John Ketcham
This content was last updated Oct. 4, 2023, 8:14 a.m. UTC
John Ketcham is the American director of state and local policy for the conservative think tank Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. He has frequently published anti-transgender articles alongside Manhattan Institute fellows Ilya Shapiro and Leor Sapir.
Far too often, parents are presented with a Hobson’s choice: proceed with drugs or have their child commit suicide. They are fed the false narrative that puberty blockers have been proven safe and effective, and that their use prevents suicide.
Education and Work
According to his LinkedIn page, Ketcham graduated from Fordham University in 2013 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information and Communications Systems. In 2021 he received his Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School.
Between 2011 and 2018, Ketcham was a real estate investor and property manager. Between June and August of 2019, he worked as a legal fellow for the Holy See at the United Nations.
Ketcham is a Grand Knight in the Catholic fraternal organization, the Knights of Columbus.
Manhattan Institute and City Journal
Ketcham began working for the Manhattan Institute as a collegiate fellow in May of 2020. After graduating from Harvard Law, he became a full fellow. In February of 2023, he was elevated to director of state and local policy at the Institute.
Ketcham has been writing for the Manhattan Institute’s public policy magazine, City Journal, since November of 2019. He frequently publishes solo articles about real estate or politics, while his anti-transgender writings are typically a collaborative effort with his Manhattan Institute peers Ilya Shapiro and Leor Sapir.
The first piece of anti-transgender journalism with Ketcham’s name attached to it is an article co-authored with Leor Sapir about transgender youth healthcare. Ketcham and Sapir advocate for contentious privacy violations of transgender youth, such as policies to inform parents that their children might be questioning their gender, or publishing classroom curriculum for parents to read in case they want to block their children from being taught about gender identity or sexual orientation.
In March of 2023 Ketcham co-authored an article in City Journal about alleged “secret social transitioning” in public schools, alongside Shapiro and Sapir. They suggest that school employees using a gender questioning child’s preferred name and pronouns constitutes a violation of parents’ rights regarding their child. They also state that the majority of transgender children “desist,” or cease to identify as transgender, by adulthood, despite the fact that a study by Princeton University’s Trans Youth Project showed that only 2.5% of their 300 cases had desisted in a five year timespan.