Marty Peretz

Martin H. Peretz (born December 6, 1938) is an American former magazine publisher and Harvard University assistant professor.

He received his Bachelor of Arts from Brandeis University in 1959, and a Master of Arts and PhD from Harvard University in Government.

After graduating from Harvard, Peretz was hired as a lecturer in the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at the university.

He was a major behind-the-scenes benefactor of Eugene McCarthy's primary presidential bid in 1968.

In 1974, he purchased The New Republic, and he later assumed editorial control of the magazine.

In 1974, Peretz purchased The New Republic from Gilbert Harrison for $380,000, which was supplied by his wife.

After purchasing the magazine, Peretz allowed Gilbert A. Harrison, its editor, to continue editing the magazine.

Peretz pledged to let him continue running the magazine for at least three years.

But by 1975, Peretz was agitated by having his own articles rejected for publication, pointing out that he had been pouring more and more money into the magazine to cover its losses, and he fired Harrison.

Much of the rest of the staff, including Walter Pincus, Stanley Karnow, and Doris Grumbach, were fired or quit.

They were largely replaced by recent Harvard graduates lacking journalistic experience.

Peretz then named himself the magazine's new editor, serving in that post until 1979.

In the 1980 presidential election, the magazine endorsed the liberal Republican John B. Anderson, running as an independent, rather than the Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter.

Over time, Peretz purged the magazine of other progressive editors and writers, as the magazine underwent a dramatic ideological transformation.

Peretz attacked I. F. Stone after Stone signed a public appeal for the provision of water and medical supplies for siege victims trapped in West Beirut during the 1982 Israeli Siege of Beirut, writing, "So this is what I. F. Stone has come to, asking his admirers to put up money so that the PLO can continue to fight."

In an April 1991 editorial, as the Gulf War commenced, Peretz wrote that he was "the only writer on the Middle East not invited by PBS or NPR to speak about the Gulf."

In 1996, Peretz founded the financial news website TheStreet.com with CNBC host and hedge fund manager Jim Cramer.

Peretz grew up in New York City.

Both of his parents were Zionists, but not religious Jews.

He is a descendant of the Polish-Yiddish writer I. L. Peretz.

Peretz graduated from the Bronx High School of Science at age 15.

In 1997, Peretz fired Michael Kelly as the editor of The New Republic after Kelly refused to publish a ghostwritten, unsigned editorial defending Peretz's former student and friend Al Gore, who was then vice president and likely to run for president when Bill Clinton's term was over.

Kelly told The Washington Post that his "firing-by-phone came days after he refused to publish an unsigned item by Peretz saying that recent allegations of improper fund-raising by Gore were overblown and old news."

Kelly added: "I didn't think that should be our editorial position. I wrote him a memo saying, 'Here's why I think you're wrong and I'm right.'" In an interview with The New York Times, Kelly said: "As long as Marty Peretz has the involvement with Al Gore and with the magazine to the degree that he does, I think the job is structurally impossible."

Peretz has long supported both Democrats and Republicans.

As he aged, his support moved from progressives and liberal candidates to neoliberals and conservatives.

He retained majority ownership of The New Republic until 2002, when he sold a two-thirds stake in the magazine to two financiers.

Peretz is known for his strong support of Israel and his support of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Peretz sold the remainder of his ownership rights in 2007 to CanWest Global Communications, but remained editor-in-chief.

He supported Senator Barack Obama in both his Democratic primary race and in the 2008 general election, but in 2012 wrote that he hoped that "maybe Barack Obama will be a one-term president" and that a prominent alternative candidate would run against him in the Democratic primary.

Peretz later expressed disappointment with Obama, telling The New York Times Magazine: "I'm not sure I feel betrayed, but it's close... our first African-American president has done less to fight AIDS in Africa than George Bush. He's done nothing on human rights."

In March 2009, Peretz repurchased the magazine with a group of investors led by ex-Lazard executive Laurence Grafstein.

As other editors were appointed, Peretz remained editor-in-chief until 2012.

During Peretz's stewardship of The New Republic, the magazine generally maintained liberal and neoliberal positions on economic and social issues, while assuming correspondingly pro-Israel and neoconservative hawkish stances on foreign affairs.

Peretz has said, "support for Israel is deep down, an expression of America's best view of itself."

Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein have said that Peretz said "I am in love with the state of Israel."

In December 2012, Caroline Glick, a columnist for The Jerusalem Post, praised Peretz for his unshakable loyalty to Israel, writing, "As a man of the Left, he has fought the fight for Israel and Jewish rights, increasingly alone for nearly fifty years, and has done so despite what must have been enormous personal costs as his comrades all jumped ship, and in many cases, joined the cause of Israel's enemies."

Media critic Eric Alterman wrote in the American Prospect of Peretz's tenure as editor of The New Republic that Peretz used the magazine to attack, tarnish, and marginalize people and institutions with which he personally or politically disagreed: "[D]uring his reign, Peretz has also done lasting damage to the cause of American liberalism. By turning TNR into a kind of ideological police dog, Peretz enjoyed... [playing] a key role in defining the borders of 'responsible' liberal discourse, thereby tarring anyone who disagreed as irresponsible or untrustworthy. But he did so on the basis of a politics simultaneously so narrow and idiosyncratic—in thrall almost entirely to an Israel-centric neoconservatism."

During his tenure as owner of The New Republic, Peretz repeatedly used the magazine's editorial pages to attack and marginalize people he perceived as enemies of Israel, among them even many mainstream Israeli politicians and activists.

"Sometimes we attack people unfairly", Peretz's friend and TNR literary editor Leon Wieseltier said.