Michigan Senate Candidate Abdul El-Sayed Identified Himself as an Egyptian Citizen When He Became a Columbia Professor. Now His Campaign Says He 'Made a Mistake.'
El-Sayed's campaign called the claim an 'error' told to him 'by family members secondhand'
Alana Goodman
January 9, 2026
As an assistant professor at Columbia University, Abdul El-Sayed said he held dual U.S.-Egyptian citizenship. El-Sayed is now running for a Michigan Senate seat, and his campaign says that was a mistake—he's not an Egyptian citizen and never has been.
El-Sayed was born in Michigan to Egyptian émigrés. He graduated from Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 2014 and joined Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health the same year. Around that time, El-Sayed published his résumé on an academic networking site. It lists his "citizenships" as "USA, Egypt." El-Sayed's résumé was removed from the site he published it to, Academia, after the Washington Free Beacon sent it to the campaign.
That was then, this is now. "Abdul is not a dual citizen by any verifiable metric and never has been," campaign spokeswoman Roxie Richner told the Free Beacon. She said that the physician was "told as a child that his grandfather had pursued Egyptian citizenship on his behalf, for which he was eligible due to his parents being born in Egypt," but that his unnamed informant was wrong.
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/michigan-senate-candidate-abdul-el-sayed-identified-himself-as-an-egyptian-citizen-when-he-became-a-columbia-professor-now-his-campaign-says-he-made-a-mistake/
