Longtime Levi Strauss & Co. President Jennifer Sey has left, citing Levi’s efforts to silence her vocal criticism of COVID-19 school closures across America. “More than 20 years ago, I joined Levi’s. I resigned my post as president so that I can use my voice,” Sey tweeted, as it seems that the former Levi’s president has a new position, and perhaps her most important yet.
Sey recaps her storied career at Levi’s, in a profile in Bari Weiss’ Substack, Common Sense. She rose from assistant marketing manager in 1999 to chief marketing officer, to the first female global brand president of the company in 2020. However, when the pandemic hit, Sey says her career was dramatically altered.
“Things changed when COVID hit. Early in the pandemic, I publicly questioned whether schools had to be shut down. I wrote op-eds, appeared on local news shows, attended meetings with the mayor’s office, organized rallies and pleaded on social media to get the schools open. I was condemned for speaking out. This time, I was called a racist — a strange accusation given that I have two black sons—a eugenicist, and a QAnon conspiracy theorist,” Sey writes.
Cancel Culture Cop-Out
Sey, who described herself as “left of left of center” before February 2020, has turned on the views she once had, in large part because of cancel culture. “The spirit of inclusion, fearlessness and acceptance of difference from the norm is gone. Any deviation from the orthodoxy, the mainstream narrative, is demonized,” she tweeted last July.
Republican congressional candidate Anthony Sabatini, who is running in Florida’s Seventh District, largely agrees with Sey’s characterization, saying that the “Woke corporate culture is getting out of control. These corporations are pushing anti-American views and have become the enemy of freedom in America today.”
This feeling of ostracization that Sey says she has experienced is why she continued to speak out against school closures. Inside Levi’s, however, was another story, with her views making her widely unpopular.
“In the fall of 2021, during a dinner with the CEO, I was told that I was on track to become the next CEO of Levi’s — the stock price had doubled under my leadership. The only thing standing in my way, he said, was me. All I had to do was stop talking about the school thing,” Sey wrote.
From Golden to Unsustainable
Sey refused to be silenced, and explains in her profile that she was told her future at Levi’s was unsustainable. “In the last month, the CEO told me that it was ‘untenable’ for me to stay. I was offered a $1 million severance package, but I knew I’d have to sign a nondisclosure agreement about why I’d been pushed out. The money would be very nice. But I just can’t do it,” Sey explains.
In quitting Levi’s, she writes that the once-iconic American company she knew has been transformed into something else entirely. “It’s trapped trying to please the mob — and silencing any dissent within the organization. In this, it is like so many other American companies: held hostage by intolerant ideologues who do not believe in genuine inclusion or diversity. In the end, no one stood with me. Not one person publicly said they agreed with me.”
‘Politically Homeless’
It is clear in her op-ed that she has struggled immensely with her experience at Levi’s, as the scourge of “silencing any dissent within the organization” personally affected both Sey, and her advocacy against pandemic school closures.
However, on a wider scale, Sey’s views on the Democrats’ actions on school closures have caused her to become “quite politically homeless,” she told Fox Business. “I've been a Democrat my entire voting life. Free speech and kids are not ‘right wing’ issues, and it should not be considered beyond the pale to stand up for these things—or even be ‘right wing’ for that matter. It certainly shouldn't make one unemployable.”