Kirk Johnson
Photo: Annette Hornischer

Executive Director, The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies, New York

Bosch Fellow in Public Policy - Class of Fall 2010

Kirk W. Johnson is an Arabist and writer focusing on US foreign policy and political Islamism throughout the Middle East. He is a leading public advocate for Iraqis who assisted the US and have become imperiled as a consequence of their affiliation with the US. The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Allies (www.thelistproject.org), which Johnson founded in 2007, has brought together over one hundred attorneys from two leading law firms to offer thousands of hours of pro bono representation for Iraqi refugees. The organization has resettled over seven hundred Iraqis and cultivates US-wide grassroots support. Johnson, who received his BA in near Eastern languages and civilizations from the University of Chicago in 2002, has worked and researched throughout the Middle East, including on the reconstruction of Iraq for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in Baghdad and in Fallujah. Prior to his work in Iraq, Johnson was a Fulbright Scholar in Egypt (2002–03).

 

He has lived in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and conducted research trips to Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank. Johnson’s work for the List Project has received wide media attention, including a profile by George Packer in the New Yorker. Johnson has contributed op-eds and longer pieces to the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post Magazine, and other publications.

Project Description

Human Rubble:The Tragedy of Iraqis Who Believed in America

During his two-month Bosch Fellowship at the American Academy, Johnson continued working on a book about the List Project’s work to help US-affiliated Iraqis reach safe haven outside of Iraq. “Human Rubble:The Tragedy of Iraqis Who Believed in America” builds on Johnson’s efforts of the past several years “to impel the US government to honor its moral obligation to US-affiliated Iraqis.” The book, Johnson writes, “examines an erosion of our nation’s principles as seen in the tragic stories of Iraqi ‘collaborators’ who fled the sniper’s sight only to confront a cold [US] bureaucracy that ignored their service. It will be the first book to examine ‘collaboration’ in America’s war on terrorism, injecting an understanding of the moral, strategic, political, geo-political, and cultural implications of ‘American-as-occupier.’ More broadly, the book aims to “shift the paradigm of refugee assistance, cementing the lessons of the List Project into a firm precedent from which future advocates can draw.”

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