Another Montgomery County Public Schools teacher was placed on administrative leave on Dec. 5 after a series of social media posts regarding the Israel-Hamas war were shared with the principal and deemed antisemitic.
MCPS spokesperson Chris Cram confirmed the teacher is Anike Robinson of Westland Middle School in Bethesda.
Robinson teaches art and sixth grade English and was placed on leave on Dec. 5. She is at least the third MCPS employee to be placed on administrative leave for social media posts about the war that the district and some in the Jewish and Israeli communities are calling antisemitic. A fourth teacher was placed on leave in November for including a Palestinian rallying cry in her email signature.
In a letter to the school community sent on Dec. 5, Westland Principal Alison Serino wrote that parents at the school brought the social media posts to her attention. Serino did not explicitly name the teacher and the letter did not give details about the posts, but Serino wrote that they were “of an antisemitic nature.”
“The posts are divisive and in conflict with our school’s core values of kindness, global-mindedness and equity,” Serino wrote. “We understand that this has had a negative impact on many in our school community. Our primary concern is the well-being of students, families and staff. Therefore, we commit to ensuring the appropriate investigative and accountability measures are taken based on the findings of the investigation.”
Serino wrote that any personnel actions resulting from the investigation are private.
In a phone call, Robinson said that her online posts were not antisemitic in nature and described Serino’s letter to the community as “strongly worded” and a defamation of character.
Robinson said that she was aware of three online posts that caused concern with parents in the community. The first was a post shared on Instagram viewed by MoCo360 depicting a bomb covered in the Israeli flag and pointed at a child surrounded by bombed buildings.
The second post was a video on TikTok by Robinson that discussed having art class outside in the school courtyard. MoCo360 viewed the TikTok, which had text over the video that read, “Art class outside and I have a heavy heart. Praying for justice so there might be peace” and a small graphic of a fist with the Palestinian flag overlayed.
In the video, Robinson says, “Made it to Friday and I’m grateful for that because there are a lot of people in the world who didn’t. … It’s been a hell of a week.” The video briefly pans to show her students working on their sketch assignments.
The third post was a graphic made by the Color Collective Press that she reposted on Instagram. The graphic includes a black and red eye centered and the text, “The world is watching. Palestine will be free,” and, “Colonized peoples across the world stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel’s settler colonial state-sanctioned apartheid program of genocide back by U.S. imperialism. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Decolonization is not a metaphor.”
Access to Robinson’s social media is currently private. She declined to comment on whether she recently made her accounts private and if she has deleted the posts in question.
Robinson said that her other posts about the Israel-Hamas war were not pointed at a particular religious group and called for humanitarian efforts and a ceasefire.
“Anything that I ever said, anything critical would have been about the Israeli government and its policies and its history of policies not only there but also as they relate to apartheid in South Africa and how much they helped support that apartheid,” she said. “So, anything that I ever said was not about those groups at all. It was not political in nature unless compassion is also considered political now.”
Robinson shared that she comes from a background rooted in social justice. Her father is Randall Robinson, a human rights activist and lawyer who was one of the leaders of the Free South Africa Movement that advocated for an end to apartheid and founded TransAfrica, a Washington, D.C.-based foreign policy organization focused on the African diaspora.
“I go out of my way and above and beyond to teach my students not only the English that we need to know but also to be people who care,” she said. “And I teach them that everybody in the world just really wants to be happy and [at] peace. And that’s what I want my kids to see when they see me instead of this horrendous letter that has come out when I have led a life of being mindful of the struggle.”
Robinson has worked at Westland Middle School for three years. She grew up in Montgomery County and attended Westland as well as Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. She said it was her dream to work at Westland and wants her name to be cleared and to be able to return to work.
The Westland PTSA did not respond to requests for comment on the matter.
For now, Robinson, like the other MCPS employees on administrative leave, is awaiting the completion of the district’s investigation into her online conduct. She is a member of the teachers’ union, the Montgomery County Education Association, and has had meetings with a union representative about the matter, she said.