People say academe will never change. But if NYC government can, so can we. Here are 8 tactics Mayor Mamdani uses–and that we academics can learn from.
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In Faculties: A Dialogue on Inciting Constructive Change in Destructive Times (forthcoming, Duke UP, Fall 2026), Jody Greene and I discuss the best strategies we’ve used ourselves or learned about from colleagues that are effective in working towards positive, beneficial, hopeful academic change–even in desperate times, especially in desperate times. Our goal is to offer the best suggestions we can for faculty stepping into leadership roles–and that can be anything from chairing a search committee in your field, leading colleagues in refashioning the major in view of declining (or burgeoning) enrollments, developing a flexible GenAI policy for one’s institution, or becoming a chair, a dean, or a different kind of administrator (such as leading or founding a Teaching and Learning Center), running a lab, or even being a college president. In all, one is both a leader and a faculty member, a colleague. It can be difficult (you can’t just step in and tell a colleague what to do) but it is also incredibly important and rewarding. Working together with one’s colleagues towards a collective good–say, coming up with a constructive AI policy or changing the institution’s general education requirements–is the best antidote to despair. Starting small or, at least, realistically enough to score a victory builds trust and confidence in the networks and allies needed to tackle still bigger future projects. And, even if one does not succeed, the relationships one builds, in and of themselves, are crucial in demoralizing times.
Because I’m interested in discovering strategies for leading positive change at this disheartening time, I have been studying the remarkable success at articulating and achieving goals by Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani. Even his detractors acknowledge his extraordinary capabilities not just as a communicator but as a leader of a very large team that is continually uncovering new areas that can be improved–and then improving them. Thirty-four years old, a proudly self-described Democratic Socialist with strong and often controversial principles, Mayor Mamdani shouldn’t exist–and yet he does. He also uses an effective bag of tricks, over and over again–for communications, goal setting, and team-building. We can learn from him, and use his continuing successes to inspire our own.*
Many of the Mayor’s principles and practices–what I’m calling the “Mamdani Method”–give concrete proof of success to the general strategies for “inciting constructive change” that we advocate in Faculties. Let’s break those down–and learn from them.
THE MAMDANI METHOD
- Stay human. That means looking down as well as up. This is especially true of administrators who suddenly rise from the ranks of faculty and colleagues to a world where 95% of one’s activity is with other administrators, professional staff, senior administrators, trustees, donors, and governing boards but with decisions that have to be implemented on the ground, by faculty who often had little or no role in making the decision. Because the process leading decisions is often invisible to the faculty who have to enact and enforce the decisions, faculty often think administrators do nothing. Labor studies of university administrators suggest they work constantly, easily 55-70 or more hours a week, again often in meetings with other administrators or professional staff. At the same time, sometimes administrators forget what it was like to be a faculty member, especially on the way to tenure, where, the research also shows, it’s also common to be working 55-70 hours a week. Remembering that simple dose of labor realism goes a long way to two key elements of the Mamdani Method: respect and trust. (Listen to any speech, any interview, and you will hear a lot of “we” when it comes to praise and vision, a lot of “I” when it comes to regret, taking responsibility for a mistake, and in striving to do better.)
- State simple, implementable goals that represent a larger mission. And repeat those goals over and over. I think every New Yorker could recite Mamdani’s three oft-repeated goals during his mayoral campaign: a rent-freeze on all of the city’s rent-stabilized apartments; free, universal childcare; and free city bus service. Simple to understand and with huge symbolic force: these were concrete initiatives towards making the city more affordable (the main mission) for the city’s workers. The first two–rent freeze and childcare–have happened. We hear almost daily on progress with the busses. Nor are these public goods just for “poor people.” “Universal”–benefit to all–is another principle he relies on often. For example, the childcare is free to any NYC resident. Mamdani has said that one needs to earn over $300,000 a year to afford full-time day care in the city’s private day care centers. The median personal income in the city is 40-50K a year, family income 80-90K. So “universal” covers a very large swath of New Yorkers. There’s no bureaucratic “means testing” that divides “rich” from “poor” or requires reams of paperwork. He is the Mayor of all New York. How can that principle of stating (and re-stating) simple, principled, achievable goals be applied in higher education?
- Do What You Promised–And Celebrate Victories In less than six months, rents are frozen and childcare centers are going up. The plans for free busses are in the works, and we get progress reports on that. Joyous progress reports on all of it. Constantly. Not as a brag but as a principle of solidarity and community-building and as a model of success against odds–if you have the will and tenacity. Even if you have no kids who will ever be in free childcare, even if you’ve never been on a city bus or lived in rent-stabilized housing, it’s thrilling seeing promises fulfilled. How often does that happen in politics? Or in academe? (And when it does, as in POTUS’s rapid execution of Project 2025 or Musk sweeping in to lay of tens of thousands of government workers–disproportionately Black women–or in the extreme and instant cutbacks of thousands of federal research grants across all fields–it is often debilitating and authoritarian, not liberating, collaborative, and positive.) If you are chairing a committee, let us all know what you are doing, what’s happening, what you are thinking about–and by all means share your successes, however incremental, along the way. Tell us what you did and how you did it. We all can learn from you!
- Do Extra, Small, Positive, Unexpected Things–And Tell Us All About Those Too. Leaving lights on at soccer fields around the city so people who work long hours can play at night? Creating a task force to eliminate bureaucracy and make it easier on small businesses? Offering a “Talk to Tenants” program where anyone can easily complain and be heard? Planning a low income housing complex on desolate, long-vacant government property? Opening government-owned grocery stores, esp in “food deserts” where there are only exploitative chain stores that don’t even stock fresh produce? Filling potholes–or finally repairing that broken bike ramp onto Brooklyn Bridge? Almost daily, New Yorker’s hear some announcement about repair to something annoying or some “gift” that costs little but has both material and symbolic value; or we are invited to a forum, a workshop, a new website. (Today, bus stops around the city had digital posters announcing a Street Sweeping day and invited residents to come join in the city clean up.) It’s clear that hundreds, maybe thousands, of people are working hard and doing what they can on the way to bigger successes.
- Be Responsive Not Defensive. Instead of denying a problem, acknowledge and address it. We saw this early on when, during his first month as Mayor, Mamdani had to deal with two historic snowstorms. The city wasn’t prepared and people suffered and several died, tragically, in the first one. Instead of blaming it on his predecessor, Mamdani initiated intensive self-study and emergency planning–and, when a second snowstorm came days later, the city was ready. Anyone could sign up to shovel streets for $30 an hour. Emergency trucks roamed the city. Long-time New Yorkers were astonished to see mothers pushing baby carriages down clean side walks, between the snow drifts, a day after the storm. No one needs to be perfect. We all need to learn how to take responsibility and how to learn from our mistakes.
- Focus on Change, not Critique If you listen to Mamdani’s speeches, you hear positive comments, forceful commitments to change, far more often than you hear critique of what has been done in the past, what is being done by others (NB: As in the interview on The Root, he rarely even utters the name of POTUS, even when interviewers push him, and dismisses comments about his detractors, insisting he doesn’t pay attention to what they say about him. Instead, he deftly turns the question back to New York, to what can be done to benefit New Yorkers.) Especially for intellectuals, critique can too easily become an end in itself–an end that defeats actual attempts at implementable, if often compromised, realistic, doable change. As bell hooks insists in Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope: “When we only name the problem, when we state complaint without a constructive focus or resolution, we take hope away. In this way critique can become merely an expression of profound cynicism, which then works to sustain dominator culture.”
- Invite Participation. Typically, an academic committee is selected and charged with specific goals (equivalent to rent-freeze, free childcare, free busses). Often, the committee is instructed to keep its proceedings secret. When two years later, the recommendations are weak, watered down, or insufficient, and the faculty on the committee are blamed. The huge amount of work that inevitably goes into those committees seems for naught. It’s unfair–and breeds cynicism and defeatism. All of the steps above are about including your public (i.e. those colleagues not on the committee) in the process, using all available communication tools. I believe very few goals are served well by keeping the process a secret. Even if parts needs to be closed for reasons of confidentiality, it’s useful to agree on a communications plan in advance that allows for regular interaction beyond the sequestered committee members–email, a regular newsletter, social media, public forums, workshops, etc. It’s crucial to keep people informed, to invite response and feedback, and to let your constituents/colleagues know what you are trying to do and who will benefit, and to be clear about the choices that were discussed, studied, and possibly had to be discarded along the way. It’s even more important to open seemingly unsolvable problems to public discussion.
- Make Allies Everywhere (Including Ones You May Disagree With). In a recent (and borderline hostile) New York Times interview that seemed designed to trap Mamdani into narrow and antagonistic positions, he over and over insisted on “the big tent.” Even over issues he cares about deeply–such as the war on Gaza and the funding of politicians, including Democrats, by AIPAC–he was explicit that he’s “a Democrat” (literally, he said: “I’m a Democrat”) and he will vote for “Democrats,” even if they do not share his commitment on that or other individual issues. Mamdani notes: “My point is that the importance of a big tent, it’s critical that we can work with those with whom we might not have agreement on every single issue. And you can even see in the administration that I’ve put together, it’s not an administration where at every job interview I ask someone, ‘What are your thoughts about Israel and Palestine?” Frankly it has very little to do with most of the things that I’m hiring for. You are looking for expertise. You are looking to deliver on the ambition of your policy platform and to build a team that’s able to do so.”
Big tent. Expertise. Delivering on your policy platform. Building a team. Communicating victories. Spreading joy. All that may sound impossible… especially with an inherited city budget deficit of $124 billion. Pretty much anyone would have said it was impossible. “A mayor can only do so much . . . ” One would have been called naive (or worse) saying change at this level could happen. But, six months in, it is happening. For the public good. If that is true in city government, why is it “naive” to believe change is impossible in academe?
We have seen some two years of disastrous actions–the destructive tornado of DOGE that we’ve seen tear through higher education and the rest of the nation and, indeed, the world. I’m not saying we can reverse disasters but there are things we can do. Impossible, you say? Academe never changes? Well, that’s simply not true. All over the country, faculty are working together with administrators, professional staff, students, and community to fight for higher education. On a national level, the scientists laid off from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration joined together to create Climate.us as a nonprofit organization that’s independent from government funding or oversight. In the humanities, several organizations (including MLA, ACLS, and AHA) sued on behalf of over 1,400 NEH recipients whose grants were abruptly ended by the government. They won the initial lawsuit. NEH was ordered to restore the funding. All around us are inspiring successes we can build on–and communications tactics, goal setting strategies, and methods for coalition-building that we can adapt to our local situations.
The best part of the Mamdani Method is that it is working. No one would have said it would. If it can succeed in New York, it can succeed anywhere (as the old song goes). Mamdani’s success makes that goal not only possible but a challenge: what can we do, each of us, in the realm where we have impact?
We discuss all of these principles and many others in Faculties: A Dialogue On Inciting Constructive Change in Destructive Times. Now, though, we have this example of a politician who, against odds, is “inciting constructive change.” Constructive change can happen–even in destructive times. That’s not just a naive belief. We can do this. Let’s get started!
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*For an excellent glimpse into Mayor Mamdani’s communication style (and a recap of his successes so far), I recommend his interview with journalist Charles Blow on The Root.
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Faculties: A Dialogue on Inciting Constructive Change in Destructive Times will be published in November and is available for pre-orders at a 30% discount if you order on the Duke University Press website (dukeupress.edu/faculties) with the Discount Code: E26FCLTS
(NB: 50% of all royalties from Faculties will be donated to a Duke UP book subsidy fund for new authors).