Bowdoin College Persecutes Student Socialist Group Slated to Host Mahmood Mamdani, Hasan Piker, and Anthony Fantano, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression Intervenes and Demands College Response by May 26
Bowdoin College is subjecting me (a founding leader of Bowdoin Socialists, an anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, and anti-Zionist student coalition) to a growing set of charges — including some tied to conduct while I was on medical leave — after I replied "RIP to bro 😿" to a campus email advertising a vigil for Charlie Kirk in September 2025. A fellow student reported the comment as a "direct threat to [their] life."
On February 12, 2026, Bowdoin Socialists published a compilation: "Bowdoin College's Jeffrey Epstein Connections," drawing on the January 2026 DOJ file release, the FCA's 2023 Decision Notice, and the Upper Tribunal's 2025 ruling in Staley v. FCA. One day later, Bowdoin's Director of Student Activities sent a written directive ordering Bowdoin Socialists to cease all online and offline activity on the grounds that we hadn't formally registered. However, student media are "editorially independent of the College and its administration" and the College "has no control over or input on the content of such publications and programming." When I questioned this on February 17, the Director simply replied that he was "passing this along to the Office of the Dean of Students for follow up."
On March 12, 2026, FIRE sent its first public letter to Bowdoin, calling the social media ban on Bowdoin Socialists a violation of our speech rights (at a private college).
On May 15, 2026, FIRE sent a second public letter condemning the ongoing investigations against me personally and demanding all charges be dropped. FIRE assigned a deadline of May 26 to respond.
Despite the ongoing pressure, Bowdoin Socialists is continuing to build out its speaker series for the coming academic year. We have announced two inaugural speakers and are currently in talks with a third:
Mahmood Mamdani is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University and one of the world's foremost scholars on colonialism and political violence. His books include Citizen and Subject, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim, Neither Settler nor Native, and, most recently, Slow Poison: Idi Amin, Yoweri Museveni, and the Making of the Ugandan State. Professor Mamdani is also the father of Zohran Mamdani '14, the Mayor of New York City, who founded Bowdoin's SJP chapter.
Anthony Fantano is widely recognized as the most influential music critic of his generation. In 2007, he joined WNPR and launched The Needle Drop as a music review blog before moving to YouTube in 2009. The channel has since accumulated approximately 1.2 billion views. The New York Times has called him "the only music critic who matters (if you're under 25)."
Hasan Piker is a leftist political commentator and one of the most-watched livestreamers in the United States. Bowdoin Socialists is currently in talks with Piker about an in-person event at the college.