In Mamdani’s New York, civil discourse has died
Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration speech on Jan. 1 became instantly famous for his promise to prove the “warmth of collectivism.” Yet Americans should pay just as much attention to another deeply concerning comment from the socialist mayor of New York City’s first act in office. He declared that those who are “fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty,” implying that his administration won’t tolerate public debate about his agenda.
These words mark the moment when higher education’s radical monoculture jumped into the real world of political power and cultural impact. Our experiment in self-government is now at unprecedented risk.
Mamdani’s words are familiar to anyone who has followed the decline of the university in recent decades. It reflects the idea that respectful discourse – a central Enlightenment and American ideal – is really a tool of oppression used by elites to prop themselves up while keeping everyone else down. This belief is widespread on campus: A December poll from the free-speech group FIRE found that 90% of undergraduates think that “words can be violence.” Even worse, a third of students are willing to use actual violence to prevent the saying of those words. This is a generation prepared to stifle debate it dislikes, casting even the most well-meaning ideological opponents as enemies of society.
But Mamdani’s inauguration is the first time this generation has seized the levers of power outside of the classroom. It makes sense: His candidacy was driven by zealot-like support from young college graduates and students – the groups most likely to be radicalized. Now Mamdani, in some of his first words, is spreading the message that discourse is dangerous. This isn’t simply another college professor preaching to the undergrad choir. It’s the mayor of America’s most powerful city proselytizing the broader public about the supposed moral importance of stifling debate.
Mamdani’s rhetoric is especially dangerous due to his track record of enabling and encouraging antisemitism. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the biggest security bills my organization has paid have been for events in which Jewish students could discuss the Hamas attacks openly and experience their heritage – and that’s in a small town in rural Pennsylvania. Two of the speakers we hosted in November and protected were attacked, bloodied, and hospitalized the next day. But it’s just not Jewish people who are threatened when civil discourse is discarded. Everyone is at risk from the resulting breakdown of basic human decency.
Given the ideological capture of academia, the day was always going to come when the inmates started running the asylum. What’s shocking is that so many serious people failed to see it. A generation of well-meaning centrists let such extremism run riot in higher education, assuming that what happened on campus would surely stay there. It didn’t, and the resulting damage will not easily or quickly be undone.
But it must be confronted as soon as possible, which requires immediate action from sane Americans of all political stripes. While some may pin their hopes on the Trump administration, the real reform of higher education must happen elsewhere. As we enter America’s 250th year, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas policymakers have created new civics programs within their state universities. This is a template for further progress. At the very least, students should learn about the Enlightenment values that undergirded the American experiment before deciding whether they will join Mamdani in denouncing them.
The most important action, however, depends on philanthropists. Many of the country’s most successful people are profoundly disappointed by their alma maters, yet continue to make large, unrestricted gifts to them. This is profoundly self-defeating, insofar as it supports the training of a generation that rejects the foundations of American success. Instead, philanthropists should stop funding irreformable schools, establish new centers at the schools where there’s still a shred of hope, and even create new schools altogether, similar to the University of Austin. Whether on the sane left or the sane right, the donor’s goal should be to make civil discourse and respectful debate the defining part of a university’s work. That’s currently the case for only a handful of schools.
Zohran Mamdani is proof that the destructive ideology that defines the modern university is poised to damage America itself. He is the first of a wave of extremists who want to reshape society for the worse. Our best hope, as a country, is to begin building an even bigger wave of college graduates who practice civil discourse and promote social cohesion. This monumental challenge will take years. Untold harm will be done in the meantime. But the survival of our experiment in self-government ultimately depends on raising the next generation to choose a better, truer, and freer path than the one chosen by Zohran Mamdani and the radicalized army that elected him.