38 Facts About Bret Stephens

Bret Louis Stephens was born on November 21,1973 and is an American conservative columnist, and journalist.

Bret Stephens has been an opinion columnist for The New York Times and a senior contributor to NBC News since 2017.

At the Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2013.

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

Bret Stephens's mother was born in Italy at the start of World War II to Jewish parents who had fled Nazi Germany.

Bret Stephens's paternal grandfather, Louis Ehrlich, was born in 1901 in Kishinev.

Bret Stephens fled with his family to New York after the Kishinev pogrom and changed the family surname to Stephens.

Louis Bret Stephens moved to Mexico City, where he founded General Products and built his fortune.

Bret Stephens married Annette Margolis and had two sons, Charles and Luis.

Bret 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.

Bret Stephens is married to Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, a New York Times music critic.

Bret Stephens was previously married to Pamela Paul, the former editor of The New York Times Book Review.

Bret Stephens later worked as an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe, in Brussels.

Bret Stephens edited the weekly "State of the Union" column on the European Union.

In 2002, Bret Stephens moved to Israel to become the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post.

Bret Stephens left The Jerusalem Post in 2004 and returned to The Wall Street Journal.

In 2017, Bret 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, Bret Stephens became editor-in-chief of SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations, published by Maimonides Fund.

Bret Stephens won the 2008 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism.

In 2017, Bret Stephens chaired the jury that awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing to Art Cullen of The Storm Lake Times.

Bret Stephens spoke at the University of Chicago's 2023 Class Day, during convocation weekend.

Bret Stephens's invitation provoked backlash from various student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, for his views about Israel.

The editors said that Bret 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.

In February 2021, Bret 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.

Bret 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.

Foreign policy was one of the central subjects of the columns for which Bret Stephens won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary.

Bret 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.

Bret Stephens 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.

Bret Stephens is a supporter of Israel and considers himself a Zionist.

Bret 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.

Bret Stephens has said that he did not consider Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal despite international law saying otherwise.

Bret Stephens supported Israel during the Gaza war and strongly opposed the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas.

Bret Stephens has criticized such groups for their violent actions towards Israel and has blamed Hamas for the ongoing conflict.

Bret Stephens pointed to the 1988 Hamas charter to claim that Hamas was a genocidal organization and accused Hamas or hiding behind civilians.

Bret Stephens has been described as a climate change denier, but disavows that term, calling himself agnostic on the issue.

Bret Stephens considers climate change a "20-year-old mass hysteria phenomenon" and rejects the notion that greenhouse-gas emissions are an environmental threat.

Bret Stephens has suggested that activists would be more persuasive if they were less sure of their beliefs.

Bret Stephens disagrees with the mainstream conservative support for the Second Amendment and has called for its repeal, but he does not support a ban on gun ownership.