Times Mamdani Article Using Hacked Documents from White Supremacist Draws Outcry

On Thursday, the New York Times published an article about Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayoral candidate, that relied on documents stolen in a hack of Columbia University’s computer systems. Since then, the piece has sparked an uproar over sourcing, newsworthiness, and race.

The article reported that in 2009, as part of a college application to Columbia, Mamdani had checked boxes indicating that he was both “Asian” and “Black or African American.” Mamdani, who is of Indian descent, was born in Uganda and lived in South Africa before moving to the United States when he was seven years old. He told the Times that he selected those boxes because the available options did not reflect the complexity of his background. (Mamdani was not admitted to the school.) The story, which was written by two reporters from the Metro desk and a freelancer who normally covers health, was overseen by a newsroom in transition: the longtime Metro editor, Nestor Ramos, is in the process of taking over the National desk.

The focus on Mamdani’s racial heritage and self-identification soon sparked an intense debate online. Many commenters suggested that the story failed to rise to the level of a scoop and instead treated a mundane matter of personal identification as a scandal. (“I don’t have a problem with how he self-identifies,” Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate for mayor running against Mamdani, told Fox News on Friday.)