6 takeaways from an interview with Zohran Mamdani’s favorite high school teacher

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Ask Zohran Mamdani which educators influenced him the most, and one name comes up again and again: Marc Kagan.

“He’s a fantastic teacher,” Mamdani said in an interview eight years ago.

The high school social studies teacher stuck with him. During a January forum in the thick of the Democratic mayoral primary, Mamdani spotted Kagan in the audience. A short time later, Mamdani posted pictures with Kagan, writing on X that he was “one of the best teachers I’ve ever had.” Kagan “taught me the value of excellence and hard work,” Mamdani continued.

Kagan, now 68, taught Mamdani twice at the Bronx High School of Science, one of the city’s vaunted specialized high schools, including an advanced world history course. At the time, Kagan was not a veteran teacher. He spent years working for the city’s transit system, first as a mechanic and later as a union activist and leader for the Transport Workers Union local.

After a falling out with the union’s leadership, he joined a city program that quickly trains career changers to fill hard-to-staff roles in public school classrooms. At 47, Kagan began his teaching career at A. Phillip Randolph Campus High School in Harlem. Two years later, he transferred to Bronx Science.

“I thought that I could do something useful and productive in the world” by becoming a teacher, Kagan said in an interview with Chalkbeat.

Mamdani is not Kagan’s first brush with a high-profile government figure. His sister is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, a connection he largely avoided mentioning with his students because he felt it would be a distraction.

After nearly a decade in the classroom, Kagan retired from the city’s public schools in 2014 and went on to earn a doctorate in history from the CUNY Graduate Center; he now teaches as an adjunct professor at CUNY.

Chalkbeat recently caught up with Kagan about his impressions of the teenage Mamdani, a noteworthy interaction with Mamdani’s father during a parent conference, and his favorite history lesson. Here are six takeaways from that conversation.

Mamdani’s father worried about his son’s (very high) marks

When Mamdani was a student in Kagan’s 10th grade global history course, his father, Mahmood Mamdani, arrived at a parent conference frustrated with his son’s performance.

“He was grousing [that] Zohran was getting just a 95,” Kagan recalled. “Like, ‘Why isn’t he working harder? He could be doing better than this.’”

Kagan chalked up the concern about Mamdani’s grades to an immigrant family “striving for their child to do well at Bronx Science and to do well in life.” At the time, he didn’t know that Mahmood Mamdani was a professor at Columbia University who was known for his scholarship on post-colonialism.

Kagan tried to reassure the dad that Mamdani was deeply engaged with the coursework.

“I told him, ‘Never mind about the grade because the wheels are spinning in your son’s head,’” Kagan said. “And that was like the perfect answer … and he just kind of floated out of the room.”

Kagan saw echoes of the teenage Mamdani during the mayoral primary campaign

Kagan said he was impressed with Mamdani’s energetic mayoral campaign and was unsurprised that Mamdani appealed to so many voters during the Democratic primary. The democratic socialist candidate became known for distilling his platform down to easy-to-remember slogans centered on affordability — including free child care and bus service.

“I think you can see that wheel spinning in his head in the current-day Zohran,” Kagan said, echoing what he told the elder Mamdani years earlier.“He was able to articulate the issues that he wanted to articulate in a way that people grasp and could understand and identify with.”

Although Mamdani unsuccessfully ran for student body vice president at Bronx Science, Kagan said he had little inkling that the teen would one day have big political aspirations.

He thinks the teachers union should take a stronger stand against Trump

When the United Federation of Teachers endorsed Mamdani for the November general election, Kagan tried to use the moment to push the union to be more proactive in countering the Trump administration. He tried to introduce an amendment that would require the union to hold a meeting about the issue.

“I look around even at the anti-Trump demonstrations that have occurred in New York, and I don’t really see the UFT there,” he said. “I’m not sure that I know exactly what they should be doing, but I know we’re not doing much.”

Michael Mulgrew, the union president, ruled Kagan out of order before he could introduce the amendment because the retired teacher had already spoken on the topic, Kagan said.

UFT spokesperson Alison Gendar countered that the union is pushing back against Trump.

“The UFT is fighting the overreach of the Trump administration in the courts and in the streets,” Gendar wrote in an email. “Protests, legal action, and union solidarity are the tools the UFT and its state and national affiliates have used seeking to block and dismantle the White House’s attacks on public education, workers, and immigrant students. “

He bristles at accusations that Mamdani’s criticism of Israel is antisemitic

Mamdani has long been a critic of Israel and supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which calls for cutting financial ties to the country due to its unequal treatment of Palestinians. During the primary campaign, Mandani responded to questions about whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state by saying it has a right to exist “as a state with equal rights.” He also characterized Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip as a genocide.

Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani in the Democratic primary and is now running as an independent, attempted to link Mamdani’s positions on Israel to antisemitism. And in the wake of the union’s decision to endorse Mamdani in the general election, some Jewish educators threatened to withhold their dues over the decision. (Mamdani has vowed to vigorously fight antisemitism if elected.)

Asked what his message is to educators who are skeptical of Mamdani’s positions on Israel, Kagan was blunt.

“There are people in New York City, in the UFT, that believe … criticism of Israel is antisemitic,” Kagan said. “They’re wrong.”

A favorite lesson probes the tradeoffs of civilization

In a unit focused on societies like the Iroquois and Maya and how they developed before European settlers arrived in the Americas, Kagan set up a debate about how students would structure society if it was up to them.

The unit “was a really interesting couple of days because people had to grapple with this idea of what is civilization? What do I like about it? What don’t I like about it?” he said. Kagan said his students often advocated for adopting current societal structures, not because they worried about access to iPhones or video games but because they worried about being conquered by other civilizations with more modern technology. Those arguments often surprised him.

“We’re just going to become victims of civilizations,” he said his students argued. “So we have to do it almost as a method of self-protection, rather than as something we necessarily want to fully embrace.”

Teachers should have more opportunities to learn from each other

At the beginning of his teaching career at Bronx Science, Kagan said he got some of his most valuable insights about the craft from informal conversations with other educators in the social studies department.

“I just sat at their feet and picked their brains and learned so much,” Kagan said.

The Education Department has made some efforts over the years to create opportunities for teacher mentorship and share best practices across schools, but Kagan said his main piece of policy advice would be for the system to deepen those efforts by giving teachers time to reflect and talk with each other by lightening their course loads after a couple years.

There is often little time to ask questions such as “What am I doing well? What am I not doing well? What can I teach to others?” he said. “It’s just hard to do that when you’re teaching 170 students.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.