THE NEW CONTEXT
07 ISSUE X
FEBRUARY 2026
FEBRUARY 2026
son of the father
The political scientist Mahmood Mamdani’s influence on his son, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s politics.
By Giselle Morales Lopez
Behind the campaign that reached and impacted millions around the globe, Zohran Mamdani’s principles grew out of the intellectual world he was raised in–shaped heavily by the work of his father, Mahmood Mamdani. Mahmood’s work focuses heavily on how violence and inequality are produced through political systems: defining who belongs, who is protected, and who is pushed to the margins. His work consistently argues that people are not naturally victims or perpetrators, but are assigned these roles by institutions that distribute rights unevenly and limit people’s citizenship and their ability to act on it.
Image via Instagram/@Mira Nair.
When in parallel to Zohran’s campaign for New York City mayor, the connection becomes crystal clear. Zohran approaches issues such as housing, safety, and transit as structural problems rather than personal failures or isolated crises. His policies approach tenants, youth, and working-class New Yorkers as political actors with agency and not passive recipients of help–Mahmood’s main argument against R2P. These policies also reflect Mahmood’s core principle that change comes from rebuilding the systems that shape daily life, not from pushing individuals or from offering surface-level solutions disguised as humanitarian aid or rescue.
Zohran brings his father’s theoretical work into a tangible political agenda. This dynamic proves how anti-colonial scholarship can inform real policymaking in a contemporary urban setting. Across some of his great works, Mahmood Mamdani develops a framework for understanding violence and inequality as outcomes of political systems and structures rather than individual behavior. In his book WHEN VICTIMS BECOME KILLERS, where he explores the Rwandan genocide and how colonial systems shaped ethnic hatred and division, Mahmood problematizes rigid categories of identity that have long determined different access to land, rights, and protection. He argues that these identities were not a product of culture or tradition, but rather political assignments by the state that produced deeply unequal forms of belonging. These concepts shape his understanding of citizenship as a differentiated status rather than a universal one. A citizenship that is constructed and distributed by institutions that decide who counts as a full political subject and under which circumstances. Thus, Mahmood’s arguments reframe violence as a predictable result of unequal arrangements, where groups are positioned differently in relation to the state and to each other–in the case study of his book, the Tutsi and Hutu; for the sake of this argument, the different classes, races, ages, genders, and citizenship statuses in New York City.
Mahmood further develops this premise in his article, “Responsibility to Protect or Right to Punish?” where he examines humanitarian intervention and its underlinings of colonialism and depoliticization. In this article, he argues that the international humanitarian system approaches people in conflict zones as passive victims in need of external–Western–rescue, rather than as citizens with political agency. He suggests that this harmful framing helps legitimize forms of external control that resemble earlier systems of trusteeship–a trusteeship stained with colonial undertones. All across his work, Mahmood advocates for meaningful change that is simply not achievable through punitive or externally imposed solutions. He argues instead that it requires rebuilding political institutions that enable people to act as political agents within their communities. Overall, his work positions violence as a result of failed structures and critiques the limitations this imposes on the political capacity of those affected unequally.
In response, Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign reflects these theoretical concepts by framing some of New York City’s most significant issues–housing, public safety, and transit–as structural, rather than isolated crises. They are framed as arrangements that determine who can reach stability, mobility, and political power and agency in the city. Similar to Mahmood, Zohran preaches that inequality arises from policy that distributes rights and opportunities unevenly–not from individual choices. For instance, Zohran’s approach to the housing crisis reframes narratives of irresponsible tenants to one of predatory landlords. With this, he identifies the broader systems that shape New Yorkers’ lives, including real estate instability, weak tenant protections, and a public housing sector that has long been underfunded. By positioning housing as a symbol of political belonging rather than a commodity, Zohran aligns closely with his father’s arguments that access to land and territory is central to feelings of belonging and citizenship.
This same approach also guides Zohran’s approach to public safety and social infrastructure by echoing Mahmood’s critiques of punitive responses to conflict. Throughout his campaign, Zohran challenged the assumption that increased policing and punishment were viable solutions to harmful preestablished and structural conditions. Instead, his call for investment in mental health services, youth programs, and community-based crisis response reflected a belief that safety emerges from strong communities and equitable institutions–and not simply from surveillance or enforcement alone. In a similar way, his push for fare-free transit and public ownership of essential services–such as city-owned grocery stores, public housing, etc.–treats mobility and basic needs as part of one’s ability to fully participate in city life. Or, as Mahmood would phrase it, one’s ability to participate in citizenship. By centering agency, dignity, and collective investment, Zohran translates Mahmood’s anti-colonial and anti-punitive theoretical frameworks into practice. Zohran successfully crafted a political agenda to expand the definition of being a citizen of New York City.
This strong connection between Mahmood Mamdani’s theoretical work and Zohran Mamdani’s political agenda becomes most evident in how both approach citizenship as produced by institutions rather than simply granted on paper. Mahmood’s analysis of colonial rule in African countries like Rwanda, Sudan, and Uganda, shows how unequally distributed rights and access to land, mobility, and political agency were shaped by organizing populations into categories–a recurring theme in modern-day American politics. This argument–that citizenship is materially constructed and thus unevenly distributed and experienced–mirrors Zohran’s focus on housing, transit, and food access as core political concerns. By proposing rent freezes, expanded public housing, fare-free buses, and publicly owned grocery stores, Zohran labels these essential services as infrastructure needed for people to fully participate in city life. His policies function as attempts to rebuild the conditions of equal citizenship at the city level, mirroring Mahmood’s insistence that political belonging depends on structures that support everyday life and stability.
In terms of public safety, the overlap in their approaches becomes even more noticeable. Mahmood argues that punitive responses to violence fail to address the structural causes of harm and instead reinforce forms of dependency and exclusion–whether delivered through humanitarian intervention or domestic criminal justice systems. He emphasizes that long-term stability requires political reform and community rebuilding instead of external–oftentimes coerced–rescue or punishment. Here, Zohran again applies this logic by rejecting conventional policing-centered approaches and advocating investment in other sectors, such as public health, crisis response teams, and community-based violence prevention. His model of public safety is based on the belief that social and economic conditions cause harm and that lasting, stable security can be achieved only by addressing them. This belief reflects Mahmood’s argument that systems generate vulnerability and that reimagining citizenship requires reshaping these systems rather than criminalizing individuals or even states as a whole.
These parallels demonstrate that Zohran’s mayoral campaign is not only influenced by his father’s work but also actively translates it into practice. Mahmood provides a conceptual framework for understanding how institutions shape belonging, agency, and harm; Zohran incorporates those concepts into a political agenda to redistribute power and strengthen collective life in New York City. This alignment proves how anti-colonial scholarship can travel across contexts–from Mahmood’s study of postcolonial states in Africa to Zohran’s practice of urban governance in New York City–and offer valuable tools for creating an equitable city.
Despite the strong intellectual connection between Mahmood and Zohran Mamdani, their work differs in terms of context, scale, and political purpose. Mahmood’s scholarship is grounded in African historical, political, and personal experiences–particularly looking at case studies from Uganda, Rwanda, and Sudan. His analyses sit at the national and international level of politics, questioning external intervention, sovereignty and post-conflict rebuilding. Thus, Mahmood’s work is largely oriented toward understanding how large political structures generate inequality and how societies rebuild after such systemic violence. Zohran, in comparison, works on a different scale–geographically smaller but globally larger–where inequality is shaped less by colonial rule and more by real estate markets, austerity budgets, policing institutions, immigration status, and uneven access to essential services. While Mahmood’s work identifies how institutions create categories of belonging, Zohran works to reshape these institutions through policymaking. These differences do not reflect different interests, politics, or perspectives, but rather showcase the distinct worlds of scholarship and governance.
The political relationship between Mahmood Mamdani’s scholarship and Zohran Mamdani’s campaign demonstrates how academic theory can meaningfully and effectively inform and shape public policy. Mahmood’s work offers a framework for understanding inequality as something produced by institutions responsible for distributing rights, resources, and protection unevenly. His work on colonial governance, humanitarian intervention, and differentiated citizenship consistently emphasizes that meaningful change comes only from reshaping political structures, not from individual blame or imposed rescue efforts. Zohran’s campaign reflects this perspective by treating housing, transit, food access, and public safety as systemic problems that require collective solutions. His proposals aim to strengthen the foundations of citizenship and encourage more New Yorkers to enter public life.
By translating key elements of Mahmood’s scholarship into an urban context, Zohran highlights the relevance of anti-colonial political thought in contemporary governance. Both father and son challenge models that frame people as passive recipients of protection–or victims–, and instead they center agency, community, and structural reform as the basis of a just and progressive society. Still, Zohran’s campaign is not only a progressive political project, but also an extension of a deeper intellectual and familial tradition–one focused on bettering the conditions of everyday life to create meaningful and equitable forms of citizenship. Together, Mahmood and Zohran’s work highlights the plausibility of bridging academic theory and political practice to design a more inclusive and democratic city.
Giselle morales is completing an MA in International Affairs at The New School.