Climate activists interrupted a “Democracy and Disagreement” lecture on the wealth tax Tuesday afternoon, calling guest speaker Larry Summers a “climate criminal” and chanting “tax the rich.” The seven protesters, who were met with boos, climbed onto the stage and unveiled banners reading “Larry Summers your time is up,” “toxic mess” and “tax the rich.” 

“Democracy and Disagreement” is a speaker series course moderated by Debra Satz, Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, and Paul Brest, former Dean and Professor Emeritus (active) at Stanford Law School. During the lectures, which are held in CEMEX Auditorium, scholars on opposing sides of a given issue debate to model civil disagreement.

Summers, who served as the 71st Secretary of the Treasury, president of Harvard University and chief economist of the World Bank, attended the class to take the “conservative position” of the debate, arguing against a 2% wealth tax on Americans with assets above $50 million and 3% tax on those with over $1 billion. 

The protesters were members of Climate Defiance, an organization tackling climate change mitigation policies, which uses “mass turn-out, non-violent direct action to force our politicians to take action,” according to their website. Having amassed 43,000 followers on Twitter and features from both CBS News and The New York Times, Climate Defiance has grown in visibility since their inception in 2023.

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.”

“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 Daily. “Larry is pushing to let the multimillionaires and the billionaires off the hook. So we confronted him.”

Greenberg also cited Summer’s push to end the ban on American oil exports as a reason for his characterization of the guest speaker as a “climate criminal.”

As the protestors occupied the stage, the audience began yelling at them to “get off the stage” and to “let [Summers] speak.” The protestors continued to chant on stage for over 10 minutes. 

Summers told the demonstrators that he would respond to their comments if they returned to the audience and did not interrupt him again, noting their disruption was longer than the time he was allowed to speak. The demonstrators chose to remain standing, which Summers said he found “revealing.” 

“It is too bad that we were not able to engage in a conversation about ideas. I would’ve been happy if invited to discuss environmental issues or anything else that was of concern to them,” he later told The Daily.

Satz condemned the protesters. “There is a time and place for protest, and it is not in a classroom, and it is not disrupting the experience of almost 500 people who came to listen,” she told The Daily.

Brest echoed this sentiment. “I apologize to our students who have come to hear a discussion, not a rally,” he told the class.

According to the University, none of the protesters were Stanford students. The Department of Public Safety collected their information at the scene and referred it to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

“We hope there will be some kind of disciplinary action against the people who deprived the rest of the audience of their time,” Satz said.

Shreya Mehta ‘26, a TA of the class, said the incident provides students with the opportunity to reflect on what kinds of civil disagreement are effective. “The more we yell, the less voices we hear,” she said.

“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,” a current student who wishes to be anonymous told The Daily. “Although Larry address[ed] some of the issues they brought up after they left, his main counter argument was ‘I am a Democrat myself,’ which left me feeling unsatisfied.” 

They also reflected on the moments where audience members shouted at protesters, saying things like “expel them!” and calling them “assholes.”

“I didn’t appreciate that some of the audience members were shouting mean messages to the protestors,” they told The Daily.

Stella Vangelis ’28, a student in the class, emphasized the irony of a direct-action protest in a class promoting civil dialogue. “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,” Vangelis said.

Vangelis added that she wished the protesters had waited until the end of class to make their point, when time is allotted for audience members to ask questions of the speakers.

Helen Szteinbaum, another class attendee and Distinguished Careers Institute Fellow, called the protest disrespectful. “It was against what democracy should be all about,” she said.