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James Kirchick

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James Kirchick
Kirchick in 2015
Born1983 (age 42–43)
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
EducationYale University
OccupationJournalist

James Kirchick (/ˈkɜːrtʃɪk/; born 1983) is an American reporter, foreign correspondent, author, and columnist. He has been described as a conservative or neoconservative.[1][2][3]

Career

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Born in Boston,[4] Kirchick was raised in a Jewish family[5] and attended Yale University, where he wrote for its student newspaper, the Yale Daily News.[6]

For over three years, Kirchick worked at The New Republic, covering domestic politics, intelligence, and American foreign policy. Later, he was writer-at-large for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty based in Prague.[7][8][9]

Kirchick has worked as a reporter for The New York Sun, the New York Daily News, and The Hill, and has been a columnist for the New York Daily News and the Washington Examiner. He has received the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Excellence in Student Journalism Award and the Journalist of the Year Award.[10][11] Kirchick was previously a fellow for the think tank Foreign Policy Initiative. As the Foreign Policy Initiative was shutting down in 2017, Kirchick announced that he would be moving to the Brookings Institution in Washington.[12] His role at Brookings was as a visiting fellow.[13]

Ron Paul newsletters

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In 2008, Kirchick wrote about newsletters that contained homophobic, conspiratorial and racist material, published under the name of Texas Congressman and Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. The story again became prominent in the 2012 presidential election.[8][9]

It was later claimed by television station WXIX that Ron Paul was not the author of the newsletter segments which contained the material in question. In their second newscast on the scandal in January 2012, based on information provided by Lew Rockwell, who had also worked on the newsletter, WXIX's Reality Check claimed that the offending articles may have been written by one of the freelance writers who were said to have been employed at the time.[14]

Erik Wemple for The Washington Post wrote an article that included Kirchick's response to WXIX's second newscast, where Kirchick implied that the writer of the WXIX article, Ben Swann, was incorrect in his naming of the supposed writer of the "Special Edition on Racial Terrorism".[15]

Ron Paul did not initially deny authorship of the offending material,[16] though he had begun denying it by 2001. He has accepted responsibility for the content regardless of its author, as it was published under his name.[17]

2016 presidential elections

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Kirchick supported Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton over the Republican Party candidate Donald Trump for the presidency during the 2016 presidential elections.[18] He described Trump as a "brashly authoritarian populist" and Clinton as "not only … the obvious choice for those who don't want to see our country degenerate into a banana republic, she's the clear conservative choice as well."[18]

On August 15, 2016, Kirchik wrote an article for The Daily Beast which described Jill Stein, Rania Khalek, Corey Robin, Glenn Greenwald, Ishaan Tharoor, Katrina vanden Heuvel, and others as "Hillary Clinton-Loathing, Donald Trump-Loving Useful Idiots of the Left".[19] Ben Norton, writing for the Salon website, enquired to those mentioned in the article and received responses from them, 13 of the 14 indicated they would not be voting for Trump. The exception, Christopher Ketcham, claimed to vote for him not because he "loves" or "admires" him, but precisely because he says the GOP nominee "is an ignorant, vicious, narcissistic, racist, capitalist scumbag, and thus an accurate representative of the United States."[20]

Political views

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LGBTQ rights views

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In several articles, Kirchick argues that gay rights activists in the United States have achieved their goals.[21][22][23][24] Kirchick's critics argue that he separates the transgender rights movement from LGBTQ movements in making this evaluation.[21][25][26]

At a 2025 symposium organized by Marty Peretz at the Center for Jewish History, Kirchick criticized transgender activists involved in Pro-Palestine protests in the United States as "crazy," "disturbing," and sick.[27]

He is married to Josef Palermo, former curator of the Kennedy Center.[28]

Zionism, Israel, and Antisemitism

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In his commentary and journalism, Kirchick has been a vocal supporter of Israel and has self-identified as a Zionist, arguing that individuals, both Jewish and non-Jewish, should unapologetically express support for a Jewish state.[29] He frequently writes on issues related to antisemitism and Israel, defending the country against critics who accuse it of "pinkwashing" by pointing out its comparatively progressive record on LGBT rights within the Middle East.[30] Following the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Kirchick criticized what he described as a rising tide of antisemitism within elite institutions and the cultural landscape, writing an essay for The New York Times about a censorious "chill" affecting Jewish and pro-Israel authors within the publishing industry.[31]

Books

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  • The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age Yale University Press, 2017.
  • Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. New York: Henry Holt and Company. 2022. ISBN 9781627792325. OCLC 1293451114. On LGBT culture in Washington, D.C.

Awards

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  • 2006 - National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Excellence in Student Journalism[10]
  • 2007 - National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year[11]

References

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  1. ↑ Doyle, Vincent (2016). Making Out in the Mainstream: GLAAD and the Politics of Respectability. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 193. ISBN 9780773598591. James Kirchick, a young gay conservative reporter and columnist...
  2. ↑ Fischer, Mia (2019). Terrorizing Gender: Transgender Visibility and the Surveillance Practices of the U.S. Security State. University of Nebraska Press. p. 64. ISBN 9781496218520. ...a two-minute outburst by conservative gay columnist James Kirchick..
  3. ↑ Chait, Jonathan (August 21, 2016). "The Neocons Have Gone From GOP Thought-Leaders to Outcasts". nymag.com. New York Magazine.
  4. ↑ "James Kirchick". Atlantic Council.
  5. ↑ "Super Tuesday - A special Election Day episode featuring 'Washington Post' reporter Bob Woodward, 'National Review' editor Eliana Johnson, Tablet columnist Jamie Kirchick, and a Democrat in Boca". Tablet.
  6. ↑ Downs, Jim; Manion, Jennifer (2004). Taking back the academy!: history of activism, history as activism. Taylor & Francis. p. 115. ISBN 9780203339589. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
  7. ↑ Staff writer (October 10, 2010). "Gewalt bei erster Belgrader Homosexuellen-Parade". Nachrichten.at. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
  8. 1 2 Montopoli, Brian (December 20, 2011). "Ron Paul disavows racist newsletters under his name". CBS News. Archived from the original on September 7, 2013. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  9. 1 2 Chait, Jonathan (December 15, 2011). "News Bulletin: Ron Paul Is a Huge Racist". New York Magazine. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
  10. 1 2 Belonsky, Andrew (October 3, 2006). "Homo Journos Honored". Queerty. Retrieved December 24, 2011.
  11. 1 2 Staff writer (August 30, 2007). "NLGJA Announces 2007 Excellence in Journalism Award Winners & LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame Inductees". National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Archived from the original on July 6, 2008. Retrieved December 25, 2011.
  12. ↑ Gray, Rosie (June 29, 2017). "A Right-Leaning Foreign-Policy Think Tank Shuts Down". The Atlantic. Retrieved October 25, 2019.
  13. ↑ "James Kirchick". Brookings Institution. Archived from the original on December 29, 2017. Retrieved December 29, 2017.
  14. ↑ Swann, Ben (January 5, 2012). "Reality Check: The story behind the Ron Paul newsletters". Fox19. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
  15. ↑ Wemple, Erik (January 19, 2012). "Cincinnati anchor goes deep on Paul campaign". The Washington Post. Retrieved January 24, 2012.
  16. ↑ Stein, Sam (December 26, 2011). "Ron Paul, In 1996, 'Did Not Deny' Controversial Statement In Newsletter". Huff Post.
  17. ↑ Trumbull, Mark (December 29, 2011). "'Racist newsletter' timeline: What Ron Paul has said". CS Monitor. Retrieved September 28, 2014.
  18. 1 2 Kirchick, James (June 9, 2016). "Hillary Clinton Is 2016's Real Conservative—Not Donald Trump". The Daily Beast. Retrieved February 3, 2022.
  19. ↑ Kirchick, James (August 15, 2016). "Beware the Hillary Clinton-Loathing, Donald Trump-Loving Useful Idiots of the Left". The Daily Beast. Retrieved December 24, 2016.
  20. ↑ Norton, Ben (August 17, 2016). "No, they don't support Trump: Smeared left-wing writers debunk the myth". Salon.
  21. 1 2 Collington, Faefyx (August 19, 2024). "Here's everything wrong with that James Kirchick Atlantic piece". INTO.
  22. ↑ Kirchick, James (May 3, 2013). "How GLAAD Won the Culture War and Lost Its Reason to Exist". The Atlantic.
  23. ↑ Kirchick, James (June 28, 2019). "The Struggle for Gay Rights Is Over". The Atlantic.
  24. ↑ Kirchick, James (August 12, 2024). "How the Gay-Rights Movement Lost Its Way". The Atlantic.
  25. ↑ Kerri, Amanda (July 2, 2019). "The Atlantic, James Kirchick Dishonor Pride With a Serving of Crap". www.advocate.com.
  26. ↑ Steinsiek, Alyssa (August 14, 2024). "Queer Liberation Isn't Over, James Kirchick". AssignedMedia.org.
  27. ↑ Klion, David (May 30, 2025). "The End of the Marty Peretz Era". Jewish Currents. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  28. ↑ "James Kirchick (@jkirchick) on X". X (formerly Twitter). April 16, 2026. Retrieved September 26, 2026.
  29. ↑ Kirchick, James (March 8, 2013). "Zionism Isn't a Dirty Word". Haaretz. Retrieved September 21, 2026.
  30. ↑ Kirchick, James (June 19, 2017). James Kirchick on the Progressive Case for Israel. American Jewish Committee. Retrieved September 21, 2026.
  31. ↑ Kirchick, James (June 3, 2024). "A Chill Has Fallen Over Jews in Publishing". The New York Times (republished via Figtree Books). Retrieved September 21, 2026.
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