Bret Stephens

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. His parents were both secular Jews. His paternal grandfather had changed the family surname from Ehrlich to Stephens (after poet James Stephens). He was raised in Mexico City, where his father was born and worked. In his adolescence, he attended boarding school at Middlesex School in Massachusetts. Stephens received an undergraduate degree in political philosophy from the University of Chicago before earning a master's degree in comparative politics at the London School of Economics.

Career

Stephens began his career at The Wall Street Journal as an op-ed editor in New York. He later worked as an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal Europe, in Brussels.

2000s

In 2006, he took over the "Global View" column after George Melloan's retirement. In 2009, he was named deputy editorial page editor after the retirement of Melanie Kirkpatrick.

From 2002 to 2004, he was editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post. He won the 2008 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism and the 2010 Bastiat Prize. In 2005, Stephens was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is also a frequent contributor to Commentary magazine.

2010s

Stephens won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Commentary recognizing his 2012 columns for the Journal for "incisive columns on U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics, often enlivened by a contrarian twist."

Stephens authored the book America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder, released in November 2014. The book presents the case that the U.S. has been retreating from its role as the "world's policeman" in recent decades, which will lead to ever greater world problems.

Stephens has made several short videos for the conservative education website Prager University. His lessons focus on American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Foreign policy

Foreign policy was one of the central subjects of the columns for which Stephens won the Pulitzer Prize. His foreign policy opinions have been characterized as neoconservative, part of a right-wing political movement associated with president George W. Bush that advocated 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. Stephens has also argued strongly against the Iran nuclear deal and its preliminary agreements, arguing that they were a worse bargain even than the 1938 Munich Agreement with Nazi Germany.

Stephens is a supporter of Israel, stating that "it remains vitally important that support for Israel remains fully bipartisan, not simply for the sake of Israel itself, but also for the moral health of both Democratic and Republican parties."

Domestic politics

During the campaign for the United States presidential election, 2016, Stephens became part of the Stop Trump movement, regularly writing Wall Street Journal articles opposing the candidacy of Donald Trump, and becoming "one of Trump’s most outspoken conservative critics". After Trump was elected, Stephens continued to oppose him: in February 2017, Stephens gave the Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles, and used the platform to denounce Trump's attacks on the media.

Global warming

Stephens is also known for his climate change contrarianism, and his mainstream media appointments have given him a prominent voice on this subject. Although others have called him a climate change denier, Stephens disavows this term, and calls himself "agnostic" on the issue.

Stephens accepts that human-caused global warming has been occurring, but denies that the change constitutes a threat and mocks climate change activism "as hysterical alarmism" that distracts the public from issues he considers more important such as terrorism. He argues that global warming activism is based on theological beliefs rather than science, as an outgrowth of western tendencies to expect punishment for sins. He has also suggested that climate change activists would be more persuasive if they were less sure of their beliefs.

Stephens' positions on this issue led to protests in 2013 for his Pulitzer from scientists, who pointed out that the Pulitzer citation omitted his climate change columns, and to a strong backlash against his 2017 New York Times posting. In reaction, the New York Times defended the "intellectual honesty and fairness" of its new columnist.

Personal life

He is married to Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, a music critic who writes for The New York Times. The couple has three children and lives in New York City. He was previously married to Pamela Paul, the editor of The New York Times Book Review. He is fluent in Spanish as a result of his childhood spent in Mexico.