Fall 2026 Speaker Series

We are an anti-capitalist and anti-fascist student group at Bowdoin College. We have announced the first two speakers in our fall semester series, bringing scholar Mahmood Mamdani P ‘14 and music critic Anthony Fantano to Bowdoin for programs on colonialism, political economy, labor, music, and contemporary culture.

The announcement follows recent public attention to us after we rejected an order from the College to shut down our social media activity. The directive came one day after we released a report on former Bowdoin trustee Jes Staley’s and former Bowdoin President Clayton Rose’s connections with Jeffrey Epstein, drawn from recent DOJ file releases.

On March 12, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sent a letter to Bowdoin President Safa Zaki arguing that Bowdoin’s action functioned as a prior restraint and that students’ right to expressive association includes the right to organize outside formal registration. We have continued to develop our speaker series as part of a broader effort to bring major academic, political, and cultural voices to campus.

Mahmood Mamdani P ‘14 is the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University, one of the foremost scholars of colonialism, and the author of 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. Mamdani is also the father of Zohran Mamdani ‘14, the democratic socialist mayor of New York City, who founded Bowdoin’s SJP chapter.

Anthony Fantano is an American music critic known as “The Internet’s Busiest Music Nerd.” The New York Times described him as “the only music critic who matters (if you’re under 25).” In 2007, he joined WNPR and launched The Needle Drop as a music review blog before transitioning to YouTube in 2009. The Needle Drop currently has around 1.2 billion views.

This series reflects our interest in engaging national and international debates. More speakers will be announced closer to the fall semester, and additional details, including dates, times, locations, and event formats, will be provided at bowdoinsocialists.org and @bowdoinsocialists.