Murray Polner, an unswerving voice for pacifism and civil liberties and the founder and only editor of Present Tense magazine, a progressive counterpoint to Commentary that began in a period of one-upmanship among Jewish intellectuals, died on May 30 in Manhasset, N.Y. He was 91.

The cause was sepsis, his son Robert said.

Present Tense, which started as a quarterly in 1973 and was later published bimonthly, was a liberal Jewish journalistic take on world affairs.

Like Commentary, which was considered somewhat more highbrow and later branded as neoconservative, Present Tense was published by the American Jewish Committee, which blamed financial constraints when Present Tense was closed in 1990.

Some members of the Present Tense staff said at the time, however, that the decision was politically motivated because the magazine had been critical of Israeli policies and, earlier, of the Reagan administration.