Radical socialist Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign hosted a closed-door roundtable to craft his prospective administration’s education policy, and stocked it with anti-merit leftists — one of whom once bashed standardized tests as “eugenics.”
Groups pushing for academic rigor were left off the guest list, which contained a veritable who’s who of radical advocates opposed to gifted and talented programs, as well as figures with troubling antisemitism accusations, critics said.
“The floodgates are opening to radical indoctrinating propaganda coming into the classroom,” said Karen Feldman, cofounder of New York City Public School Alliance — a group that fights antisemitism in city public schools.
Included at the roundtable was the Education Council Consortium, a group that once called NYC’s gifted and talented programs “an oddity in the nation” and also accused them of “systematically” segregating black students.
The ECC has hosted a rally featuring Linda Sarsour, an activist with a long history of antisemitic remarks and a mentor of Mamdani’s.
Shino Tanikawa, ECC’s treasurer, has ranted against “toxic whiteness” on social media.
The Alliance for Quality Education, which has similarly come out against gifted and talented programs, was also at the meeting, as was former Manhattan Panel for Educational Policy member Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, according to Chalkbeat.
Salas-Ramirez is a member of Opt Out, an organization that advocates against standardized tests, which she has claimed originated as a part of the “eugenics movement” at a 2021 Chancellor’s Parents Advisory Council meeting. She has long faced accusations of antisemitism.
“Israel is a terrorist state,” she posted Oct. 1.
The Rutgers University medical school professor was the subject of a parental letter-writing campaign urging Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine not to reappoint her to the PEP. She left the panel in 2024, according to her LinkedIn.
Anti-Israel Mamdani has faced criticism for not yet providing a detailed education policy, but has vowed to eliminate gifted and talented programs starting at kindergarten.
Parent Leaders of Accelerated Curriculum and Education, an organization that advocates for higher standards in the NYC public school system, was not given a seat at the table, nor was the New York City Public School Alliance.
“[Mamdani] is probably going to be worse than De Blasio 2.0 from all the signals that we’re seeing,” said Yiatin Chu, co-president of PLACE.
Also in attendance was former Squad Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who is rumored to be in the running to be Mamdani’s schools chancellor and has a history of antisemitism accusations.
“Jamaal Bowman, which is kind of the scary one,” Chu mused regarding Mamdani’s potential chancellor picks, “[He was] a middle school principal that really was kind of abysmal.”
“Public school high-stakes standardized testing is a form of modern-day slavery,” Bowman, former principal of Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, wrote in 2015.
Bowman infamously pulled the Capitol building’s fire alarm in 2023 as Democrats attempted to delay a spending vote, and was subsequently censured by the House.
“How’s he going to tell kids not to pull the fire alarm?” wondered Chu.
Bowman and the Mamdani campaign did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
The post Mamdani campaign hosts education roundtable featuring woman who called standardized tests ‘eugenics’ appeared first on New York Post.
