Peter Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars, a former professor of anthropology, and the author of several compelling books. He adds something to our understanding of Zohran Mamdani in his Spectator essay “The education of Zohran Mamdani.” Drawing on the study 2013 NAS study What Does Bowdoin Teach? — Bowdoin being Mamdani’s alma mater, every word of the essay is worth reading. I excerpt it here to draw it to your attention. This is Wood’s conclusion:
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In light of Zohran’s nomination to the mayoralty of New York, profiles of him, analyses of campaign strategies, and surveys of his appeal to voters have proliferated. These lie a bit beyond what I set out to do in this article, though some of his maneuvers are pertinent. He has, for example, played his Muslim identity with finesse. Muslims know he is a Muslim and that he embraces their self-image as casualties of the West. But none of this appears in his campaign. Rather he appeals to the sensibilities of each South Asian (“Desi”) ethnicity in New York separately, eliding their differences. He is the candidate for Pakistanis. Indians, and Bangladeshis alike, though they are not exactly one another’s friends, and most of them are robust supporters of the market-driven New York economy and merit-based schools. How would they like living in Zohran’s socialist paradise? All the while he is also cultivating his base of disaffected – mostly white, and heavily female – underemployed college graduates.
The politics of such coalitions is a politics of resentment. It is an open question how much of that combustible material Zohran can load into his bandwagon without things going awry.
Seemingly innocent of what his program entails, Zohran charms his way through the crowds of college graduates who expected more from life than “late capitalism” has so far bestowed on them. His is the disappointment of millions of young people at the moment. We used to call it entitlement, but it could be more soulless than that.
In any case, when we asked in 2013, “What Does Bowdoin Teach?” we found a version of this disturbing story. A lot of Bowdoin students were poised, charming, and self-confident. They expected – or rather knew – that their lives after graduation were going to be vibrant, fun, prosperous, and fulfilling. What happened to them if and when things didn’t turn out like that? America has been running that experiment for the last decade. At least part of the answer is they will harken to the voice of one of their own. That’s Zohran. The campus activist who sees all of New York as his campus and is poised to turn New York into Bowdoin on the Hudson.
Whole thing here.
