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    The Grip That Race and Identity Have on My Students

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    In the spring of 2023, in a cramped classroom in the Hudson Valley, I taught an undergraduate seminar on the courage to think about race in unconventional ways. It revolved around reading books by Frederick Douglass, James Weldon Johnson and Albert Murray. These minds had shaped and refined my thinking about the idea of America, the fundamentally mongrel populations that inhabit it, as well as the yet-to-be-perfected flesh-and-blood nation of the future we might one day bring forth in unison.Early in the semester, as I waxed exuberant about the unifying possibilities of the 2008 election, I was met by a conference table ringed with blank stares. For my clever and earnest students, I realized, the earth-shattering political achievements of the beleaguered but still unfolding present were nothing but the vaguest rumor of an abstract history.“Professor,” a diligent young woman from Queens who described herself as Latina and applied a no-nonsense activist lens and corresponding vocabulary to most engagements with the world, voiced what all her classmates must have been thinking. “I was 4 years old in 2008. I don’t know what you’re talking about!”Their experience of this country, and themselves, couldn’t have differed more from my own, or from many of the 19th- and 20th-century authors on our syllabus. I assigned these writers because they had so courageously laid the intellectual and moral framework that a figure like Barack Obama would one day harness.I am old enough now to appreciate that there can be only one politician in your lifetime who can truly move you to dream. I feel lucky to have had that experience through Mr. Obama. My students that semester — white, Latino and Asian teens and 20-somethings whose political views had been forged in relation to the reactionary populism of Donald Trump and through a certain skepticism of the American idea itself — had yet to encounter such an inspirational figure. Race pessimism, even a kind of mass learned helplessness, was instead the weather that enveloped them.When my friend Coleman Hughes guest-lectured on his case for colorblindness, several of them were visibly unnerved, suggesting that the idea itself was a form of anti-Blackness. Most maintained that one could no more “retire” from race, as Adrian Piper — another of the authors we wrestled with — aspired to do, than one could teleport up from the classroom.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mamdani Once Claimed to Be Asian and African American. Should It Matter?

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      Zohran Mamdani’s responses on a 2009 college application were criticized by his mayoral rivals. The blowback was dismissed by his supporters as a politically motivated attack.The disclosure on Thursday that Zohran Mamdani identified his race as both “Asian” and “Black or African American” as a high school senior applying to college has provoked sharply different reactions.Three of his rivals in New York City’s mayoral race have strongly criticized Mr. Mamdani, with two suggesting potential fraud and calling for further investigation.Right-wing pundits have flocked to social media to call Mr. Mamdani a liar — and worse.And his supporters have rallied to his defense, angrily characterizing the disclosure as a politically motivated hit job with no bearing on the mayor’s race, one advanced by a right-wing academic who has promoted eugenic views.The varied responses followed Mr. Mamdani’s acknowledgment on Thursday that he had “checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background” while filling out an application to Columbia University in 2009. He said he had not been trying to gain an edge through Columbia’s race-conscious affirmative action admissions program — and, indeed, he was not accepted to the school.The New York Times could find no speeches or interviews in which Mr. Mamdani referred to himself as Black or African American, and he said in an interview that applications to Columbia and other colleges were the only instances when he could recall describing himself as such.Representative Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat who endorsed Mr. Mamdani’s chief rival, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, in the primary, said that he believed that, “within reason, we should all be the arbiters of our own identity.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application

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      Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat running for mayor of New York City, was born in Uganda. He doesn’t consider himself Black but said the application didn’t allow for the complexity of his background.As he runs for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has made his identity as a Muslim immigrant of South Asian descent a key part of his appeal.But as a high school senior in 2009, Mr. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, claimed another label when he applied to Columbia University. Asked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times.Columbia, like many elite universities, used a race-conscious affirmative action admissions program at the time. Reporting that his race was Black or African American in addition to Asian could have given an advantage to Mr. Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and spent his earliest years there.In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani, 33, said he did not consider himself either Black or African American, but rather “an American who was born in Africa.” He said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process. (He was not accepted at Columbia.)“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” said Mr. Mamdani, a state lawmaker from Queens.The application allowed students to provide “more specific information where relevant,” and Mr. Mamdani said that he wrote in, “Ugandan.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Happens to Harvard If Trump Successfully Bars Its International Students?

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      If President Trump makes good on all his threats, Harvard may lose much of its influence and prestige. It could also become even harder to afford.As President Trump and his team dialed up the pressure on Harvard University last month, threatening to bar its international students, the school issued what was at once a warning and a plea.“Without its international students, Harvard is not Harvard,” school officials wrote in a lawsuit asking a judge to stop the federal government’s actions.It left unsaid what Harvard, if it were no longer Harvard, would become.It’s a scenario that some inside Harvard are beginning to imagine and plan for as the Trump administration lobs attacks from all angles, seeking to cut the university off from both students and billions of dollars in federal funding.Top leaders at Harvard, one of the nation’s oldest universities, including its provost, John F. Manning, a conservative legal scholar who once clerked for the former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, are meeting more frequently to strategize.The school’s board of trustees, the Harvard Corporation, has discussed whether hundreds, if not thousands, of people will need to be laid off.And on 8:30 a.m. Zoom calls once or twice a week, administrative officials meet with senior leaders of Harvard’s undergraduate and graduate schools to share updates about the latest Trump developments, which keep coming rapid-fire.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Tesla Protesters Claim a Victory as Elon Musk Leaves Trump’s Side

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      The activists behind the Tesla Takedown campaign say they intend to expand beyond protests at the company’s showrooms.Elon Musk left the Trump administration with a White House send-off on Friday. That was a victory of sorts for a group of activists who have spent much of the last four months organizing protests against Mr. Musk’s right-wing politics by targeting his electric car company, Tesla.A day later, on Saturday, hundreds of people showed up at more than 50 Tesla showrooms and other company locations to continue their protests.The campaign at Tesla sites began in February after Joan Donovan, a sociology professor at Boston University, gathered friends to hold a demonstration at a Tesla showroom in Boston, and posted a notice about her plan on Bluesky using the hashtag #TeslaTakedown. She said she had been inspired by a small protest at Tesla’s electric vehicle chargers in Maine soon after President Trump’s inauguration.“That first one on Feb. 15 was me and like 50 people,” Ms. Donovan said. “And then the next week it was a hundred more people, and then a hundred more after that, and it’s just grown.”Tesla Takedown has since expanded into an international movement, staging demonstrations at Tesla factories, showrooms and other locations in countries including Australia, Britain, France and Germany as well as across the United States. The campaign’s U.S. growth has been fueled in large part by anger over Mr. Musk’s leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency, which has slashed government spending and dismissed tens of thousands of federal workers while gaining access to sensitive personal data.Mr. Musk departed the administration after his involvement in politics hurt his companies, especially Tesla. Sales of the company’s cars have tumbled since Mr. Trump took office and the start of protests against the company.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Stephen Miller Staffer and Tough Talk: Inside Trump’s Latest Attack on Harvard

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      The Justice Department opened an investigation into the student-run Harvard Law Review. The startling accusations show how the Trump administration is wielding power in pursuit of its political agenda.The Justice Department quietly approached Harvard University last month with startling claims, even by the extraordinary standards of the Trump administration’s monthslong assault on the elite college.The department signaled that it was reviewing claims of discrimination against white men at The Harvard Law Review, and accused the renowned publication of destroying evidence in an open investigation. The administration demanded that Harvard “cease and desist” from interfering.In a series of letters that have not been previously reported, the government also disclosed that it had a “cooperating witness” inside the student-run journal. That witness now works in the White House under Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s domestic policy agenda, Trump officials confirmed.The Law Review is independent of Harvard University. The allegations nonetheless deepened fears among Harvard officials that the administration appeared eager to escalate one of its civil investigations into a criminal inquiry, underscoring how the university’s problems with President Trump extend far beyond the loss of billions in federal funding.But the aggressive language in the letters from the Justice Department’s two top civil rights lawyers appeared to have overstated the allegations in pursuit of an additional way to punish Harvard. In that way, the episode fits a broader trend in how the administration is wielding federal investigatory powers to impose its political agenda.From reshaping the economy to ramping up deportations to punishing the nation’s elite law firms and universities, Mr. Trump’s government has repeatedly prized speed and shock value over the kind of methodical steps typically taken to build a legal case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Skulls of 19 Black Americans Return to New Orleans After 150 Years in Germany

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      The remains, used in the 19th century as part of now discredited racial science, are being laid to rest on Saturday in a traditional jazz funeral.Sometime before Jan. 10, 1872, a young Black laborer named William Roberts checked himself into Charity Hospital in New Orleans. Just 23 years old, he was from Georgia and had a strong build, according to hospital records. His only recorded sickness was diarrhea.He was one of 19 Black patients who died at the hospital in December 1871 and January 1872, and whose skulls were sent to Germany to be studied by a doctor researching a now wholly discredited science that purported a correlation between the shape and size of a skull and a person’s intellect and character.The skulls languished in Germany for about 150 years until Leipzig University contacted the city of New Orleans two years ago to repatriate them.They were returned to New Orleans this month, and on Saturday morning those 19 people who died in the 1800s are being honored with a jazz funeral before their skulls are interred.A staff member at Rhodes Funeral Home removes the remains of one person from the shipping crate that arrived from Germany.Jacob Cochran/Dillard UniversityWhile the return of human remains from museum collections has become more common, the repatriation of these 19 Black cranial remains to New Orleans is believed to be the first major international restitution of the remains of Black Americans from Europe, according to Paul Wolff Mitchell, a researcher at the University of Amsterdam who studies the 19th century history of race and science in the United States and Europe.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Chinese Students Rattled by Trump Plan to ‘Aggressively’ Revoke Visas

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      Students said the latest move had upended their plans and intensified their fears.It had been all figured out, Cici Wang said. Summer at home in China, then back to get her master’s degree in Chicago. After that, if she was lucky, a job in the United States.Now all of that is up in the air, she said, a potential casualty of a crackdown that has upended the future for more than 277,000 Chinese nationals studying in this country.“Hopefully, I’ll be fine,” said Ms. Wang, a 22-year-old aspiring computer scientist, sitting with her parents in the stately main quad of the University of Chicago on Thursday. “But I’m not sure.”Across the country, Chinese students reeled Thursday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that the Trump administration would begin “aggressively” revoking visas for Chinese students studying in the United States. More than two dozen students studying in the United States, most of whom did not want their names published for fear of retaliation, told The New York Times that they worried they could lose their academic opportunities in an instant, with little explanation.In a statement late Wednesday, the State Department announced it was focusing on those who were studying in “critical fields” or who had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The vague parameters had a chilling effect on Thursday as students wondered how broadly the Trump administration would apply its new criteria. Mr. Rubio did not define “critical fields,” but science students felt particularly vulnerable because American officials have expressed concerns about the recruiting of U.S.-trained scientists by China. Nor was it clear how American officials would determine which students had ties to the Communist Party.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Officials Give Harvard 30 Days to Rebut Foreign Student Ban

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      The announcement of the delay came in a legal filing on Thursday as the two sides faced off in a Boston courtroom.The Trump administration has given Harvard 30 days to respond with evidence showing why the administration should not make good on its threat to bar it from enrolling international students, according to a notice that was filed in federal court ahead of a hearing on Thursday.A judge had already temporarily stopped the federal government from cutting off international students from Harvard, and the sides were taking part in a hearing on Thursday morning in an Boston courtroom after Harvard asked for an extension.The administration’s filing appears to be a legal maneuver to delay, if not change, the ultimate outcome in the case. Any halt to the admission of international students threatens to rock Harvard, where international students make up about a quarter of the student body.The filing appeared to address a procedural claim that the administration had not followed the proper method of notification when it abruptly announced it would bar Harvard from a program that allows it to admit international students, said David Super, an administrative law expert at Georgetown University. “An obvious violation like this procedural one is going to be a simple way for the court to rule against the government, and the government wanted to remove that,” he said.But the 30-day delay does little to address the core questions in the case, on which the judge may ultimately have to rule.The Trump administration has sought extensive documentation from Harvard, requesting, among other things, coursework for every international student and information on any student visa holder involved in misconduct or illegal activity.Citing Harvard’s failure to fully comply, the administration moved last week to revoke its ability to host international students. It also has accused Harvard of fostering a culture of antisemitism, among other allegations.It is now giving Harvard 30 calendar days to provide written documentation and other evidence “to rebut the alleged grounds for withdrawal.”International students are core to Harvard’s efforts to attract global talent, and they make up an especially high share of the university’s graduate programs. At the Kennedy School of Government, more than half of students are international. At the Chan School of Public Health, about 40 percent of students are international students. More