How the university handled a past social media scandal became the heart of the case
A federal court backed Georgetown University's decision to fire a new hire over old social media posts – but flagged the inconsistencies that invited the lawsuit.
On March 31, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed all claims against the defendants who appeared in a sprawling employment discrimination case that grew out of a campus social media firestorm during the first week of a junior administrator's tenure.
Aneesa Johnson, an African American Muslim woman of Palestinian origin, started as Assistant Director of Academic and Faculty Affairs at Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service on October 30, 2023. Her offer letter described the role as at-will with a six-month probationary period. Within days, everything fell apart.
A Georgetown student searched Johnson's name online and found a profile on the Canary Mission website, an organization that catalogs individuals critical of Israel. The profile included tweets Johnson had posted roughly eight years earlier as a first-year undergraduate at Northwestern University. The posts included derogatory language directed at Zionists and a repost featuring a photograph of an Orthodox Jewish man with a disparaging caption. The student posted screenshots on Twitter, calling Johnson an antisemite. That post went viral, reaching over a million views.
Georgetown placed Johnson on administrative leave the next morning,...
Among a flurry of posts on social media last weekend, US president Donald Trump declared “good riddance” to a specific emissions scenario used in global climate projections. The “RCP8.5” scenario,...