Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s schools chancellor is a race-obsessed apparatchik for extreme leftist, anti-merit policy, critics told The Post.
Kamar Samuels, a longtime educator with a history of dismantling Gifted & Talented programs, served as a superintendent of school districts repping parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn before Mamdani tapped him to head the nation’s largest school system.
As a superintendent for District 13 in downtown Brooklyn and then District 3 on the Upper West Side, he pushed for a bevy of woke policies while regularly holding “antiracist” and “equity” town halls.
“I don’t like him, I’ve never liked him; he came in as an ideologue,” a DOE official told The Post, adding he thinks Samuels is an “idiot.”
Samuels, 48, called the shots in District 13 before being appointed by then-Mayor Eric Adams in 2022 to lead District 3.
The longtime educator promoted and hosted multiple “Anti-Racist Town Hall” events in both boroughs dedicated to pushing a woke agenda in the name of equity. Guest speakers included far-left Brooklyn Councilwoman Crystal Hudson in February 2022.
“You are invited to join D3 town hall: A courageous conversation about equity,” he posted in 2023.
“District 13 continues our conversation on serving all students in an Anti-Racist District tonight at 7pm when we hear from students at MS 266 and PS 133! Tuesday, June 7 @ 7:00 pm Anti-Racist Town Hall,” Samuels posted in June 2022.
Samuels was so color-obsessed that he couldn’t help but race-bait on social media after comedian Chris Rock was slapped by actor Will Smith at the 2022 Oscars.
“Just wondering … If Chris Rock were white, would Will Smith had slapped him?” Samuels quipped on X following “the slap heard round the world.”
In June 2023, he hosted an “equity” town hall with Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, an advocate against standardized testing who once claimed the practice originated in the eugenics movement and has faced accusations of antisemitism.
“Israel is a terrorist state,” she posted Oct. 1 on X.
Samuels’ District 13 run saw him dismantle G&T programs there and replace it with the International Baccalaureate programs.
“What a pleasant surprise! Removing G&T gives us an opportunity to recreate and reimagine,” he claimed in October 2021.
“He has a progressive vision that is evil, asking individuals to solve all of society’s problems is not something that’s generally worked,” the DOE official said.
However, Samuels fit the mold for what Mamdani was seeking in a schools chancellor.
Doing away with the longstanding Gifted & Talented program for kindergarten students was one of Mamdani’s core campaign promises.
Former Mayor Bill de Blasio began to phase out the program in 2021 — before his successor Eric Adams revitalized it.
Samuels and the Department of Education did not immediately return messages.