Bret Stephens | |
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.jpg) Stephens in 2015 | |
| Born | Bret Louis Stephens (1973-11-21)November 21, 1973 (age 52) New York City, U.S. |
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| Years active | 1995–present |
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Bret Louis Stephens (born November 21, 1973) is an Americanconservative columnist.[1] He has been an opinion columnist forThe New York Times and a senior contributor toNBC News since 2017. Since 2021, he has been the inaugural editor-in-chief ofSAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations.
Stephens was previously aforeign affairs columnist and deputy editorial page editor atThe Wall Street Journal, overseeing the editorial pages of its European and Asian editions. From 2002 to 2004, he was editor-in-chief ofThe Jerusalem Post. At theWall Street Journal, Stephens won thePulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2013. Stephens is known for hisneoconservative foreign policy opinions and for being part of theright-of-center opposition toDonald Trump.[2]
Stephens was born in New York City,[3] the son of Xenia and Charles J. Stephens, a former vice president of General Products, a chemical company in Mexico.[4][5] Both his parents weresecular Jews. His mother was born in Italy at the start ofWorld War II to Jewish parents who had fledNazi Germany.[6] His paternal grandfather, Louis Ehrlich, was born in 1901 inKishinev (todayChișinău,Moldova). He fled with his family to New York after theKishinev pogrom and changed the family surname to Stephens (after poetJames Stephens).[7]
Louis Stephens moved toMexico City, where he founded General Products and built his fortune.[8] He married Annette Margolis and had two sons, Charles and Luis. Charles married Xenia. They moved to Mexico City with their newborn son, Bret, to help run the chemical company, inherited from Louis.[8] Bret was raised there and is fluent in Spanish.[9] As a teenager, he attended boarding school atMiddlesex School inConcord, Massachusetts.[citation needed] Stephens earned an undergraduate degree from theUniversity of Chicago, and a degree incomparative politics from theLondon School of Economics.[10]
He is married to Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, aNew York Times music critic. They have three children, and live in New York City.[11][12] He was previously married toPamela Paul, the former editor ofThe New York Times Book Review.[5]
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Stephens began his career as an assistant editor atCommentary magazine in 1995–96.[13] In 1998, he joinedThe Wall Street Journal as anop-ed editor.[14] He later worked as an editorial writer forThe Wall Street Journal Europe, inBrussels.[15] Stephens edited the weekly "State of the Union" column on theEuropean Union.[16] In 2002, Stephens moved to Israel to become the editor-in-chief ofThe Jerusalem Post.[17] He was 28 years old.Haaretz reported at the time that the appointment of Stephens, a non-Israeli, triggered some unease among seniorJerusalem Post management and staff.[16]
Stephens leftThe Jerusalem Post in 2004 and returned toThe Wall Street Journal.[18] In 2006, he took over theJournal's "Global View" column. In 2017, Stephens left theJournal, joinedThe New York Times as an opinion columnist,[19] and began appearing as an on-air contributor toNBC News andMSNBC.[20] In 2021, Stephens became editor-in-chief ofSAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations, published by Maimonides Fund.[21]
In 2005, theWorld Economic Forum named Stephens aYoung Global Leader.[15] He won the 2008Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism.[22] In 2009, he was named deputy editorial page editor after Melanie Kirkpatrick's retirement. In 2010, Stephens won theReason Foundation'sBastiat Prize.[15]
Stephens won the 2013Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "his incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist."[23][24] He is a national judge of the Livingston Award.[25][26] In 2015, Stephens joined the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences.[27] The Real-Time Academy judges contestants for theShorty Awards, which honor the best individuals and organizations on social media.[28]
Stephens has chaired two Pulitzer juries.[26] In 2016, he chaired the one that awarded thePulitzer Prize for International Reporting toAlyssa Rubin ofThe New York Times.[29] In 2017, Stephens chaired the jury that awarded thePulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing toArt Cullen ofThe Storm Lake Times.[30] Stephens spoke at theUniversity of Chicago's 2023 Class Day, duringconvocation weekend. His invitation provoked backlash from various student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, for his views about Israel.[31]
Stephens's bookAmerica in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder was released in November 2014.[15] In it, he argues that the US has been retreating from its role as the "world's policeman" in recent decades, which will lead to ever-greater world problems.
In August 2019, Stephens sent a complaint to aGeorge Washington University (GWU) professor and the university'sprovost about a tweet in which the professor called Stephens a "bedbug".[32][33] The topic of Stephens's next column was the "rhetoric of infestation" used by authoritarian regimes such asNazi Germany. The column was interpreted as criticism of the GWU professor and other critics of Stephens.[34][35][36] The controversy gained massive attention online, leading to then-presidentDonald Trump tweeting, "lightweight journalist Bret Stephens, a Conservative who does anything that his bosses at the paper tell him to do! He is now quitting Twitter after being called a 'bedbug.' Tough guy!"[37][38]
In August 2016,The Wall Street Journal published a column by Stephens about an Egyptianjudoka refusing to shake hands with his Israeli opponent after an Olympic match, in which Stephens calledantisemitism "the disease of the Arab mind".[39] Some readers criticized this as a racist generalization that all Arabs were antisemitic. After Stephens joinedThe New York Times, several reporters at the newspaper criticized Stephens's previous writings.[40]
In a December 2019 column titled "The Secrets of Jewish Genius",[41] in which he contended thatAshkenazi Jews have a history of alternative thinking which has led them to be successful. This article led to accusations ofeugenics and racism. The column originally said that "Ashkenazi Jews might have a marginal advantage over their gentile peers when it comes to thinking better. Where their advantage more often lies is in thinking different."[42][43] Following widespread criticism,The New York Times editors deleted the section of the column in which he appeared to claim that Ashkenazi Jews are genetically superior to other groups.[44] The editors said that Stephens erred in citing an academic study by an author with "racist views" whose 2005 paper advanced a genetic hypothesis for the basis ofintelligence among Ashkenazi Jews.[44][45] TheTimes's deletion was criticized byJonathan Haidt,Nadine Strossen, andSteven Pinker, who called it "surrender to an outrage mob".[46]
In February 2021, Stephens wrote a column critical of theTimes's dismissal ofDonald McNeil for using a racial slur against African Americans in the context of a discussion with students of the slur's usage. Six students present on the occasion said that McNeil had used the word "in a way that they perceived as casual, unnecessary or even gratuitous", but one of them added that "McNeil's opinions didn't disparage African Americans".[47] TheTimesspiked the column,[48][49] but it was leaked to theNew York Post, which published it.[50] Stephens principally argued against the editor's initial position that the newspaper would "not tolerate racist language regardless of intent";[48][50] the editor subsequently backed down from that position.[48][49]
Foreign policy was one of the central subjects of the columns for which Stephens won thePulitzer Prize for Commentary.[24] Critics have characterized his foreign policy opinions asneoconservative, part of a right-wing political movement associated with PresidentGeorge W. Bush that advocates the use of military force abroad, particularly in the Middle East, as a way of promoting democracy there.[51][52] Stephens was a "prominent voice" among the media advocates for the start of the 2003Iraq War,[51] for instance writing in a 2002 column that, unless checked, Iraq was likely to become the first nuclear power in the Arab world.[53] Although theweapons of mass destruction used as acasus belli were never shown to exist, Stephens continued to insist as late as 2013 that the Bush administration had "solid evidence" for going to war.[53] He also argued strongly against theIran nuclear deal and its preliminary agreements, claiming that they are a worse bargain even than the 1938Munich Agreement withNazi Germany.[53]
Stephens is a supporter of Israel and considers himself aZionist.[54][55] He said that one of the reasons he leftThe Wall Street Journal forThe Jerusalem Post was that he believed that Western media was getting Israel's story wrong.[17] Stephens also said: "I do not think Israel is the aggressor here. Insofar as getting the story right helps Israel, I guess you could say I'm trying to help Israel."[17] Stephens ledThe Jerusalem Post during the height of theSecond Intifada and pointed the paper in a moreneoconservative direction.[17] He has said that he did not considerIsraeli settlements in theWest Bank to be illegal despiteinternational law saying otherwise.[56]
Stephens has supportedIsrael during theGaza war and strongly opposed theHouthis,Hezbollah, andHamas.[57] He has criticized such groups for their violent actions towards Israel and has blamed Hamas for the ongoing conflict.[57][55] In an opinion piece forThe New York Times, Stephens calledSouth Africa's genocide case against Israel a "moral obscenity" that supposedly misinterpretedquotes from Israeli officials. He pointed to the1988 Hamas charter to claim that Hamas was a genocidal organization and accused Hamas ofhiding behind civilians.[58]Richard Falk called this piece "so extreme, in my view, as to make it unpublishable in a responsible media platform" and stated that calling "recourse to the preeminent judicial body with a conservative legal tradition 'a moral obscenity' is itself 'a moral obscenity.'"[59] Stephens opposes the characterization of the war asgenocide, stating that there is "no evidence of an Israeli plan to deliberately target and kill Gazan civilians."[60]
Stephens is also known for his climate changecontrarianism.[61][62] He has been described as aclimate change denier,[2][63][64][65] but disavows that term, calling himself agnostic on the issue.[66][67] Stephens considers climate change a "20-year-oldmass hysteria phenomenon" and rejects the notion thatgreenhouse-gas emissions are an environmental threat. According to him, "it isn't science" and belongs in the "realm of belief" as it is a "sick-souled religion".[61] He also mocksclimate change activism as hystericalalarmism,[68] denying that any significant temperature change will occur in the next 100 years[69] and arguing that it distracts from more important issues, such asterrorism.[70] Stephens claims that global warming activism is based on theological beliefs, rather than science, as an outgrowth of Western tendencies to expect punishment forsins.[61]
Stephens has suggested that activists would be more persuasive if they were less sure of their beliefs.[63][71] Stephens's positions on this issue led to a protest in 2013 over his Pulitzercitation omitting his climate change columns,[68] and to a strong backlash against his 2017 hiring byThe New York Times.[2][66][71] In reaction,The New York Times praised Stephens's "intellectual honesty and fairness".[67] As of October 28, 2022, Stephens said that he had come to accept the reality of anthropogenic climate change after a trip to Greenland with climate scientistJohn Englander, although he believes that markets are more effective than government at addressing the problem.[72]
Stephens disagrees with the mainstream conservative support for theSecond Amendment and has called for its repeal, but he does not support a ban on gun ownership.[73][74]
During the2016 United States presidential election campaign, Stephens became part of theStop Trump movement, regularly writing articles forThe Wall Street Journal opposingDonald Trump's candidacy,[2] and becoming "one of Trump's most outspoken conservative critics".[1] Stephens has compared Trump to Italian dictatorBenito Mussolini.[18] After Trump was elected, Stephens continued to oppose him: in February 2017, Stephens gave theDaniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles, and used the platform to denounce Trump's attacks on the media.[75] His opposition to Trump continued after he moved to theTimes. For instance, in 2018 he argued that by the same logic Republicans used to justify theimpeachment of Bill Clinton, they should impeach Trump.[76]
After the2024 United States presidential election, Stephens published an opinion article inThe New York Times acknowledging his past criticisms and reservations about Trump but concluding, "So here's a thought for Trump's perennial critics, including those of us on the right: Let's enter the new year by wishing the new administration well, by giving some of Trump's cabinet picks the benefit of the doubt, by dropping the lurid historical comparisons to past dictators, by not sounding paranoid about the ever-looming end of democracy, by hoping for the best and knowing that we need to fight the wrongs that are real and not merely what we fear, that whatever happens, this too shall pass."[77]
Stephens has been one of Trump's most outspoken conservative critics
While Stephens has garnered moderate praise from the left for being anti-Trump, he has written on other topics that may anger most Times readers. His views on climate change have created the strongest backlash, so far, with liberal site ThinkProgress questioning the hire on Wednesday and calling the writer is a climate science denier.
First of all, I was born in New York and I'm wondering why Wikipedia keeps insisting that i was born in Mexico. But I was born to a father who had been born in Mexico and had a family business there...
That Stephens doesn't bother to cite which climate-change facts are uncertain may be because he knows exactly what he is doing, and he's aware he wouldn't win that argument. Or it may be because he himself has fallen prey to his own argument about epistemic uncertainty, and so he no longer thinks the evidence matters. Either way, his accusation—that it is not the facts you should question, but the entire system that creates facts at all—is terrifying.
There was particular concern that Stephens would import his penchant for climate science denialism into the Times, a fear that was validated when Stephens devoted his very first column to that subject
The naming of a "climate agnostic" as a regular columnist risks turning the newspaper of record into a vehicle for the spread of ignorance
In other words, the people obstructing climate policies are justified because climate "advocates" are too mean to them, and claim too much certainty about the future. This is of course nonsense.
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