The Unchecked Rise of Crazy Race Theory in Academia

Last Thursday, a longtime tenant advocate named Cea Weaver was tabbed by new New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to head a new “Office to Protect Tenants.” Mamdani had made holding bad landlords accountable a priority, and the appointment of his confidante Weaver along with a publicized visit to crumbling rental property underscored the commitment.

Then Weaver’s social media history became an issue. While the Bryn Mawr and NYU-educated Weaver disabled her X account, she didn’t act fast enough, as “Notes From the Front” author and Substacker Michelle Tandler grabbed screenshots. Tandler, a business world vet turned aggressive citizen journalist who cut her teeth documenting corruption and decay in San Francisco, wrote she “had a hunch” this summer that Weaver might get a position in Mamdani’s government, and set about archiving her statements. “She’s Chesa Boudin times a thousand,” an incredulous Tandler said today, referencing the oft-mocked former San Francisco District Attorney.

In one clip, Weaver talked about how “we” can “take over a lot of distressed housing,” and use legal processes to tell “scofflaw” landlords, “We’re gonna take this building away from you.” A video short that went viral showed Weaver talked about moving home ownership from an “individualized good” to a “collective good,” saying that “especially white families, but some POC families” are going to have to embrace a “different relationship to property” than “the one that we currently have”:

There aren’t many things more obnoxious than a housing official threatening to take your home for the crime of owning it. But she’s one person, and merely “controversial,” according to the New York Times. Gotham’s paper of record, which has seemed split internally on how to cover Mamdani, quoted former Deputy Mayor for Housing Vicki Been as saying Weaver is “very savvy, strategic. Ideologically driven, of course, but also practical.” Even the outgoing head of the “probusiness” Partnership for New York City, Kathleen Wylde, said Weaver was “not a lunatic” and “actually quite smart.”

After blowing off reporters for days, Mamdani issued a statement doubling down on Weaver:

We made the decision to have Cea Weaver serve as our executive director for the mayor’s office to protect tenants, to build on the work that she has done to protect tenants across the city, and we were already seeing the results of that work.

Mamdani continues to ignore media