal gain is deeply offensive.”

Supporters of Mamdani, however, argue that the controversy is overblown. Echoing the support of many Mamdani’s Black voters in the city, New York Assemblywoman Phara Souffrant Forrest posted on X, saying, “No one cares about his college applications.”