Mamdani reportedly eyeing former ‘Squad’ member for top position despite controversial track record

New York City socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is reportedly considering former Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman as his choice to lead the city’s schools despite Bowman’s controversial track record on a variety of issues.

Bowman could become the New York City Chancellor of Schools if Mamdani were to become mayor in November, in a position where he will oversee more than 1,000 schools with almost a million students, the New York Post reported last month.

Bowman, a progressive Democrat and former member of “The Squad” in Congress, once called standardized testing in public schools a “form of modern-day slavery” when he was serving as a Bronx public school principal in 2015.

“Slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, crack cocaine and now standardized testing were all … designed to destroy the mind, body and soul of black and brown people,” Bowman said. 

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According to a New York Post report on Friday, Bowman operated a radical public school without a license for about two years. 

Bowman, who gained national notoriety in 2023 for pulling a fire alarm in Congress in the middle of a dramatic House floor vote which led to him being censured, has drawn heated criticism in recent years for controversial anti-Israel comments.

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Bowman has defended the pro-Palestine chant “From the river to the sea,” which many in the Jewish community view as a call to eradicate Israel.

He has been a staunch critic of Israel, especially since the start of its ongoing war with Hamas in Gaza. Last year, he attended a fundraiser co-hosted by an Islamic leader who said he was “happy to see” the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians.

Bowman was also forced to apologize for denying that Hamas had raped women and committed other atrocities during the terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel. 

Bowman sparked outrage from Jewish groups in 2024 for defending a mural of Louis Farrakhan, who has infamously made disparaging comments about Jews, including calling them “the synagogue of Satan” and “termites.” 

He also came under fire that same year when an unearthed video showed him honoring a radical Black activist and convicted murderer during a special project at a New York City middle school while serving as its principal before being elected to Congress.

A 2014 video centered on Cornerstone Academy for Social Action Middle School’s (CASA) then-“Wall of Action” project shows Bowman praising various historical Black and Latino figures being honored on the wall, including Assata Shakur, who was convicted in the 1973 killing of a New Jersey state trooper. Bowman referred to the people on the wall as “tremendous, tremendous figures.”

Shakur, whose real name is JoAnne Chesimard, was a member of the Black nationalist group Black Liberation Army and was serving a life sentence for the fatal shooting of the officer before escaping from prison in 1979 with the help of Mutulu Shakur, another radical Black activist praised by Bowman in the video. She fled to Cuba, where she remains a wanted domestic terrorist today.

Mamdani has faced criticism for numerous anti-Israel positions of his own dating back to his college days when he called for academic sanctions against Israel. He has often spoken out in favor of BDS, sanctions against Israel that Influence Watch describes as “an international campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel as the expression of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination by isolating the country economically through consumer boycotts, business and government withdrawal of investment, and legal sanctions.”

Mamdani has also faced criticism for refusing to condemn the phrase “Globalize the intifada,” and Fox News Digital reported this week that Mamdani had said in 2023 that Israel is “not a place” and “not a country.”

Mamdani’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.

“I am not thinking about any of that,” Bowman told the New York Post in early July about the possible appointment. “I want to help my brother get elected. I am exceptional in compartmentalizing. Right now, I want to help Zohran win the general election.”

Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie contributed reporting.