Mamdani’s Victory Was Made Possible by Our Leftist College Campuses
Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic primary victory in the New York City mayoral race shouldn’t surprise anyone given the demographics of the socialist’s voting base: the June 23 Emerson College poll had Mamdani leading Cuomo 62-38 percent among college graduates.
That’s a problem. Educational attainment should not be so indicative of political affiliation and ideology because the current far-left echo chamber is creating a reactive electorate that is unhealthy for our society. But the correlation points to the root cause of this terrifying outcome.
A sobering 62% of 18-29 year-olds support socialism because they hold romanticized ideas about redistribution and misunderstand economics, which harkens back to the brainwashing they received in classrooms. A 2024 survey reported that 37% of college students misunderstand what capitalism is, likely due to the finding that professors’ comments “are more often positive toward socialism and negative toward capitalism.” That is unacceptable.
Mamdani’s win makes it imperative for higher education to increase and expand the professors, staff, and students who hold conservative, centrist, and non-leftist views.
Mamdani’s demographic base, which The Wall Street Journal describes as “young, educated New Yorkers, many of them white,” voted against high rent prices and for a socialist candidate who supports Intifada terrorism and opposes the police.
College graduates have long been conditioned to vote this way - the result of a corrupt moral code that professors indoctrinate through social justice teachings. These distorted teachings in our classrooms are not just nonsensical; they threaten to upend American communities if left unchecked by anti-socialist scholars and students.
This code teaches students that if they feel something, they are right and, therefore, have the right to abolish whatever makes them feel that way – and by any means necessary. This is what social justice activist curriculum looks like in practice. It fuels violent anti-Western protests and the polarizing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives that brainwash students to see every problem or inconvenience as the result of a larger capitalist social structure or system that must be brought down with it.
That immoral code is why over-educated socialists like Mamdani, who founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin College, react emotionally to isolated police news stories with blanket calls to defund law enforcement, or why they think that eradicating Israel will make their unhappy lives here better.
New York’s recent college graduates took one economic grievance over rent and globalized it to embrace every radical tenet of Mamdani’s“snake oil salesman” platform of no Israel, no cops, and no financial accountability for all.
Radical faculty condition students to avenge feelings of grievance, victimization, and oppression that were conjured from assigned readings and class discussions, more than actual events in the real world.
An April 2025 report from Harvard University unwittingly revealed that among Harvard’s entire student population, the 21-25 age group harbors the most aggrieved, divisive, and antagonistic attitudes on its campus. That demographic, which nominally represents students wrapping up undergraduate degrees and commencing post-graduate programs, was the cohort that felt the most uncomfortable expressing themselves, the least “mentally safe” on campus, and the least able to befriend peers with opposing beliefs.
Harvard’s report is relevant to New York City politics because the trendline is not confined just to the university’s Cambridge campus.
By senior year, faculty have primed students to view socialist ideas as the magical salvation for an antagonistic world. Graduates can either carry those indoctrinated biases into society or have them compounded in master’s programs. It is that cohort of recent college graduates and professional students who carried Mamdani to victory.
The best hope for the nation's future is complete reformation of higher education to achieve greater intellectual and viewpoint diversity. A new generation of college-educated Americans who are exposed, taught, and uplifted by open-minded professors would not fall prey to a herd mentality and vote for radical socialism as New York’s recent graduates just did.
