New York Jewish News via JTA — When he sat down for an interview in November with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mahmood Mamdani offered one parameter: “Let’s not talk about the mayor thing.”

It was just two days after the Columbia University professor had taken the stage alongside his wife and daughter-in-law after his son Zohran had been elected mayor of New York City, winning more than 50% of the vote in a three-way race.

Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist with a long track record of pro-Palestinian activism, has said he counts his father as one of his political inspirations.

But Mahmood Mamdani preferred to talk about his own record, as a professor of anthropology and international affairs and a longstanding pro-Palestinian activist who was the first faculty member to address the Gaza war encampment on his campus.

His wife, filmmaker Mira Nair, and Zohran’s wife, the artist Rama Duwaji, likewise are respected in their fields and well known for their pro-Palestinian advocacy and adherence to the movement to boycott Israel.

Zohran Mamdani has described the BDS movement as “consistent with the core of my politics,” and in 2023 introduced a bill while serving as an assemblymember that sought to block nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

While it is unclear the extent to which Mamdani will pursue BDS policies during his upcoming mayoral term, his politics and those of his parents reflect a shared alignment with pro-Palestinian causes.

“When you’re the kid of two parents who are very involved in social justice, a lot of times what you remember as a playdate was you being at some rally or some march,” Mamdani recalled in an interview with City & State in April 2023.

Now, after Zohran took the city’s reins on January 1, here’s what you need to know about his immediate family.

Long before his son’s mayoral campaign, Mahmood Mamdani, 79, was known widely as one of the foremost scholars on colonialism and postcolonial politics in Africa. Born in India in 1946, Mamdani was raised in Kampala, Uganda at a time when the country was racially segregated. After receiving his bachelors, masters and doctorate from universities in the United States, Mamdani was expelled from Uganda in 1972 after Ugandan President Idi Amin ordered all Asians to leave the country.

Since 1999, he has been a professor of government at Columbia University, and has published several books and essays on colonialism and political violence including “Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism” in 1996 and “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror” in 2004.

As a scholar, Mahmood Mamdani is best known for his analysis of colonial rule and how it shapes the identities of both the occupied and occupiers. In his 2020 book, “Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities,” he uses case studies that include Nazi Germany, Israelis and Palestinians and post-apartheid South Africa.

Mamdani has spoken directly and repeatedly about how his broader scholarship shapes his thinking on Israel and Palestinians. “The issue is not settlers, but settler colonialism,” he wrote in “Neither Settler nor Native.” In 2021, during an 11-day war between Hamas and Israel that was sparked by tensions in Jerusalem, Mamdani wrote on X, “Palestinians have a right to resist. This is a colonial occupation, not a conflict!”

Three days later, as Hamas and Israel exchanged missiles and airstrikes, Mamdani wrote that the conflict was not between Israel and Hamas, but rather the resurgence of a third intifada.

“The resistance this time began in Jerusalem and spread to Gaza, now the West Bank and Palestinian communities beyond.........

© The Times of Israel