{"id":199730,"date":"2026-04-16T19:00:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T19:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/199730\/"},"modified":"2026-04-16T19:00:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T19:00:18","slug":"nycs-first-lady-rama-duwaji-apologizes-for-teenage-posts-says-her-work-is-her-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/199730\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC\u2019s First Lady Rama Duwaji apologizes for teenage posts, says her work is her focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

A month after saying his wife, Rama Duwaji, was a \u201cprivate person\u201d with no role in his administration<\/a>, Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced renewed questions Thursday after she apologized in a recent interview for \u201charmful\u201d posts she wrote as a teenager.<\/p>\n

The questions followed a\u00a0Hyperallergic profile<\/a> of the city\u2019s first lady, published Wednesday; it was Duwaji\u2019s first interview since Mamdani took office. In it, she addressed the publication of \u201cold tweets I wrote as a teenager,\u201d saying she felt \u201ca lot of shame\u201d over language that was \u201cso harmful to others.\u201d She added that \u201cbeing 15 doesn\u2019t excuse it\u201d and said she was \u201ctruly sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve read and seen a lot of what others have had to say in response, and I understand the hurt I caused and am truly sorry,\u201d Duwaji, a Syrian-American artist who married Mamdani last year, told the outlet.<\/p>\n

But the interview did not settle the broader questions surrounding Duwaji\u2019s online history. While she apologized for posts from her teenage years, she did not specify which remarks she regretted making. Mayor Mamdani, on Thursday, declined to clarify the posts when he was asked about them at an unrelated press conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe shared some of her reflections in this interview. I won\u2019t add much to them,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat I will say, however, is that she is someone of incredible integrity. She\u2019s someone that I\u2019m lucky to be able to call my wife, and that I am proud of her each and every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hyperallergic interview also did not directly address the separate controversy over Duwaji\u2019s Instagram activity related to Oct. 7, 2023. In March, Jewish Insider<\/a> reported that Duwaji had liked Instagram posts tied to the Hamas attack and pro-Palestinian messaging that circulated afterward.<\/p>\n

Asked about the report at the time, Mamdani declined to discuss the posts themselves and instead stressed that his wife was not part of the city government. \u201cMy wife is the love of my life, and she\u2019s also a private person,\u201d the mayor said.<\/p>\n

On March 13<\/a>, Mamdani again defended Duwaji after reports that she had illustrated an essay by Susan Abulhawa, a writer whose past social media posts have drawn accusations of antisemitism. The mayor called Abulhawa\u2019s rhetoric \u201cunacceptable\u201d and \u201creprehensible,\u201d while saying Duwaji had been hired by a third party as a freelance illustrator, had never met or engaged with Abulhawa, and had not seen the posts at issue.<\/p>\n

Also last month, the right-wing Washington Free Beacon published a story<\/a> linking dormant X and Tumblr accounts to Duwaji and reviewing posts from her teens and early 20s. The outlet said the posts included her use of the N-word at age 15, along with later posts praising Palestinian \u201cfreedom fighters,\u201d invoking PFLP figures including Leila Khaled and Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, and retweeting messages saying Tel Aviv \u201cshouldn\u2019t exist in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duwaji referred to those revelations only generally in the Hyperallergic interview, describing them as \u201cold tweets I wrote as a teenager.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The Hyperallergic profile also included a brief reflection from Duwaji on the scrutiny that has followed her husband\u2019s election. She said becoming a public figure had \u201cabsolutely changed\u201d her life, while also saying her focus was not on public attention but on continuing her work \u201cwith care and responsibility\u201d and allowing her art to speak for itself.<\/p>\n

Asked how becoming first lady had affected her freedom as an artist, she said \u201ceverything is political\u201d and said the role had made her more committed to being \u201chonest and attentive\u201d and making work that reflects \u201cthe times around me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani further explained Thursday that while he had chosen to run for mayor and become a public figure, his wife had chosen to be an artist \u2014 thus she will remain out of the public limelight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A month after saying his wife, Rama Duwaji, was a \u201cprivate person\u201d with no role in his administration,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[36610,9,56,63,65,64,18510],"class_list":{"0":"post-199730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-mayor-mamdani","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-ny","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-nyc-headlines","13":"tag-nyc-news","14":"tag-rama-duwaji"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}