Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has promised to bring sweeping changes to New York City after a campaign that claimed national attention and rallied youth voters. Now college and university leaders, scholars, and students are speculating about what his win might mean for the city’s more than 120 higher education institutions.

The answer? It’s unclear.

Mamdani was sparse on details about his plans for higher ed on the campaign trail. But his platform, and some of his recent comments and priorities as a New York state assemblymember, may offer a glimpse into his goals for postsecondary education.

Higher ed experts and leaders suspect he’ll be a champion for the City University of New York system, after a long track record of support, while private colleges and universities face a hazier future, given that he previously proposed removing wealthier institutions’ tax breaks. Some also believe, and hope, that he’ll act as a bulwark against interference from the Trump administration, which has heavily targeted higher ed. Mamdani has also shown support for pro-Palestinian protesters and their condemnation of Israel’s war in Gaza, reassuring some he’ll protect students’ right to protest while ringing alarm bells for others, including some of New York City’s Jewish students.

A Cheerleader for CUNY

Mamdani’s platform put forward a single policy proposal on higher education: a promise to work with state and city lawmakers to “massively invest” in the City University of New York, the city’s public system of four-year institutions, community colleges and professional schools, which has consistently called for more funding.

The goal is to support “infrastructure, pay staff and faculty a living wage, give free OMNY cards to all students, and make CUNY tuition-free for all students,” Mamdani’s platform read.

The mayor-elect also highlighted ways he might go about this investment, including by advocating for the New Deal for CUNY, legislation that would cover students’ remaining tuition after other aid programs and increase the system’s faculty-to-student ratio.

The Professional Staff Congress, CUNY’s faculty and staff union and a longtime proponent of the New Deal for CUNY, is celebrating his win. The union endorsed Mamdani and encouraged members to vote for him.

James Davis, president of PSC, said that as an assemblymember, Mamdani was “very consistent and vocal in support of CUNY students and the CUNY system over all.”

The union is “really enthusiastic about the opportunity that his election presents,” he said.

Davis stressed that while CUNY secured important funding wins under Governor Kathy Hochul, including a $53 million influx of state dollars, the system is still recovering from decades of underfunding.

“Mamdani ran and won on an affordability agenda,” and the city’s public higher ed system “can be both affordable and high-quality” with the right resources, he said.

Uncertainty for Privates

While a boost for CUNY would likely draw broad support, Mamdani’s platform also floated a more controversial idea to bolster the system’s funding: taxing the private New York and Columbia Universities.

Two years ago, as an assemblymember, Mamdani and State Senator John Liu introduced the REPAIR Act—or Repeal Egregious Property Accumulation and Invest It Right—which would have eliminated tax breaks for private universities with property taxes that reach or exceed $100 million and redirected the revenue to CUNY. Mamdani and other proponents reintroduced the bill in January after it died in committee. But on the campaign trail, he made little mention of it. (Some institutions, including Brown University, make payments to the municipalities that host them in lieu of property taxes.)

Ann Marcus, professor and director of the Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy at New York University, said she’s not opposed to private universities paying up, but now doesn’t seem like the right time to squeeze Columbia and NYU. Trump cracked down hard on Columbia for tolerating pro-Palestinian student protests, resulting in a more than $200 million settlement, and both universities have struggled with slashed research grants and declining international enrollments.

“He doesn’t want to start a real conflict or war that pits the private sector against the public sector,” Marcus said. “That’s not very productive.”

Davis said removing the tax breaks is “absolutely the right thing to do,” but he agrees “the optics are hard” as “those universities are also being shaken down by the Trump administration—and, frankly, being extorted for ideological reasons out of hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Nonetheless, private universities may have to prepare for their roles to change, said Augusta Kappner, formerly the president of Bank Street College of Education and Borough of Manhattan Community College and the assistant secretary of education in the first Clinton administration.

She noted that Mamdani grew up in Morningside Heights, where Columbia’s main campus is located, so he’s likely to understand not only the value of such institutions but also their tensions with surrounding communities as they expand their real estate holdings and jack up neighborhood housing prices.

“I do think, for the private universities, it’s going to mean a much harder look at what their relationship to the city is and how universities contribute to the city, and how they can help solve the problems that he as mayor is trying to solve,” Kappner said.

Hiroko Masuike/Pool/AFP/Getty Images

Resisting Trump

At the same time, Kappner believes Mamdani could offer a strong defense against Trump, pushing back against the administration’s meddling in higher ed institutions, particularly selective private ones. Mamdani has previously called himself the president’s “worst nightmare.” He sharply condemned the federal arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and recent Columbia University graduate, and has repeatedly promised to resist Trump’s immigration crackdowns. He recently shared plans to meet with Trump ahead of his inauguration.

Mamdani’s “acceptance speech, and other speeches, [have] made it clear that he intends to try to use city resources, particularly legal resources, to fight back against federal incursions on the city,” Kappner said. She expects that to include “any new attempts by President Trump and the federal establishment to further weaken or attack higher education.”

Davis agreed that Mamdani is likely to put up a fight on behalf of immigrant students in particular, who make up at least 30 percent of CUNY’s student population.

“We’re hopeful that, based on [his] more pluralistic vision and the very explicit embrace of New York as a town built by immigrants over many, many generations, that the Mamdani administration will be supportive of the communities that CUNY serves,” he said.

Campus Protests and Policing

Students and higher ed experts are also wondering what Mamdani’s support for pro-Palestinian student protesters might mean for higher ed. In particular, Mamdani criticized Columbia for bringing law enforcement onto campus to respond to a student encampment in the spring of 2024, calling the move “shameful” and “unacceptable” in a post on X.

Kappner said that under his leadership, she anticipates “some pressure on universities to give more careful thought as to when it’s appropriate or necessary to have a police presence on campus.”

For some Jewish students, Mamdani’s embrace of pro-Palestinian protests—including his past hedging on condemning protest slogans like “globalize the intifada”—has stoked concerns.

(Mamdani has also repeatedly condemned acts of antisemitism in New York and the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel.)

A national Jewish student group, Jewish on Campus, sent him a letter this month calling on him to draw up a “clear plan” to address campus antisemitism in the city.

“During your campaign, you simultaneously gave voice to young New Yorkers on issues such as affordability while refusing to condemn rhetoric that has fueled hate and violence against Jewish New Yorkers—including Jewish students,” Julia Jassey, president and CEO of Jewish on Campus, wrote in the letter. “In these critical weeks before you take office, we implore you to outline tangible steps to ensure the safety of every student, including Jewish students.”

The group asked for reassurance that he’ll help implement recent legislation to install Title VI coordinators on New York campuses and that he won’t allow his negative perceptions of Israel to interfere with law enforcement efforts to combat antisemitic hate crimes, including antisemitic acts committed “under the guise of criticism of Israel.” The students also wanted a clear understanding of how antisemitic hate crimes will be defined under his leadership and requested a meeting.

Jassey told Inside Higher Ed that the group’s letter reflected the most common concerns she’s heard from Jewish students in New York City, as well as what “we’d love to happen to make sure that Jewish students’ voices are being heard” within the new mayoral administration.

The group has since been in communication with Mamdani’s team, she said. She declined to share further details “to be respectful of our direct communication with the mayor-elect’s office.”