Bret Stephens

Bret Louis Stephens (born November 21, 1973) is an American journalist and opinion columnist for The New York Times, specializing in foreign policy, domestic politics, and cultural matters. Born in New York City and raised in Mexico City, Stephens earned an undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Chicago and a master's from the London School of Economics. His career trajectory includes serving as editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post from 2002 to 2004 and a subsequent role at The Wall Street Journal as deputy editorial page editor and author of the foreign-affairs column "Global View," for which he received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary. Joining The New York Times in April 2017, Stephens has distinguished himself through neoconservative advocacy for American internationalism, defense of Israel against regional threats, and critiques of isolationist tendencies in U.S. politics, alongside opposition to Donald Trump's presidency. Notable for challenging institutional consensuses, his inaugural Times column questioned the overconfidence in climate change projections, eliciting widespread accusations of denialism despite his acknowledgment of anthropogenic warming, while a 2019 piece examining genetic and historical factors behind Ashkenazi Jewish achievements in intellectual fields provoked charges of endorsing eugenics, though it emphasized descriptive data over normative prescriptions.