{"id":30752,"date":"2020-01-01T22:59:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-01T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mathewingram.blog\/?p=30752"},"modified":"2020-01-01T22:59:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-01T22:59:00","slug":"the-ongoing-dilemma-that-is-times-columnist-bret-stephens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2020\/01\/01\/the-ongoing-dilemma-that-is-times-columnist-bret-stephens\/","title":{"rendered":"The ongoing dilemma that is Times columnist Bret Stephens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n


Note<\/strong>: This is something I originally wrote<\/a> for the daily newsletter at the Columbia Journalism Review, where I\u2019m the chief digital writer<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The holiday season and the arrival of a new year are often cause for reflection and soul-searching. Whether any of the senior management at the New York Times<\/em> spent the holidays engaged in this kind of activity is unknown, but many critics have made it abundantly clear that they would like them to, if only to explain why the newspaper allows op-ed columnist Bret Stephens to write the things he does. As most people were winding down their work week and preparing to turn out the lights on 2019, Stephens chose to lob a hand grenade into the Twitter-sphere with a column entitled<\/a> The Secrets of Jewish Genius<\/em>. In it, the Times<\/em> columnist posed — and then tried to answer — the question of why there have been so many noteworthy Jewish scientists and leading thinkers like Einstein. As he put it: “How is it that a people who never amounted even to one-third of 1 percent of the world\u2019s population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, Stephens comes to the conclusion<\/a> that Jewish genius “operates differently” from the intelligence displayed by others. It is, he says, “prone to question the premise and rethink the concept; to ask why (or why not?) as often as how; to see the absurd in the mundane and the sublime in the absurd. These differences, according to Stephens, stem from cultural factors, as well as a focus on questioning authority. But those ideas weren’t what triggered a multi-day backlash<\/a> against Stephens or the Times<\/em> (although many argued they were also wrong-headed). What drove the wave of criticism<\/a> was that in the course of making this argument, Stephens cited a paper he said supported the theory that Ashkenazi Jews (i.e., those with a primarily European background) have higher IQs than the average population. Within hours of the column being posted, multiple people had pointed out that one of the co-authors<\/a> of the paper had expressed racist views and had ties to white supremacist organizations, and that the journal<\/a> the paper was published in was formerly known as Eugenics Review<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Sunday the 30th, two days after the column originally appeared, the Twitter account for the Times<\/em> opinion section announced that the piece<\/a> had “been edited to remove a reference to a paper widely disputed as advancing a racist hypothesis.” The column was also updated with a long editor’s note (at the top of the piece, rather than at the bottom, as some notes often are), which pointed out that the reference to the paper had been removed and why. The note went on to say that<\/a> “Mr. Stephens was not endorsing the study or its authors\u2019 views, but it was a mistake to cite it uncritically” and admitted that the effect of doing so was to “leave an impression with many readers that Mr. Stephens was arguing that Jews are genetically superior [but] that was not his intent. The column was also edited to remove all references to Ashkenazi Jews, something that was a central part of Stephens’ argument in the original column, but these removals weren’t mentioned<\/a> in the editor’s note. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

For some, including<\/a> Slate writer Ashley Feinberg and<\/a> Judd Legum, who writes the progressive newsletter Popular Information, the paper’s explanation was weak at best. As Feinberg pointed out using a screenshot, Stephens originally wrote: “The common answer is that Jews are, or tend to be, smart. When it comes to Ashkenazi Jews, it’s true.” As a number of people <\/a>argued, if the phrase “it’s true,” followed by a reference to the study, doesn’t amount to an endorsement of a paper’s findings, it’s hard to think of what would. As debate about the column continued, it widened to include the editorial judgment of Times <\/em>op-ed editor James Bennet (something that has been questioned before, both externally and internally<\/a>). As Vice editor Tim Marchman put it<\/a>: “There’s a level on which this is trivial, but also one on which the most important media operation in the United States publishing grotesque things and then not accounting for their handling of them even in brutally humiliating editors’ notes is not trivial at all.” BuzzFeed media editor and correction expert Craig Silverman said the note sounded<\/a> like Times <\/em>editors “making excuses and covering for Stephens.”
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Several Times<\/em> contributors also criticized<\/a> the paper’s decision to run the column, including author and Times<\/em>‘ magazine writer Jody Rosen, who said<\/a>: “Speaking as both an Ashkenazi Jew and a NYT contributor, I don’t think eugenicists should be op-ed columnists.” Former CNN anchor and talk-show host Soledad O’Brien wondered why more Times staffers and contributors weren’t speaking up<\/a>: “I think it\u2019s interesting how there are so few people at (or affiliated with) the New York Times who said anything about Bret Stevens column publicly,” she wrote. “I mean, at some point isn\u2019t there a line where you say\u2014\u201cyeah, the eugenics thing. I gotta stand up and say something\u201d? New York magazine and HuffPost contributor Yashar Ali echoed this sentiment<\/a>, saying: “I get why reporters at the NYT (or any news org) aren’t going to publicly criticize their colleagues for a bad tweet or a story… but the Bret Stephens thing is terrible and should require his NYT colleagues to speak up.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s more on Bret Stephens and his column:<\/p>\n\n\n\n