New York Times Columnist Bret Stephens Cites White Nationalist in ‘Jewish Genius’ Column
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
New York Times Columnist Bret Stephens Cites White Nationalist in ‘Jewish Genius’ Column
Stephens’ latest controversial column (which cites a study co-authored by a eugenicist) led some readers to call for a New York Times boycott.
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens is once again stirring outrage—this time with a piece entitled “The Secrets of Jewish Genius” that cites a paper co-authored by an academic labeled an “extremist” eugenicist and celebrated by white supremacists.
Stephens’ op-ed on Ashkenazi Jews was denounced all over social media as an example of race science bunk.
“How is it that a people who never amounted even to one-third of 1 percent of the world’s population contributed so seminally to so many of its most pathbreaking ideas and innovations?” Stephens wrote.
He said that Jews “are, or tend to be, smart” and cited the 2005 paper “Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence” by Gregory Cochran, Jason Hardy, and Henry Harpending, which declares that Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average I.Q. of any ethnic group. Stephens’ take? “Ashkenazi Jews might have a marginal advantage over their gentile peers when it comes to thinking better. Where their advantage more often lies is in thinking different,” he wrote.
As Stephens began trending on Twitter and the New York Times ’ tweet of his column was ratioed, the study he cited and its authors drew new scrutiny. Nieman Lab director Joshua Benton noted that the Times itself had published an op-ed last year by a Harvard geneticist, David Reich, in which he denounced Harpending’s work.
A 2005 Times article about the paper cited by Stephens quoted a Cornell University geneticist as saying Harpending and company “make pretty much all the classic mistakes in interpreting heritability,” though also quoted scientists with a less critical view.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has Harpending, who died in 2016, on its list of extremists and lists his ideology as “white nationalist.”
“Harpending has given talks on these ideas at white supremacist conferences, and is widely celebrated among white supremacists on forums like Stormfront and the Vanguard News Network, who see a champion for their cause behind his academic rhetoric,” the center said.
Benton also pointed out in a Twitter thread that the lead author on the 2005 paper, Gregory Cochran, has a history of homophobia.
In the paper “An Evolutionary Look at Human Homosexuality,” Cochran wrote that homosexuality, from a biological perspective, is “surely a disease.”
“So it’s a bug,” Cochran wrote. “Somehow, the brain has been damaged, but in a limited and focused way.”
The Times and Stephens did not respond to requests for comment.
The uproar over Stephens’ latest column follows the controversy that ensued in August after George Washington University professor David Karpf referred to him as a bedbug—prompting Stephens to complain to the school provost.
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I think the problem here is in wanting to and trying to claim that one group is "better" than another. That's not our role as human beings.
It is a short step to go from "western civilization is superior" to "white people are superior".
In Stephens case I dont think it is about race, I think he is doing it believing it is an appropriate way to defend Jews from anti-semites, but it has backfired on him.
Saying one group or another has a small average IQ advantage is almost meaningless anyway. There is always a range so , let's say that someone proves that Polish have higher IQ's , on average , than Irish. There would still be many Irish that have higher IQ's than many Polish, the difference in averages between the two groups would only show up at the extremes of the applicable ranges. In other words, the information that one group has a higher IQ is of very little real world worth.
Bret Stephens is a moderate conservative pundit who writes for the New York Times. He used to work for the Israeli government.
It's not your IQ, it's what you do with it. And education level has little to do with intelligence.
I guess DNA isn't real. One of it's discoverers said racist things!
Nor does smoking cigarettes cause lung cancer, since Nazi doctors discovered the link!