Of all the ways that Zohran Mamdani could be compared to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, this is likely the one he wanted least.

According to a report published Thursday evening in The New York Times, Mamdani claimed on his application to Columbia University to be both “Asian” and “Black or African American.”

This 2009 application, obtained by the Times, is at odds with his presentation of himself on the campaign trail, where he has stressed that he’s a Muslim of South Asian descent. It was among data stolen and released last month by a “hacktivist” who wanted to see if the Ivy League university was still using affirmative action to discriminate against students in spite of Supreme Court decisions that forbid heavily loading the dice against applicants solely due to their race.

The move, the Times reported, would have increased his chances of getting accepted to the elite New York City school. He ended up graduating from another elite liberal arts institution, Maine’s Bowdoin College, where his major was Africana studies; Mamdani says the decision was due in part to the fact that his father was and is a professor at Columbia. He did not get in, anyhow, although he says he filled out all of his applications the same way.

“Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there,” the Times reported.

“The Times could not find any speeches or interviews in which Mr. Mamdani referred to himself as Black or African American, and Mr. Mamdani said the college applications were the only instances where he could recall describing himself as such.”

Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, albeit to two members of the African country’s ethnically Indian diaspora: academic Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair. He would leave for South Africa at age 5 and then the United States at age 7.

Speaking to the Times on Thursday, Mamdani said that the information was not conveyed to get an upper hand by identifying him as a black American but instead to emphasize his complex background as “an American who was born in Africa.”

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

Where “more specific information where relevant” was asked for, Mamdani said that he wrote he was “Ugandan.”

“Even though these boxes are constraining, I wanted my college application to reflect who I was,” he told the Times.

He added that while his family emigrated to Uganda from India over 100 years ago, there was no intermarriage with black Ugandans: “They’re all of Indian origin, from Gujarat,” he told the Times.

The revelation is likely to have reverberations that affect Mamdani’s chances at winning in a general election. In the Democratic primary, main challenger Andrew Cuomo did far better in black and Hispanic sections of the city, while Mamdani tended to do better in white areas.

Moreover, Mamdani’s emphasis of his South Asian heritage was a keystone of his campaign and helped him get a foothold in New York City’s Asian and Muslim communities: “As the first South Asian elected official, the first Muslim elected official to ever run for mayor, the turnout in those same communities has been incredible to see,” he said in an interview last week. His campaign had also released ads in Urdu and Bangli, which helped him secure votes in those communities.

Meanwhile, Mamdani’s most formidable opposition in the November race is likely to come for current New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who is black and whose moribund independent campaign to stay in Gracie Mansion has been given new life by Mamdani’s radicalism and the lack of an effective challenger on the Republican side. (The GOP nominee, Guardian Angels founder and radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa, does not have governing experience nor broad appeal in the city outside of the Republican primary electorate.)

The revelation was also the subject of widespread outrage and mockery on social media platforms.

Zohran Mamdani said he was black on his college application ???? pic.twitter.com/HrTu96IBU1

— ALX ???????? (@alx) July 3, 2025

“Mamdani claims he wasn’t trying to give himself an advantage because Mamdani is a liar,” said Jerry Dunleavy IV of Just the News.

Mamdani claimed to be “Black” or “African American” when he applied to Columbia. Mamdani was born in Uganda & lived there a few years, but he is very much South Asian & very much not black. Mamdani claims he wasn’t trying to give himself an advantage because Mamdani is a liar. pic.twitter.com/cSxF9c2mvI

— Jerry Dunleavy IV ???????? (@JerryDunleavy) July 3, 2025

Meanwhile, another user noted that this was the latest in “a long list of frauds from the Democrat Party” — noting the most analogous case to Mamdani’s, Elizabeth Warren’s longtime claim to be Native American, a move which likely ended up garnering her positions in academia but which hobbled her 2020 presidential campaign when it was revealed she might contain less than one one-thousandth indigenous ancestry.

???? WOW. Zohran Mamdani identified as a Black Man on his college application.

The latest in a long list of frauds from the Democrat Party. pic.twitter.com/gGjEw3p05c

— Alec Lace (@AlecLace) July 3, 2025

Mamdani, meanwhile, spent most of Thursday touting his endorsements and attacking the GOP for passing the “Big, Beautiful Bill” in Congress.

“Donald Trump is attacking me because he is desperate to distract from his war on working people,” his campaign said in one X post. “We must and we will fight back.

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