On Saturday evening, amid intense thunderstorms, thousands of Zohran Mamdani supporters turned up at Brooklyn College, CUNY, to hear the mayoral candidate speak alongside Senator Bernie Sanders. Those waiting in line were greeted by dozens of members of PSC-CUNY — the union representing the university’s faculty and staff — as well as community supporters who stood in the rain distributing fliers for the CUNY Fired Four: the four faculty fired for pro-Palestine activism. The Fired Four had also previously posted on instagram, inviting Mamdani and Sanders to speak about the repression of the pro-Palestine movement at the university.
Part of Sanders’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, the talk focused largely on the senator’s populist economic policy, his critique of inequality, and the need for the Democratic Party to confront Trump’s ultra-reactionary second-term agenda.
Before introducing Sanders, Mamdani took a moment to directly speak about the ongoing repression at the university, calling out the CUNY administration for its McCarthyist attacks on faculty and speaking out in defense of the Fired Four:
I cannot begin my remarks this evening without first acknowledging PSC-CUNY and the fact that no faculty member should be disciplined for supporting Palestinian human rights. I want to thank PSC-CUNY for standing alongside their rank and file.
His statement was met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation from the crowd in support of the Fired Four and in defiance of the CUNY administration’s attacks against the Palestine movement. The crowd then took up the chant that has been repeated at protests across the world: “Free, free Palestine!” One student who attended the event remarked, “It felt electric to be standing with everyone chanting for Palestine and for the Fired Four.”
Later in the evening, after being pressed by a Brooklyn College student who spoke about the school’s disruption of a May protest for Palestine as well as the repression of faculty and staff, Mamdani reiterated his support:
We are seeing faculty members who are facing not just discipline but termination for the “crime” of expressing solidarity with the fight for Palestinian human rights. I know this is a repression that is not unique to Brooklyn College. It is a repression that extends even to the ways in which we choose when to send police officers onto college campuses. The incident around encampments at Brooklyn College, the decision to send officers into that site, is one that leaves students less safe than they were before.
The fact that Mamdani addressed the Fired Four is a product of a months-long struggle, with PSC-led multiple rallies and rank-and-file organizing on the campuses against repression. In order to reinstate the faculty and reverse the earlier suspensions of eight pro-Palestinian student protesters, including Hadeeqa Arzoo Malik, we need to continue to organize, building on this momentum.
Come for Four, Face Us All
Mamdani’s messages of support for CUNY faculty comes months after the administration’s sudden firing of the four adjunct professors. All four were fired or non-reappointed by the administration over the heads of their department chairs, and despite often stellar teaching observations. The one thing they all have in common: their vocal support for the cause of Palestinian liberation. Brooklyn College has also begun investigations into five more faculty and one staff member.
Since May, the PSC-CUNY, the Fired Four, and their supporters have been organizing to resist these firings and to call attention to the university’s McCarthyist tactics in the face of political pressure from the U.S. congress. This includes a unanimous statement passed by the PSC delegate assembly, multiple rallies, and an incipient campus-based organizing system in which students, faculty, and staff are tabling on their own campuses.
After learning that Mamdani and Sanders would be at Brooklyn College, activists issued a statement inviting him to speak about the Fired Four and student repression at CUNY. The struggle to reinstate the faculty and to reverse the university’s repressive policies on speech and protest will require united action from students, university workers, and community supporters, including other unions, political organizations and social movement groups.
Ultimately, however, this is not just a struggle against repression at CUNY — it’s part of a much bigger fight against Trump’s assault on universities and the bipartisan war on the movement for Palestine, a war that was begun by former President Biden to end the student encampments across the country, and which Trump has eagerly expanded as part of a broader attack on students, faculty, immigrants, working people, and the oppressed.
But these activists are not alone in their fight. Indeed, as the question of Palestine has taken center stage in U.S. and global politics, more and more people are questioning the legitimacy of the Israeli state and its imperialist supporters, a shift in consciousness that is reshaping politics across Europe and the United States. Nowhere is this more evident perhaps than in Mamdani’s campaign, which has been fueled not only by his populist rhetoric around bread and butter economic issues, but by thousands of supporters fed up with the Democratic Party’s support for genocide.
The Fired Four and the Fight Against the Far Right and Genocide
Mamdani’s support for the Fired Four is a step forward in building support for the struggle to reinstate the Fired Four, one that is the result of the hard work of student, faculty, and union activists at the university. His comments made it into every major news outlet that covered the event at Brooklyn College. But it is also a decision that is consistent with the candidate’s previous support for the movement for Palestine, his criticisms of the ongoing genocide in Gaza and his outrage at the attacks on student protesters in New York City.
This support for Palestine in particular, and Mamdani’s self-described (if highly qualified) identity as a democratic socialist, has led members of both parties and the Trump administration to attempt to actively undermine his campaign, most recently by trying to convince Mayor Eric Adams to drop out of the race. Despite this, and the smears and fear-mongering coming from the bourgeois press, Mamdani has maxed out his possible campaign contributions, and continues to significantly outperform his rivals in the polls.
If Mamdani becomes mayor — which is looking increasingly possible, especially if Adams stays in the race — he would have a significant influence over future CUNY policy on free speech and the right to protest, particularly around the questions of Israel and Gaza. He would also, as Mamdani himself acknowledged during the rally, oversee the brutal NYPD and determine if and when it is deployed to repress protests on university campuses and throughout the city.
He harshly criticized the decision to repress the encampments on CUNY’s campuses, but as mayor he would be in the position of containing such resistance when it risks upsetting “business as usual” in the country’s financial capital. In fact, Mamdani is already cozying up to liberal Democratic politicians like Obama, and showing that he is willing to step back from some of his more radical positions and to distance himself from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in order to appease the financial and business interests of the city’s elite. The pressure to fall in line will be even greater after he wins.
Going further in supporting the Fired Four and the broader attacks on the Palestine movement could bring Mamdani and the university into direct conflict with the Trump administration, which is just itching for an excuse to attack New York City’s working class, immigrants, and students. Mamdani referenced this possibility in answer to a question from the crowd about Trump’s threats to send the National Guard as he did in Los Angeles and Washington D.C., but his response was hardly inspiring. Instead of talking about building true working-class resistance on the streets and in the unions — the way a socialist politician would — he instead spoke vaguely about the necessity to “use all the tools at our disposal” to stop Trump’s militarization of our cities and terrorizing of immigrant communities.
He then went on to reference the efforts of Governor Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass, both of whom did little more than seek to quell the protests and sue the Trump administration, as if their actions are a model for resisting Trump. But as the president’s total disregard for the law has shown, we will not defeat such attacks through legislation or appeals to the courts. The sharpest tools in our arsenal are the actions staged by the working class, students, and communities who have come out to defend their neighbors and loved ones and steadfastly reject Trump’s attacks; they’re the efforts by union members and students to stand up against the repression of their right to protest and speak up against genocide.
In that spirit, Mamdani’s expression of solidarity with the Fired Four and the support it received is a sign that outrage at this repression is deeply felt by New Yorkers and the CUNY community. Unwaveringly defending the Fired Four and all students, faculty and staff targeted for their activism is a critical part of the fight against the Far Right and attacks on the working class in the university and beyond.