Socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani used a Brooklyn College event hosted by Sen. Bernie Sanders Saturday night to rip the City University of New York for firing and disciplining Israel-hating, pro-Palestine faculty members.
“I cannot begin my remarks this evening without first acknowledging … that no faculty member should be disciplined for supporting Palestinian human rights,” said Mamdani, shortly after being introduced as Sanders’ “special guest.”
The Democratic mayoral nominee was referring to at least four adjunct professors at Brooklyn College who claim they were canned in June – not over job performance, but over their pro-Palestine advocacy – but he failed to mention these same lecturers are also accused of enabling antisemitism at a college with a huge Jewish pollution.
The remarks drew huge cheers – and chants of “Free! Free Palestine!” — from a predominately lefty audience of nearly 1,800 who attended the “Fight Oligarchy” Town Hall at the college’s Leonard & Claire Tow Center.
Sanders – who briefly attended Brooklyn College in 1959-1960 — also criticized Israel, saying “we should have a foreign policy based on humanity,” and the U.S. government “should not be spending billions of dollars” supporting Israel.
Sanders (D-Vermont) also claimed the NYC mayor’s race is a “test case” for whether Americans still live in a democracy.
“What are the oligarchs afraid of?” said Sanders, referring to President Donald Trump and other billionaires trying to thwart Mamdani’s candidacy.
“They’re afraid of Mamdani becoming an example of what can happen all over this country,” added Sanders, drawing huge cheers.
Both pols took questions from the audience, but they were mostly softball topics allowing Mamdani to tout some of his campaign platforms.
They included Mamdani’s desire to roll the retirement age of “Tier 6” public employees hired after 2012 back to 55 years old from its current benchmark of 63 years old, and boost NYC’s efforts to provide legal aid for illegal migrants facing deportation.
However, a Jewish woman, who wasn’t selected to speak but tried repeatedly to ask Mamdani how he planned to make life safer to Jewish New Yorkers, was promptly booted from the event on Sanders’ orders.
She wasn’t the other attendee kicked out.
Earlier, a male heckler sporting a T-shirt with the Cuban flag was escorted out the venue after yelling at Mamdani: “You are a communist! This is not Cuba, you fool!”
“You know that something has changed when it’s not enough to call us Democratic socialists anymore,” quipped Mamdani.
Prior of the event, critics ripped Brooklyn College for using its public campus to host what amounts to a partisan event boosting Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.
“This is a political event,” former CUNY trustee Jeffery Wiesenfeld told The Post.
“Oligarchy my ass. Sanders is coming to New York to help Mamdani.”
CUNY deferred comment to Brooklyn College, which is part of the taxpayer-funded city university system.
The college in a statement said “the Leonard and Claire Tow Center is a part of the Brooklyn College campus. Any candidate is welcome to rent this facility.”
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