Can Zohran Mamdani Fix New York’s Public Education?
Zohran Mamdani’s potential election as New York City mayor could be transformational for the city’s underfunded public K–12 schools and higher education system.
Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani answers questions from the media during an event in Queens, New York, on June 19, 2025. (Adam Gray / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
As New York City gets ready for a historic mayoral election, Zohran Kwame Mamdani has exploded onto the scene as a candidate proposing transformative changes to the city’s educational framework. Central to his vision is ending unilateral mayoral control and redistributing wealth to support equity, development, and research.
In this exclusive interview, organizer, union activist, and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York (CUNY), Nivedita Majumdar, discusses the potential challenges to realizing Mamdani’s platform. These include barriers to funding, connections between education and climate, and the roles of civil society and union advocacy. Drawing lessons from historical city governance, she explains how New York’s public education landscape might evolve under a potential Mamdani administration.
Daniel Falcone
As an assemblymember, Mamdani advocated increased investments in higher education by ending property tax breaks for wealthier institutions like Columbia and New York University (NYU). What are the biggest political and logistical barriers to making this a reality? Can we ensure that these funds will reach the working-class students and faculty Mamdani intends for them to?
Nivedita Majumdar
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