Devouring its Own: Liberal Columnist Ezra Klein Faces Protest at Sarah Lawrence

 by Jonathan Turley

On Tuesday, my new book for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Rage and the Republic, will be released. It is a book about revolutions, including our own. The book begins with a quote from the French writer Jacques Mallet du Pan, written in 1793: “Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.” History has proven him right over and over again. Today’s revolutionaries often become tomorrow’s reactionaries as the mob turns on its former leaders.

That inexorable pattern will soon play out as Democratic establishment leaders fuel the rage in the streets of cities like Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. A glimpse of this reality was seen this week at Sarah Lawrence College. The college has long pandered to the far left and has virtually purged any conservatives or libertarians from its faculty ranks. Without a conservative to cancel, students set upon liberal columnist Ezra Klein, disrupting his talk, as Cristle Judd, president of Sarah Lawrence College, sat obediently in silence next to him.

After disrupting the event, the students left to carry on their protests outside. What was notable was Klein’s surprise, who (to his credit) remained calm and tried to engage the protesters. Klein attempted to object that he was not a “denier” of alleged atrocities in Gaza. The students were not there for a dialogue but a disruption. They ignored Klein’s efforts to tamp down the rhetoric and yelling.

Judd was entirely useless, remaining a mere pedestrian watching the protest. After the students left, she quipped, “Welcome to Sarah Lawrence College.”  There was no pledge to suspend or expel the students: just a shrug and a joke.

I have long argued that universities need to focus on conduct, not speech content. This is conduct. If you disrupt classes or events (rather than protesting outside), you deny the very essence of higher education by preventing others from hearing a diversity of viewpoints.

In fairness to Klein, I am not suggesting that he is leading a mob. Rather, he is an example of how the focus on cancelling conservative figures is unlikely to end there. Sarah Lawrence College is a liberal echo chamber with virtually no conservatives or libertarians to attack. In that environment, the left becomes the target of the far left; the spectrum simply adjusts with no relative reactionaries.

After years of viewpoint intolerance, schools like Yale have finally reached the point where there is not a single faculty member left who donates to the Republican party or candidates.

In 2018, a faculty member who called for greater viewpoint diversity at Sarah Lawrence was the subject of threats and vandalism.

Samuel J. Abrams, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, wrote about the problem almost ten years ago. His research showed that, while the faculty was overwhelmingly liberal, the administrators were even more so. In his survey of 900 college administrators, he found that liberal staff members outnumber conservative staff members by a 12-to-1 ratio: “A fairly liberal student body is being taught by a very liberal professoriate — and socialized by an incredibly liberal group of administrators.”

That was almost a decade ago.

This does not happen overnight or by accident. It is the result of faculty and administrators replicating their own views while effectively purging their ranks of conservatives or moderates.

When this intellectual cleansing is complete, what remains is a new spectrum and an adjusted political litmus test. That is how a liberal columnist like Klein can become the target of a cancel campaign.

As Klein pleaded, “You have me right here. You can talk to me,” he was missing the point. It is not about dialogue or intellectual exchange. These students have been taught that they do not have to tolerate opposing views on their campuses. Klein was simply next in line.

Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of the Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.” 

https://jonathanturley.org/2026/01/31/devouring-its-own-liberal-columnist-ezra-klein-faces-protest-at-sarah-lawrence/