Two weeks ago, the New York Times ginned up a controversy over Zohran Mamdani’s college application. In his senior year of high school, Mamdani applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked off the boxes for Asian American and African American. He made a point of specifying that by African American he meant that he was from Uganda.

Mamdani’s opponents, most notably Eric Adams, and other commentators immediately used the story against him, claiming that Mamdani was trying to game the affirmative action system of higher ed for his personal advantage by falsely claiming he was black and Asian American.

Peter Beinart has an excellent video out this morning, which puts the story in Mamdani’s family context — and makes me think there is an interesting parallel between the pseudocontroversy over his college application essay and the pseudocontroversy over the “globalize the intifada” phrase.