Kirk Johnson

Kirk 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 Fallujah.

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.

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. From March to May he also acted as Public Affairs Officer, overseeing interaction with the international media. Since returning from Fallujah in January 2006, Johnson has become a leading advocate for providing asylum for Iraqis who were forced to flee their country as a result of their affiliation with the United States. He first wrote an op‐ed about a former USAID colleague – now a refugee – which appeared in December 2006 in The Los Angeles Times. His efforts to aid hundreds of Iraqis were featured in a New Yorker article in March 2007, and his most recent op‐ed ran in The New York Times. He has also published an essay on his experience returning from Fallujah in The Washington Post Magazine in January 2007.

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.