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.

Bret Stephens was born on November 21, 1973, in New York City to Jewish parents Charles J. Stephens and Xenia Stephens. His father, born and raised in Mexico City, managed the family's business interests there, prompting the family to relocate when Stephens was a toddler. This move resulted in Stephens spending much of his formative years in Mexico City, where he was immersed in a blend of American expatriate, local Mexican, and international influences.

Stephens' paternal grandparents had emigrated from New York to Mexico City during the administration of President Lázaro Cárdenas in the 1930s, establishing roots in a country that hosted Jewish refugees fleeing European persecution. His mother, born in Italy at the outset of World War II, was the daughter of Jewish parents who had escaped Nazi Germany, embedding in the family a direct legacy of displacement and survival amid antisemitism. Though his parents maintained a secular Jewish household, this heritage of migration and endurance—spanning pogroms, the Holocaust, and Latin American upheavals—fostered an awareness of vulnerability that Stephens has described as central to Jewish cultural resilience.

Growing up as an American Jew in Mexico City positioned Stephens as an "insider-outsider," navigating a society where antisemitic undercurrents persisted despite Mexico's historical openness to Jewish immigrants. This environment, combined with exposure to multilingual, multicultural settings, cultivated a rooted yet adaptable worldview, emphasizing skepticism toward ideological extremes and a preference for Western liberal traditions as bulwarks against historical threats to Jewish continuity. The family's business acumen and emphasis on self-reliance further reinforced habits of critical thinking and perseverance in the face of external pressures.