Bret Stephens

Bret Louis Stephens (born November 21, 1973) is an American conservative columnist, and journalist. He has been an opinion columnist for ''The New York Times'' and a senior contributor to NBC News since 2017. Since 2021, he has been the inaugural editor-in-chief of '' SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations''.

Stephens was previously a foreign affairs columnist and deputy editorial page editor at ''The Wall Street Journal'', overseeing the editorial pages of its European and Asian editions. From 2002 to 2004, he was editor-in-chief of ''The Jerusalem Post''. At the ''Wall Street Journal'', Stephens won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2013.

Stephens is known for his neoconservative foreign policy opinions and for being part of the right-of-center opposition to Donald Trump.

Early life and education

Stephens was born in New York City, the son of Xenia and Charles J. Stephens, a former vice president of General Products, a chemical company in Mexico. Both his parents were secular Jews. His mother was born in Italy at the start of World War II to Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Germany. His paternal grandfather, Louis Ehrlich, was born in 1901 in Kishinev (today Chișinău, Moldova). He fled with his family to New York after the Kishinev pogrom and changed the family surname to Stephens (after poet James Stephens). Louis Stephens moved to Mexico City, where he founded General Products and built his fortune. 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. Bret was raised there and is fluent in Spanish. As a teenager, he attended boarding school at Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts.

Stephens earned an undergraduate degree in political philosophy from the University of Chicago, and a master's degree in comparative politics from the London School of Economics.

Personal life

He is married to Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, a ''New York Times'' music critic. They have three children, and live in New York City. He was previously married to Pamela Paul, the former editor of ''The New York Times Book Review''.

Journalism career

Stephens began his career as an assistant editor at '' Commentary'' magazine in 1995–96.

In 1998 he joined ''The Wall Street Journal'' as an op-ed editor. He later worked as an editorial writer for '' The Wall Street Journal Europe'', in Brussels. Stephens edited the weekly "State of the Union" column on the European Union.

In 2002, Stephens moved to Israel to become the editor-in-chief of ''The Jerusalem Post''. He was 28 years old. ''Haaretz'' reported at the time that the appointment of Stephens, a non-Israeli, triggered some unease among senior ''Jerusalem Post'' management and staff.

Stephens left ''The Jerusalem Post'' in 2004 and returned to ''The Wall Street Journal''. In 2006, he took over the ''Journal''s "Global View" column.

In 2017, Stephens left the ''Journal'', joined ''The New York Times'' as an opinion columnist, and began appearing as an on-air contributor to NBC News and MSNBC.

In 2021, Stephens became editor-in-chief of '' SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations'', published by Maimonides Fund.

Awards and recognition

In 2005, the World Economic Forum named Stephens a Young Global Leader. He won the 2008 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism. In 2009, he was named deputy editorial page editor after Melanie Kirkpatrick's retirement. In 2010, Stephens won the Reason Foundation's Bastiat Prize.

Stephens won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for "his incisive columns on American foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist." He is a national judge of the Livingston Award. In 2015, Stephens joined the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts & Sciences. The Real-Time Academy judges contestants for the Shorty Awards, which honor the best individuals and organizations on social media.

Stephens has chaired two Pulitzer juries. In 2016, he chaired the one that awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting to Alyssa Rubin of ''The New York Times''. In 2017, Stephens chaired the jury that awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing to Art Cullen of '' The Storm Lake Times''.

Stephens spoke at the University of Chicago's 2023 Class Day, during convocation weekend. His invitation provoked backlash from various student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, for his views about Israel.

Published works

Stephens's book ''America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder'' was released in November 2014. 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.

Controversy

George Washington University

In August 2019, Stephens sent a complaint to a George Washington University (GWU) professor and the university's provost about a tweet in which the professor called Stephens a "bedbug". The topic of Stephens's next column was the "rhetoric of infestation" used by authoritarian regimes such as Nazi Germany. The column was interpreted as criticism of the GWU professor and other critics of Stephens. The controversy gained massive attention online, leading to then-president Donald 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!"

Comments about antisemitism, race

In August 2016, ''The Wall Street Journal'' published a column by Stephens about an Egyptian judoka refusing to shake hands with his Israeli opponent after an Olympic match, in which Stephens called antisemitism "the disease of the Arab mind". Some readers criticized this as a racist generalization that all Arabs were antisemitic. After Stephens joined ''The New York Times'', several reporters at the newspaper criticized Stephens's previous writings.

In a December 2019 column titled "The Secrets of Jewish Genius", in which he contended that Ashkenazi Jews have a history of alternative thinking which has led them to be successful. This article led to accusations of eugenics 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." 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. 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 of intelligence among Ashkenazi Jews. The ''Times'''s deletion was criticized by Jonathan Haidt, Nadine Strossen, and Steven Pinker, who called it "surrender to an outrage mob".

In February 2021, Stephens wrote a column critical of the ''Times'''s dismissal of Donald 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". The ''Times'' spiked the column, but it was leaked to the ''New York Post'', which published it. Stephens principally argued against the editor's initial position that the newspaper would "not tolerate racist language regardless of intent"; the editor subsequently backed down from that position.

Political views

Foreign policy

Foreign policy was one of the central subjects of the columns for which Stephens won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary. Critics have characterized his foreign policy opinions as neoconservative, part of a right-wing political movement associated with President George W. Bush that advocates the use of military force abroad, particularly in the Middle East, as a way of promoting democracy there. Stephens was a "prominent voice" among the media advocates for the start of the 2003 Iraq War, for instance writing in a 2002 column that, unless checked, Iraq was likely to become the first nuclear power in the Arab world. Although the weapons of mass destruction used as a ''casus 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. He also argued strongly against the Iran nuclear deal and its preliminary agreements, claiming that they are a worse bargain even than the 1938 Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany.

Israel

Stephens is a supporter of Israel and considers himself a Zionist. Stephens said that one of the reasons he left ''The Wall Street Journal'' for ''The Jerusalem Post'' was that he believed that Western media was getting Israel's story wrong. "I do not think Israel is the aggressor here", he said. "Insofar as getting the story right helps Israel, I guess you could say I'm trying to help Israel." Stephens led ''The Jerusalem Post'' during the height of the Second Intifada and pointed the paper in a more neoconservative direction. He has said that he did not consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal despite international law saying otherwise.

He supported Israel during the Gaza war and strongly opposed the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. He has criticized such groups for their violent actions towards Israel and has blamed Hamas for the ongoing conflict.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Stephens called South Africa's genocide case against Israel a "moral obscenity" that supposedly misinterpreted quotes from Israeli officials. He pointed to the 1988 Hamas charter to claim that Hamas was a genocidal organization and accused Hamas or hiding behind civilians. Richard Falk called this piece, "so extreme, in my view, as to make it unpublishable in a responsible media platform" and claimed that calling "recourse to the preeminent judicial body with a conservative legal tradition 'a moral obscenity' is itself 'a moral obscenity.'"

Global warming

Stephens is also known for his climate change contrarian