Zohran Mamdani “Unfairly Tarred as Antisemite,” Harvard Central Administration Says

Boycott-Israel, arrest-Netanyahu socialist gets a kosher stamp from Cambridge

Zohran Mamdani speaking at a May 11, 2021, rally to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel

As Election Day approaches in New York City, the Harvard Gazette—the official publication of the Harvard University central administration—is reassuring its readers that the Democratic Party’s candidate in the race isn’t really a Jew-hater, no matter what his political opponents, mainstream Jewish organizations, and prominent New York rabbis say.

The Gazette is owned by Harvard. It exists to promote Harvard. Its reporters and editors are Harvard University employees. The considerations and protections of academic freedom that might conceivably apply to an academic journal do not apply; this is a marketing organ for the university. There are plenty of things that happen at Harvard that the Gazette chooses not to cover, and there are plenty of things that it does cover in which it omits aspects selectively, or emphasizes others, to reflect the message that the university wants to get across. A job listing last month for “executive director of content and editorial strategy” at Harvard, overseeing the Gazette (paying up to $273,600 a year), describes the position as “storytelling strategies to advance the mission of Harvard University.” How in the world does absolving an antisemitic New York mayoral candidate of antisemitism, the week before the election, advance Harvard’s “mission”?

Yet here is an October 28, 2025 article in the Harvard Gazette about a recent event on the Harvard campus featuring New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg: “some Israel critics like New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani have been unfairly tarred as antisemites, she said.”

That’s the only coverage Mamdani has received in the Harvard Gazette. It’s lopsided. Mamdani isn’t merely an “Israel critic,” as the Gazette misleadingly describes it. He is part of the boycott, divest, and sanction movement that wants to eliminate the Jewish state. He has promised to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu for “genocide.”

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of New York’s Central Synagogue said October 31, “Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has contributed to a mainstreaming of some of the most abhorrent antisemitism. His shocking 2023 accusation: ‘when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.’ This crosses the line clearly into antisemitism – not only demonizing Israelis but echoing the age old antisemitic trope that Jews across the world are the root cause of our problem here. His false claims of genocide, his reluctance to label Hamas a terrorist organization, his unwillingness to condemn phrases like ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and absolute opposition to Israel as a Jewish state contributes to an atmosphere of denigration and ostracization of Jewish people everywhere. In addition to dangerous rhetoric, his pledge to shut down the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, which broke up violent protests at Columbia, could mean that when Jews are under attack, we may not feel protected. It is hard not to fear that the environment we witnessed for our Jewish children on Columbia’s campus after October 7 could be a preview of the way that New York City could start feeling for all Jews.”

Here is the rabbi of New York’s Park Avenue Synagogue, Elliot Cosgrove, in an October 18, 2025 sermon: “I believe Zohran Mamdani poses a danger to the security of New York Jewish community….To delegitimize Israel, as Mamdani has repeatedly done, is an attack on my personhood as a Jew, as an American, and as an American Jew.”

Mamdani rejects the mainstream Jewish organizations devoted to fighting Jew-hate, such as the Anti-Defamation League. That prompted the CEO of the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, to write, “I’m absolutely blown away by the sheer brazen audacity of Zohran Mamdani, telling all of us in the Jewish community who does and doesn’t represent us. We don’t need anyone – a political candidate or any non-Jewish person — to tell us who should speak for the Jewish people. Obviously, no marginalized group is a monolith, but I’m stunned by his arrogance in telling a minority community who should or should not speak for them. The vast majority of American Jews consider themselves Zionists and have strong ties to the State of Israel. Attending a religious service at a synagogue known for its anti-Zionist activities does not show that you understand the overwhelming majority of the NYC Jewish community or their concerns about safety. In fact, it communicates the very opposite.”

I covered the Harvard event in question—the annual Doft Lecture of Harvard University’s Center for Jewish Studies—for The Editors back on October 17. The headline here was was “New York Times Opinion Writer Explains Lack of Pro-Trump Columnists; Harvard Jewish Studies lecturer says Mamdani poses no threat.” My article about the event got some attention on social media thanks to the great Steve McGuire of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. Maybe Harvard feels the need to get its own account of the event out there to compete against mine.

Section 501(c)3 of the tax code says Harvard’s tax exemption applies to a corporation “which does not participate in, or intervene in (including the publishing or distributing of statements), any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for public office.” “Public office” is not restricted to federal office. It appears to me that Harvard’s publishing this statement the week before the election clearing Mamdani of antisemitism amounts to an intervention in the election and at least flirts with a violation of the rules. Harvard will claim it’s not a Harvard statement, it’s just a news account of something that one speaker said on campus. But if that is so, then where are the anti-Mamdani speakers on campus (or their honoraria?), and where is the Harvard Gazette coverage of them?

Plenty of people at Harvard think the whole institution has been unfairly tarred as antisemitic, so the idea that Mamdani has also been unfairly tarred as antisemitic is likely to resonate widely on the campus. The Gazette article has been posted on the website of Harvard’s Center for Jewish Studies, whose faculty director, Derek Penslar, invited Goldberg to campus. Penslar was also appointed by Harvard President Alan Garber as co-chair of a Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.

The whole episode may not appreciably affect the New York City election outcome. It is, however, likely to reinforce the view of the non-Cambridge, non-New York Times Jewish world that when it comes to Jew-hate and Israel, what Harvard is pumping out institutionally these days is all too often the opposite of Veritas.