Kirk, Grayson Louis, 1903-97, American educator, b. Jeffersonville, Ohio, grad. Miami Univ., 1924, Ph.D. Univ. of Wisconsin, 1930. He taught at Wisconsin from 1929, then became a professor of government (1940-72) at Columbia. He contributed to the Dumbarton Oaks Conference (1944) and the San Francisco Conference (1945) during World War II. In 1949 he was named provost of Columbia; in 1953 he succeeded Dwight D. Eisenhower as university president, a post he held until 1968, when he resigned amid controversy over his handling of student unrest and over a contract between Columbia and a cigarette filter maker. He is the author of Philippine Independence (1936), Contemporary International Politics (with W. R. Sharp, 1940), and The Study of International Relations in American Colleges and Universities (1947).

Kirk, Norman Eric, 1923-74, New Zealand political leader. A Labour party member, he rose in New Zealand politics, entering Parliament in 1957, and becoming vice president (1963) and then president (1964) of the Labor party. In the Nov., 1972, elections Kirk's party gained a parliamentary majority and he assumed the posts of prime minister and foreign minister. He was a supporter of increased social security, housing, and welfare benefits.

Mr.Kirk's Nightmare is an early 1990s hardcore track by UK artists 4 Hero. The track's notoriety was mainly due to the use of a sample that went: "Mr Kirk, do you have a son named Robert? Robert Kirk? "I'm sorry Mister Kirk, your son is dead" "Dead? How" "He died of an overdose." The sample came from the 1971, Bobby Susser, hit song, "Once You Understand", sung by his studio group, Think.