Zohran Mamdani Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

Take Back the City

An interview with Samuel Stein on his new book, A Right to Housing?

September 16, 2026 • by Samuel Stein and Andreas Petrossiants

Samuel Stein’s A Right to Housing? asks more than just the titular question, but it does sit with a particularly troubling dilemma: are we crazy to keep fighting? As the book jacket describes, it offers both a “radical blueprint for universal housing” and an “unflinching assessment of why we haven’t won,” split ...

How to Incentivize Justice

The Price of Mercy makes clear the human toll when we employ a criminal legal system that prioritizes punishment over progress

August 31, 2026 • by Emma Robertson

Emily Galvin Almanza is a former public defender and the cofounder of advocacy group Partners for Justice. Her legal career boasts impressive accomplishments and accolades, and yet, as Almanza herself recognizes in the opening pages of her debut book, The Price of Mercy (Crown 2026), her life would likely be ...

A Mayor Who Promises the Moon

Canvassing for Mamdani

October 29, 2025 • by Mitchell Abidor

In the run-up to this year’s election for New York City’s next mayor, I’ve spent several days canvassing for Zohran Mamdani. On every occasion I’ve been as much as a half-century older than the rest of my young, white comrades. Unlike most of them, I’m also a native New Yorker, ...