Just seven days into his tenure as president of Chicago’s public school board, Reverend Mitchell Ikenna Johnson is stepping down from his post amid a flurry of backlash over recently unearthed antisemitic social media posts.

His resignation comes at the recommendation of the mayor, who, on Thursday, announced that he had asked Mr. Johnson to step down. “Reverend Mitchell Johnson’s statements were not only hurtful but deeply disturbing,” Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, stated. “I want to be clear: antisemitic, misogynistic, and conspiratorial statements are unacceptable.”

Just a day prior, the Illinois governor, J.B. Pritzker, said that Mr. Johnson had “failed to live up to” the job’s necessary values of “kindness and inclusivity.”

“Any person charged with the stewardship of the Chicago Public School Board must exemplify focused, inclusive and steady leadership. The views expressed in the current Chair’s posts — antisemitism, misogyny, fringe conspiracy theories — very clearly do not meet that standard,” Mr. Pritzker told NBC News. “I believe it is in the best interest of our schools and our children for the Chair to resign.”

The same day, 30 Chicago aldermen — more than half of the members of the city council — issued a joint statement calling on Mr. Johnson “to apologize and step down from his position immediately.”

“Since October 7, 2023, Rev. Johnson has posted frequently on social media about the conflict between Israel and Hamas,” the aldermen continued. “His comments have crossed major red lines into overt antisemitism, both in his explicit support for Hamas and his insistence on collectively blaming all Jews for Israel’s military actions.”

The social media posts in question were unveiled by Jewish Insider in an article that quickly went viral online. It offered dozens of examples of Mr. Johnson sharing antisemitic messages on his publicly accessible Facebook page in the months following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7.

Many of Mr. Johnson’s posts show him defending Hamas and justifying the October 7 attack and drawing comparisons between Zionists and the Nazis.

He even appeared to threaten his Jewish colleagues in a post he made in December, which read: “My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment. It will not be nice and I care not how and what you call me.” Scores of additional antisemitic comments are listed in the Jewish Insider article.

Reverend Johnson was brought into the Chicago Board of Education after seven members resigned in early October over budgeting disagreements with Mayor Johnson.

His resignation marks yet another embarrassment for Chicago’s mayor, who already has a strained relationship with the Jewish community. The regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, David Goldenberg, called Mr. Johnson’s appointment to president “the latest example of the mayor elevating and surrounding himself with individuals with a history of enabling antisemitism and expressing views out of touch with the mainstream Jewish community. Troubling is an understatement.”