About Director Kirk Johnson
Kirk
W. Johnson is an Arabist and writer, focusing on U.S. foreign policy
and political Islamism throughout the Middle East. He has worked
and researched throughout the region, most recently on the
reconstruction of Iraq for the U.S. Agency for International
Development in Baghdad and in Fallujah.
As founder and director of The List: Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, Johnson has become a leading public advocate for Iraqis who assisted the U.S. Government. In his capacity as director, he has brought together over 100 attorneys from two leading law firms to offer thousands of hours of pro bono representation for Iraqi refugees on his list, and is cultivating a nation-wide grassroots support effort. He has written op-eds on the subject for the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and his efforts to help U.S.-affiliated Iraqis were the subject of a New Yorker article. His has discussed his project and the issue in numerous media outlets.
Johnson began working for USAID in December 2004 on a contract through the International Resources Group, serving in Baghdad as the Mission's chief Information Officer for the first half of 2005. In the fall of 2005, Johnson was appointed to USAID's Senior Staff as the Agency's first emissary to the city of Fallujah in Anbar Province. As the Regional Coordinator for Reconstruction in Fallujah, he was USAID's chief liaison on reconstruction issues with local Iraqi government officials, the Second Marine Expeditionary Force, and other international actors in the region. In this capacity, Johnson coordinated a portfolio of reconstruction and humanitarian assistance projects valued at over $20 million.
Prior to his work in Iraq, Johnson analyzed political Islamic 'pulp' writings as a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt (2002-2003). He holds a B.A. with general and departmental honors in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago, where he wrote his honors thesis on the state of political Islamist currents in Egypt and the broader Middle East. During that time, Johnson received a Foreign Language Acquisition Grant to study the Syrian colloquial dialect of Arabic in Damascus. As a high school student, he started his studies of classical and Egyptian colloquial Arabic at the age of 16 at the College of DuPage, followed by summer studies at the American University in Cairo. He has lived in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and conducted research trips to Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank.