“We have seen no indication that [the Israelis] are violating the law of war,” proclaimed John Kirby, the recently appointed director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics (IOP), in January 2024, three months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As the communications advisor for Biden’s National Security Council from 2022 to 2025, Kirby’s denials of Israeli wrongdoing were commonplace. Two months earlier, when confronted with criticisms of Biden’s insensitivity to the growing civilian death toll in besieged, starved, and occupied Gaza, Kirby had replied “that’s what war is”—a stark contrast to the tears he shed for Israelis in 2023 and Ukrainians in 2022. Over the course of 2024, as deaths in Gaza continued to multiply, Kirby repeatedly provided cover for the genocidal Zionist state, denying Israeli targeting of civilians—including humanitarian workers and journalists—and asserting, over and over and over again, that the government had not “found any incidents where the Israelis have violated international humanitarian law.”

While civilian deaths mounted and Israel targeted Gazan universities, hospitals, schools, and places of worship, Kirby insisted that judgments of legality and proportionality—precisely the kinds of judgments demanded by international and U.S. law—comprise “a sort of judgment that we’re not making of [Israel].” But as NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch released reports declaring Israel’s assault on Gaza a genocide, and as the International Court of Justice declared that these accusations of genocide were “plausible,” Kirby did offer such a judgment—albeit with a conclusion opposite to that of human rights groups and genocide experts worldwide. Not only did Kirby repeatedly deny that a genocide is taking place; he also repeatedly insisted that Israel had not violated the laws of war or international humanitarian law at all. In July 2024, Kirby took this even further: when the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor applied for an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges, Kirby declared that “we don’t find him to be a war criminal. He’s an ally and a partner and a friend.”

Kirby’s denial of Israeli culpability for genocide and war crimes is consistent with his reputation as “one of the loudest voices” in support of Israel in the Biden administration—a marked achievement within an administration now widely acknowledged to be a core enabler and facilitator of Israeli war crimes and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Indeed, as multiple former staffers have described in a joint statement, the Biden administration broke national records in its military support for Israel in the year after the start of the genocide, silencing all internal dissent and “willfully violating multiple U.S. laws and attempting to deny or distort facts, use loopholes, or manipulate processes to ensure a continuous flow of lethal weapons to Israel” for use in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

As a result, NGOs and experts have argued that senior Biden administration officials are legally liable—under both the 1948 Genocide Convention and the 1988 U.S. Genocide Convention Implementation Act—for not only failing to prevent, but in fact aiding and abetting Israeli genocide through military, economic, and diplomatic means. There is nothing to suggest that Kirby could or should be exempt from such liability: in his capacity as National Security Council spokesman—one who appeared more publicly than is typical for the role—Kirby repeatedly provided rhetorical cover for the Biden administration’s illegal support for Israeli genocide in Gaza. In fact, he did so loudly and passionately enough to be described as “making the case for Israel” in his briefings. Today, even as other former members of the administration have acknowledged—albeit far too belatedly—their complicity in the Biden administration’s genocidal lies, Kirby has remained noticeably silent.

In appointing Kirby as the new director of the IOP, the University of Chicago has evidently deemed his complicity in Israeli genocide and war crimes, including the destruction of every university in Gaza, excusable, perhaps even laudable. In the University’s announcement of Kirby’s appointment, President Paul Alivisatos, Provost Katherine Baicker and IOP Board Chair David Axelrod touted his “deep experience,” “expertise,” and “longtime commitment.” In doing so, they suggest that Kirby’s expertise and experience as a statesman is praiseworthy in itself, independently of the actions he committed and the policies he advanced as part of that experience.

However, it is incumbent here to ask whether all forms of expertise are intrinsically and equally valuable. Is expertise in advancing war crimes truly the kind of expertise that the IOP, and the University of Chicago, want students to learn from and celebrate? After all, Joseph Goebbels, who served as Nazi Germany’s minister of propaganda for 12 years, was also an expert in his field. In this vein, we might read the University’s emphasis on Kirby’s service to presidential administrations over the substance of that service as a modified invocation of the Nuremberg defense—one which came 80 years too late and has been roundly rejected as an ethical and legal defense by experts worldwide.

Against such claims, the University of Chicago is likely to defend Kirby’s appointment to the IOP directorship in the name of the University’s vaunted commitment to free expression and institutional neutrality. Appointing or rejecting a director based on their political views or alignment with a particular policy, they might argue, would undermine the free exchange of ideas on campus. However, as Alivisatos claimed in his April 2024 email, “Concerning the Encampment,” UChicago’s commitment to free expression does not extend to activities that undermine “the safety of others.” One might conclude from this that the University excludes expressive activities that directly provide cover for war crimes—like, say, acting as a spokesperson for an administration militarily, economically, and diplomatically facilitating genocide and scholasticide—from its repertoire of activities that are welcome on campus. And yet the University of Chicago’s IOP is welcoming Kirby with open arms, ethically and legally liable for complicity in genocide as he may be.

As deplorable as this appointment may be, it is also unsurprising: for just as Kirby claims not to make a judgment on Israel while continuing to aid and abet its genocide in Gaza, so too does the University of Chicago proclaim a neutrality belied by its longstanding practices in service of U.S. imperialism and violence worldwide. It has never been neutral for the University to profit from investments in death and destruction in Gaza and beyond; for its board of trustees to helm extractive and imperialist operations worldwide; for the University to build institutional partnerships like the Chicago Quantum Exchange (more appropriately named the Chicago Genocide Exchange) with major arms exporters and apartheid enablers; for academic departments to appoint Israeli generals to lecture on so-called “counter-terrorism”; for Alivisatos to proudly meet with the consul general to the Midwest of a country committing genocide as bombs continue to drop. It was never neutral for the University to maintain investments in apartheid South Africa and companies financing the genocide in Darfur, or to export neoliberal economics to Chile. Nor is it neutral today for the University to celebrate and appoint Kirby, a spokesperson for genocide and scholasticide, to the directorship of the IOP. Indeed, as countless campus advocates have argued, the University’s proclaimed commitment to institutional neutrality is nothing but a commitment to business as usual, one that eschews democratic deliberation, accountability, and responsibility to anything beyond the status quo of U.S. power and the University’s bottom line.

But this is how things go, from the White House briefing room to Levi Hall, and this is how they have gone for two years and 77 more since the Nakba. At the University of Chicago, the appointment of genocide enablers and imperialist stooges is just institutional neutrality at work. This is what Kirby’s appointment reveals: that what we do here at the University of Chicago, what we claim is business as usual or an act of free expression and neutrality, is far from it. For the University of Chicago to appoint Kirby—a state-appointed apologist for genocide and scholasticide, someone likely legally liable for his role in advancing and covering up war crimes—is not simply to fill a vacancy at the IOP. Instead, for the University of Chicago to appoint Kirby is to celebrate his contributions to extinguishing the possibility of free expression and education for the people of Gaza. And, as the Biden administration’s staggering body count testifies, for the University of Chicago to appoint Kirby is to celebrate extinguishing the very possibility of Palestinian life itself.

Postscript: Readers similarly outraged by this appointment are encouraged to share their views with the administrations of the IOP and the University of Chicago, which they can do at this or this link.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UChicago is a student organization committed to the liberation of Palestine and justice for all oppressed peoples.