Mayor Brandon Johnson said Wednesday his newly appointed Chicago Board of Education president is “seeking atonement” for making antisemitic comments but did not call for his removal as requested by just over half of the City Council.
The mayor’s comments came less than a day after Jewish Insider reported that Board President Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson crafted more than a dozen Facebook posts with antisemitic statements following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which led to the death of at least 1,200 Israelis, according to Reuters. Israel has since launched a full scale offensive on Gaza, resulting in the death of 45,000 Palestinians, Reuters reported.
“I know Rev. Mitchell Johnson has worked hard as a faith leader in his interfaith work,” the mayor told reporters Wednesday after a City Council meeting. “I know he has since come forth and has apologized for his comments and how harmful that they have been to the people of the Jewish community.”
The mayor continued: “These are not sentiments that I subscribe to and I do appreciate Rev. Johnson being willing to be held accountable for statements that he has made that has caused harm.”
The mayor appointed Johnson as board president last month after the entire Board of Education resigned. He has presided over one Board of Education meeting, and the body is set to meet again for its first regular meeting on Friday, Nov. 1.
In a prepared statement, Rev. Johnson issued an apology “to the Jewish community” for his remarks, and said he has fought antisemitism throughout his career.
“The remarks I posted were reactive and insensitive, and I am deeply sorry for not being more precise and deliberate in my comments posted last year,” Rev. Johnson wrote. “Since then, I have asked for and received feedback from my Jewish friends and colleagues, who helped me be more thoughtful in the way I address these sensitive matters.”
He added that he is “committed to making sure that antisemitism and hate of any kind have no place in Chicago Public Schools.”
Since the Oct. 7 attacks, posts from Rev. Johnson — who is not related to the mayor — have ranged in extremity. Several of his posts shared support for Palestinians and called for a ceasefire in Gaza, which the Chicago City Council has also formally done as part of a narrowly passed resolution earlier this year.
In December 2023, he shared a video of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, stating, “And, like him, I believe that Israel has a right to exist just as the Palestinians have a right to exist. Further, Israel must retreat to the original land border which was illegally granted to them by the United Nations.”
Other posts have gone far further. On Feb. 20, Johnson wrote, “The Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews.” In an apparent support for Hamas, Johnson also wrote that “people have an absolute right to attack their oppressors by any means necessary!!!”
Jewish Insider reports that posts Johnson reshared came from anti-Israel and Russian propaganda accounts, as well as a conspiracy theorist.
On Wednesday, the mayor declined to directly say whether he knew about Johnson’s Facebook posts when he picked him for school board.
Elected officials, at least one school board candidate, and some political groups called for the board president to step down Wednesday, including 27 alderpeople — just over half of the City Council.
Asked about the comments, Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who is Jewish, said he did not condone the remarks, and that proper vetting “doesn’t seem to have occurred here,” as reported by Capitol Fax.
“Look, can you miss things in peoples’ vets? Sure. But it feels like Facebook posts are pretty easy to find,” Pritzker said.
The board president has also faced questions about separate controversies. NBC Chicago reported earlier this month that Johnson was disbarred as a lawyer in the 1990s and that he had a lien placed on his home, in part for not paying child support.
Asked last week about those findings, Board President Johnson told reporters, “The truth is, I was suggested for this position because of my leadership capacity and my ability to get things done. That’s the truth. The good news is I wasn’t hired to be an accountant and I wasn’t hired to be a lawyer.”
School Board candidate Ellen Rosenfeld, who is running for District 4 on the north lakefront, said the “stunning lack of vetting” around the board president shows “just how far [the mayor] is willing to go to push his agenda at the expense of students and teachers.”
Chicago Democrats for Education, a political organization that opposes the Chicago Teachers Union and is backing school board candidates, said Rev. Johnson’s remarks “raise serious concerns about the safety and well-being of Jewish students and families in our city.”
Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.
