Anti-Zionist Mayor Mamdani’s scholar dad ripped Columbia University’s antisemitism task force as a “prosecutorial agency” — comparing it to the race-based “divide and rule” approach utilized by British colonists, The Post has learned.
Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia’s Department of Anthropology, dropped the remarks during a University Senate meeting last month as he reacted to the release of the final bombshell report into antisemitism at the Ivy League school.
“It became very clear that [the task force] saw itself not as representing the community, but as a prosecutorial agency,” Mamdani said, according to a transcript of the Dec. 12 meeting held via Zoom.
Mamdani — who specializes in the study of colonialism, anti-colonialism and decolonization — went on to list the “disadvantages” of the school-led task force, suggesting that one dedicated just to antisemitism could be seen as a form of discrimination.
“I teach colonial history … and this is known as divide and rule in British colonial history,” he said, according to the transcript.
“In British divide and rule, you set up different sections of the population as independent, as autonomous, as separate constituencies — and each begins to see the other as a competitor. Soon, you have a fragmented society like grasshoppers in a bottle.”
Elsewhere, Mamdani acknowledged during the meeting that he hadn’t yet read the fourth and final report but assumed it would bring an end to the task force, which was created to address rampant antisemitism on campus in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack.
“We’ve come to a point where hopefully this period can end. I suggest one lesson to be drawn from this is not [a] task force on separate grievances, of separate constituencies, but an anti-discrimination task force,” Mamdani said.
“A measure which can be a healing measure, which can get all these constituencies represented on a single task force and get them to look at it, to look at discrimination from the point of view of others.
“The university should not play a divide and rule game,” Mamdani added.
A source who attended the meeting confirmed to The Post that Mamdani made the remarks in question.
The final report, published in December, outlined various heinous instances where rogue professors had turned classrooms into their personal anti-Israel soapboxes and detailed instances of harassment against Columbia’s Jewish community.
Some students told The Post they weren’t the slightest bit surprised the professor had slammed the report.
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“If you were surprised by Zohran Mamdani illegally deleting tweets about NYC’s antisemitism report two weeks ago, you shouldn’t have been. His father has been trying to delete Columbia’s antisemitism task force for the last two years. Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” the Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students posted on X.
Columbia grad student, Sam Nahins, 32, pointed to the professor’s prior writings in which he claimed the Nazis took direct cues from the United States’ history of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
“I can’t say that I’m surprised that the professors who said that Lincoln was Hitler’s inspiration is now stating that the antisemitism task force can be compared to British colonialism,” Nahins said.
“I would love to know who he compares Stalin, Lenin, Ayatollah, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani or even Rebecca Kadaga to. Who knows. Maybe he’ll claim that Kadyrov was inspired by Frederick Douglass.”
