Bowdoin Socialists is planning to bring Mahmood Mamdani to campus this fall, pressing ahead with a lecture series even after Bowdoin College ordered the group to stop publishing online content and dial back its political activity.
The student group said the speaker series reflects its interest in engaging national and international debates. Finley Rhys, speaking for Bowdoin Socialists, said the group is also talking to Hasan Piker about holding a lecture at the college.
Bowdoin Socialists, which describes itself as an anti-capitalist and anti-fascist coalition, was organized after socialist Mamdani was elected mayor in November. The group has since become one of the more visible political organizations on the $94,000-a-year campus, and the planned appearance by Mahmood Mamdani is set to be one of its biggest events of the fall.
Administrators moved against the group in February after it released a report linking two former college trustees to Jeffrey Epstein. The college has alleged that Bowdoin Socialists never registered with the school, while the group rejected the order and continued with its plans.
Mahmood Mamdani is a chaired professor of African history and colonialism at Columbia University and sits on the London-based Gaza Tribunal's advisory policy council. His son, Mamdani, graduated from Bowdoin in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in Africana studies and founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine while at the college.
The Gaza Tribunal has been described as an Israel-hating organization that routinely accuses the Jewish state of committing genocide and has expressed sympathy for suicide bombers. That makes the planned lecture more than a routine campus event: it places Bowdoin at the center of a fight over socialism, free expression and how far a student group can push before the college steps in again.
