Twenty-five years after the September 11 attacks reshaped New York City and the world, a dispute over who may stand in the circle of civic mourning has surfaced once again. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani publicly demanded that scholar Mahmood Mamdani be barred from the anniversary memorial, framing his objection in anti-Muslim terms — while the sitting mayor affirmed Mamdani's rightful place at the ceremony. The episode asks an enduring question that American cities have never fully answered: when a community gathers to grieve, who decides which voices belong to the grief?