You either think he’s a vital voice for "intellectual diversity" or he’s the reason you finally canceled your subscription. Honestly, there isn't much middle ground when it comes to Bret Stephens New York Times tenure. Since he made the jump from the Wall Street Journal in 2017, he has basically lived in the center of a perpetual hurricane.
It wasn't supposed to be this loud. The Times hired him to give their liberal-leaning readership a taste of "principled conservatism." You know, the kind that doesn't involve wearing a red hat. But instead of a quiet bridge-building exercise, we got a decade of bedbug jokes, climate change blowups, and columns that seem specifically designed to make Twitter (now X) lose its collective mind.
The Never-Trump Conservative Without a Home
Stephens is a bit of a political ghost. He’s a Neoconservative in an era where the GOP has moved toward isolationism. He won a Pulitzer Prize back in 2013 for his work at the Wall Street Journal, mostly for his hawkish foreign policy views. When he moved to the Bret Stephens New York Times role, he was the ultimate "Never-Trump" Republican.
That should have made him an easy fit for the Times, right? Wrong.
The problem is that he didn't just bring critiques of the Republican party; he brought a worldview that many Times readers found fundamentally offensive. His very first column in 2017 questioned the "certainty" of climate change science. It was a disaster. Thousands of people canceled their subscriptions within 48 hours.
The Bedbug Incident and the "Rhetoric of Infestation"
If you want to understand why Stephens is such a polarizing figure, you have to look at the 2019 "Bedbug" saga. It sounds like a comedy sketch, but it’s real. A George Washington University professor, David Karpf, made a joke on Twitter—literally a tweet that had zero likes at the time—calling Stephens a "bedbug."
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Instead of ignoring it like a normal person with a Pulitzer would, Stephens emailed the professor and CC'd the university's provost.
He didn't stop there. He wrote an entire column about the "rhetoric of infestation," linking the bedbug comment to the dehumanizing language used by the Nazis before the Holocaust. It was a massive escalation. People weren't just annoyed; they were baffled. To many, it felt like a powerful man using the world’s most influential newspaper to settle a personal grudge with a random academic.
Jewish Genius and the Eugenics Accusation
Then came the "Secrets of Jewish Genius" column in late 2019. Stephens argued that Ashkenazi Jews had a genetic or cultural edge in intelligence.
The backlash was instant. Critics pointed out that the paper he cited was co-authored by Henry Harpending, a researcher with well-documented white nationalist views. The Times eventually had to scrub the mention of the study and attach a massive editor’s note.
Stephens argued he wasn't pushing eugenics, but the damage was done. It reinforced the idea that he was a "provocateur" rather than a columnist.
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Israel, Gaza, and the 2026 Landscape
By 2025 and 2026, the focus on Bret Stephens New York Times work shifted heavily toward the Middle East. As a staunch Zionist, his defense of Israel’s actions in Gaza has been some of his most controversial writing to date.
In mid-2025, he wrote a piece titled "No, Israel Is Not Committing Genocide in Gaza." The column was a direct rebuttal to various UN reports and international court cases. He argued that "genocide" was being used "promiscuously" to describe any military conflict people didn't like.
- The Reaction: Al Jazeera and other outlets labeled it "genocidal journalism."
- The Defense: Stephens maintained that Hamas, not Israel, was the party with genocidal intent.
- The Result: Another wave of "Cancel NYT" hashtags.
It’s worth noting that he also lost his long-time sparring partner, Gail Collins. Their weekly column, "The Conversation," was quietly ended in early 2025. Without that "breezy" back-and-forth to soften his edges, Stephens has become an even more isolated figure on the op-ed page.
Is He Actually Necessary?
The Times leadership, from James Bennet to the current editors, has always defended the hire. Their argument is basically: "If we only print what our readers already believe, we are a bubble, not a newspaper."
But there’s a difference between "challenging views" and "faulty logic."
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Many critics, like those at Swarthmore or the Columbia Journalism Review, argue that the problem isn't that Stephens is conservative. The problem is that his columns often rely on "cheap sophistry"—basically, clever-sounding arguments that fall apart if you look at the data for more than five seconds.
Take his views on the 2024 and 2026 political shifts. He famously said he couldn't vote for Kamala Harris, calling her "weaker than Biden," but also couldn't stand Trump. This "double hater" stance represents a very small slice of the American electorate, yet he has one of the biggest megaphones in the world to scream it from.
What Most People Get Wrong About Him
People often think Stephens is a Trump apologist. He’s not. He has called Trump a "hollow, squalid man" and "the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House."
The real friction is that he hates the "woke" left just as much as he hates the MAGA right. He’s a man of the 1990s world order—pro-intervention, pro-free market, pro-institutional authority—living in a world that has largely moved on from all three.
Key Takeaways for the Engaged Reader
If you're following the Bret Stephens New York Times saga, here is how to approach his work without losing your mind:
- Check the Citations: As seen with the "Jewish Genius" and climate columns, his primary sources are often the weakest point of his argument.
- Look for the "Subtweet": Stephens often uses his 800-word platform to respond to people who mean-tweeted him three days earlier. If a column feels weirdly specific, that’s probably why.
- Separate Policy from Personality: You can agree with his critiques of authoritarianism while acknowledging his "bedbug" emails were a massive overreach.
- Read the "Editor's Notes": No other columnist at the Times has as many "clarifications" or "corrections" attached to their archive. They provide crucial context that he often leaves out.
The best way to engage with a writer like Stephens isn't to just "hate-read" him. It's to hold the New York Times to the same standard for their opinion pieces as they do for their reporting. Opinions are free, but facts—even in an op-ed—should be sacred.
If you want to dive deeper into the current state of American media, start by comparing his columns on the Middle East with those of his colleagues like Nicholas Kristof or Jamelle Bouie to see the vast ideological gap that the Times is trying to bridge.