NEW YORK – Asad Haider, the philosopher, writer, and educator whose 2018 book Mistaken Identity became a touchstone for a generation of activists disillusioned with mainstream identity politics, died unexpectedly on December 5, 2025. He was 42.
Friends and family confirmed his passing Thursday evening but have not yet released details surrounding the cause of death, asking for privacy as they grieve.
SUPPORT THE FAMILY - GOD BLESS YOU
Born in State College, Pennsylvania, to Pakistani parents, Haider spent formative years in rural central Pennsylvania before studying philosophy at New York University and completing his PhD at the University of California, Santa Cruz under the mentorship of Angela Davis. In recent years he divided his time between Brooklyn and Toronto, where he was a visiting assistant professor in the Social and Political Thought program at York University.
Mistaken Identity—originally published by the radical imprint Verso—arrived at the height of debates over “identity politics” and immediately unsettled both liberal and leftist camps. Haider argued that contemporary appeals to racial and gender identity often functioned as a substitute for, rather than a vehicle for, genuine emancipation. Drawing on the Black radical tradition, Frantz Fanon, and the early Combahee River Collective, he insisted that identity must be understood as a site of struggle rather than a fixed possession. The book sold tens of thousands of copies, was translated into multiple languages, and remains required reading in political theory and critical race studies courses worldwide.
“Asad had the rare ability to write theory that felt like it was written in the middle of a street protest,” said writer and longtime friend Yasmin Nair. “He never let intellectual rigor become an excuse for cowardice.”
In the classroom, students described Haider as the professor who could spend an entire three-hour seminar on a single sentence from Fanon and somehow make it feel urgent. “He never talked down to us,” said Maya Al-Zayer, a former York graduate student. “He treated every question as if it might change the world, because he genuinely believed it could.”
Haider co-edited the influential online magazine Viewpoint Magazine for over a decade and was a frequent contributor to publications including n+1, The Baffler, and Salvage. His second book, on the politics of insurrection and the legacy of the 1970s, was nearing completion at the time of his death.
Friends remember a man who quoted poetry in three languages, cooked massive pots of biryani for struggling grad students, and could be found at 3 a.m. still answering emails from activists halfway around the world. Despite chronic health struggles in recent years, he refused to slow down, insisting that “thinking is the least we owe the dead.”
He is survived by his parents, his sister, and a vast network of comrades, students, and readers who say they have lost not just a thinker but a moral compass.
A public memorial and teach-in in Haider’s honor is being organized for early January in New York, with simultaneous events planned in Toronto, London, and Lahore. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to the Palestine Legal defense fund, a cause Haider championed relentlessly.
As one former student wrote on social media last night: “He taught us that identities are mistaken only when we stop fighting to make them otherwise. Rest in power, Asad. The struggle continues because you showed us how.”