Naomi Klein is a world-renowned Canadian public intellectual, journalist, and academic, currently serving as a Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She grew up in Montreal within a Jewish family with deep radical and anti-war roots, a background that profoundly shaped her political consciousness. For Klein, her Jewish identity is the cornerstone of her critical spirit—she frequently asserts that the historical lesson of “Never Again” should not be confined to a single people but should instead be a universal call to oppose all forms of oppression.
Guided by this systemic scrutiny, Klein authored a series of era-defining books that established her central role in global leftist thought. Her debut, “No Logo,” was hailed as the manifesto of the anti-globalization movement, while “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” exposed how power exploits crises for economic plunder. In recent years, her focus has shifted to the climate crisis; her book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate” won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize. With her rigorous empirical research and sharp cultural critique, she has been described by The New Yorker as one of the most influential voices on the American left.
This refusal to accept unjust systems also permeates her long-standing support for the Palestinian liberation movement. As one of the earliest and most influential proponents of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, Klein famously refused to sign a traditional publishing deal in Israel in 2009 to protest its occupation policies. She is active in organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and delivered a landmark speech at the 2024 “Seder in the Streets” protest in New York. In that address, she outspokenly characterized Zionism as a “false idol” that betrays the core of Jewish values, calling for an “exodus” from ethnonationalism. She advocates for liberating Judaism from militarism, emphasizing that true peace and collective justice can only be achieved by recognizing the rights and dignity of Palestinians.