Naomi Klein is an influential Canadian journalist, author, and academic who serves as Professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Raised in Montreal in a secular Jewish family with deep radical roots, her political outlook was shaped early by her family’s activism. She frequently invokes the historical Jewish principle of “Never Again” to advocate for universal opposition to human oppression.
Klein’s influential books helped shape modern anti-globalization and leftist thought. Her debut work, No Logo (1999), became an international bestseller and a manifesto for the anti-globalization movement, while The Shock Doctrine (2007) analyzed how governments and corporations use crises to implement free-market policies. In recent years, her research has shifted toward environmental policy; her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (2014) won the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize.
A long-time vocal critic of Israeli policies, Klein was an early supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and refused to publish her books through traditional Israeli publishers in protest of the occupation. Active in organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), she delivered a widely covered address at a 2024 “Seder in the Streets” demonstration in New York. In the speech, she criticized Zionism as a “false idol” that strays from core Jewish ethics, calling instead for an “exodus” from ethnonationalism and the liberation of Jewish identity from militarism.