By Jay Senter, Shawnee Mission Post
The ACLU of Kansas announced this week that it had named Nadine Farid Johnson, who spent six years as a diplomat in the U.S. Department of State before moving to a role with Google in Los Angeles, as its new executive director.
Johnson will begin her work based in the organization’s Overland Park headquarters next week.
Johnson takes over leadership of the organization from Micah Kubic, PhD, who resigned last year to accept a leadership position with the ACLU of Florida. ACLU of Kansas Legal Director Lauren Bonds had served as interim executive director since Kubic’s departure.
A native of Indiana, Johnson attended DePauw University and went on to earn her law degree from Tulane University in New Orleans. During her time as a diplomat, she was posted in west Africa, the Middle East and Washington, D.C. Before her appointments with the state department, Johnson taught law and political science at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. She was also a Climenko Fellow at Harvard Law School.
The ACLU of Kansas has been active in the Shawnee Mission area in recent years, organizing legal efforts against the Shawnee Mission School District after students complained about efforts to censor speech about gun violence and school shootings and suing the Johnson County Election Office for access to the names of voters whose ballots were rejected over questions about their signatures.