A week after he was sworn into office, the president of the Board of Education in Chicago resigned on Thursday over social media posts from the past year that elected officials criticized as anti-Semitic and misogynistic and that espoused a conspiracy theory about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The posts by the former president, the Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson, were “not only hurtful but deeply disturbing,” the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, said on Thursday.
The mayor said that he had asked for Mr. Johnson’s resignation, adding, “I want to be clear: Antisemitic, misogynistic and conspiratorial statements are unacceptable.”
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Johnson, 64, the former board president, defended his track record as an ally of the Jewish community, citing his past work with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights group.
“The people that have reacted strongest are choosing to forget the work I’ve done in that community, and that is a darn shame,” he said.
He said he apologized for his comments, which “could have been tempered with language that is not meant to be seen or heard as anti-Semitic.”
On Tuesday, The Jewish Insider published a report that included more than a dozen screenshots of Mr. Johnson’s Facebook page.
After the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel last year, he posted about the Middle East and invoked the Holocaust.
“The Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews,” he wrote in February, The Jewish Insider reported.
In March, he wrote on Facebook, “The Israeli government offers a renewal of Nazi language once directed toward European Jews, ‘savages, dogs, vermin.’”
Mr. Johnson also appeared to back Hamas, writing in March, according to The Jewish Insider: “I have been saying this since October 2023. People have an absolute right to attack their oppressors by any means necessary!!!”
In an interview on Friday, Mr. Johnson stood by his views, saying that he was standing up for Palestinians.
“Any leader who opens their mouth to say that Israel is incorrect in how it is dealing with the Palestinian challenge is going to be pegged as anti-Semitic,” he said.
While most of the posts in question were about Israel and Gaza, past ones about women and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks also came to light this week.
Mr. Johnson reposted material in January that said “3,000+ EXPERTS AGREE: 9/11 Really Was An Inside Job,” NBC5 Chicago reported.
Mr. Johnson said on Friday that there is “so much evidence that calls into question actions by our government going back to John F. Kennedy to today, and I’m just not going to give that conversation the light of day.”
In May, he shared a post on Facebook that said that “when a Woman earns money she feels She does not need her man and her family. Sounds harsh but it’s reality.”
“Sad Facts,” he commented in sharing the post.
In the interview on Friday, Mr. Johnson said that was his only such post about women and that he has “stood up for women’s rights.”
As of Friday morning, the posts in question were not visible on Mr. Johnson’s Facebook page.
Mr. Johnson served as the economic development officer for the Baptist State Convention of Illinois and as a faculty member of Lifeway Black Church Leadership and Family Conference, according to a city statement.
After the posts surfaced, many leaders in the city and state denounced him.
Debra Silverstein, the City Council’s lone Jewish member, wrote a letter on Wednesday that called on Mr. Johnson to apologize and step down.
In all, she said, it was signed by 43 of the 50 City Council members. She also questioned the vetting process, calling it “a failure of leadership and judgment” of the mayor and his team.
Mr. Johnson was among seven new board members named by the mayor to manage the country’s third-largest school district.
The previous members resigned en masse last month after tense disagreements with the mayor over next year’s budget.
The Jewish Council on Urban Affairs in Chicago said in a statement on Wednesday that it was “deeply troubled” to learn of Mr. Johnson’s social media posts, calling them “unacceptable” and having “no place among School Board leadership.”
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois also raised concerns about the screening procedures.
He called for Mr. Johnson’s resignation on Thursday, saying someone in charge of the school board “must exemplify focused, inclusive, and steady leadership.”
Hours later, the Chicago mayor announced that Mr. Johnson had resigned.
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