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But attendees criticized the disruption, questioned why they didn’t just ask questions at the end

Seven activists disrupted a debate about taxes held at Stanford University yesterday, accusing one speaker of being a “climate criminal.”

Members of “climate defiance,” none of whom were students, took the stage on Tuesday to confront Larry Summers. The event is part of a class called “Democracy and Disagreement” that includes regular debates – in this case, a tax on wealth.

Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and chief economist of the World Bank, argued against a wealth tax, according to the Stanford Daily. In addition to serving as President Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Summers also served as an economic adviser to President Barack Obama.

The activists “climbed onto the stage and unveiled banners reading ‘Larry Summers your time is up,’ ‘toxic mess’ and ‘tax the rich,’” according to the student newspaper.

“Members of the protest group also threw fake money into the crowd reading ‘toxic mess Larry,’ ‘Larry Summers bankrolls climate destruction,’ and ‘you deserve this money, Larry made sure it went to billionaires,’” the student newspaper reported.

The interruption had little effect on winning over supporters to the cause.

The activists were booed by those in the crowd. “Let him speak,” attendees chanted, according to video posted on social media.

Larry Summers speech interrupted at Stanford pic.twitter.com/xQ0seL0jez

— Antonio Alonso-Stepanov (@antonioalst) February 25, 2025

The student newspaper also interviewed several attendees, all of whom disagreed with the protest.

“I liked their message that the wealthy should be taxed more to help the needy more, but I think the way they went about it was slightly damaging to their message,” one student told the newspaper.

“I was just appreciative that there were people who, like myself, wanted the discussion to go on regardless of disagreements, because the point of the class is to debate on issues – it’s not to have everyone agree,” another student said.

Another student also disagreed with the protest, saying “It was against what democracy should be all about.”

The protesters stood on stage for 10 minutes, rejecting an offer by Summers to talk more during the question-and-answer period.

“We interrupted Larry Summers because establishment corporatist incrementalist democrats like him are part of what got us to the problem [of climate change] in the first place,” Climate Defiance co-founder and executive director Michael Greenberg told the student newspaper. “Larry is pushing to let the multimillionaires and the billionaires off the hook. So we confronted him.”

The Stanford police reported the students to Santa Clara County for prosecution, according to the student newspaper.
Greenberg has a history of interrupting private events to push his political views.

“I went into Morton’s to confront Brett Kavanaugh as he was eating his steak dinner,” Greenberg wrote on X on July 10, 2022. He said he did not respect the justice’s privacy because Kavanaugh “abolished it” for others, likely in reference to the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which invented a right to abortion.

However, the group was unsuccessful in directly confronting the Supreme Court justice, according to media reports at the time.

Editor’s note: The article has been updated to clarify the speaker series is part of a course.

MORE: Check out the College Fix Cancel Culture Database

IMAGE: Antonio Alonso-Stepanov/Shutterstock

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