Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s, resigned from the company on Tuesday, Sept. 16. He was an employee of the company for 47 years. He shared on X that he felt the social causes that he and Ben & Jerry’s fight for have been silenced by their parent company, Unilever.
Ben & Jerry’s has a long history of activism. Ben and Jerry’s seeks to advocate for human needs and to eliminate injustices in all communities, both locally and around the world. The company has created special ice cream flavors in the past to support their mission, including “Empower Mint” to support democracy and “One Sweet Whirled” to bring awareness to environmental problems.
Ben & Jerry’s was sold to Unilever in 2000. Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational consumer goods company that owns over 400 other brands. This sale allowed Ben & Jerry’s to maintain control over its social mission, but not its business operations. In 2024, Unilever announced the spin-off of its ice cream brand, The Magnum Ice Cream Company, which began operating independently in July 2025.
However, Ben & Jerry’s has claimed that Magnum has censored the company’s attempts to speak out against highly impactful subjects such as the Israel-Palestine conflict and LGBTQ+ rights by quieting the independent board of the company. This attempt at censorship raises important concerns about free speech and people’s ability to speak out about topics they care about.
Robert Furmanek is a senior electives teacher at State High. He teaches economics, modern issues of society and sociology. Furmanek believes that Magnum may have been legally justified in its decision to silence Ben & Jerry’s.
“By selling the company, it’s not that he’s [Greenfield] selling his right to free speech…the owner of the company has the right to say, ‘I want my company to have this image,’ or ‘I don’t want my employees to generate this commentary,’” Furmanek said.
Senior Molly Workman has a different opinion. “Because they [Unilever] are not the founders of the company, I feel like they don’t have the right to dictate how they [Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield] use their platform,” Workman said.
How can consumers speak out against businesses whose values they don’t agree with? “We can put consequences on businesses if we don’t like their moral or ethical values, whether it’s a lack of healthcare, their treatment of their labor, or their messages… we can simply choose not to consume,” Furmanek said.
Workman shared some advice for students who are interested in advocating for free speech. “Do research beforehand, before you go and publicly make some statement, and know what you are attaching your name to. And then going out in the community and trying to not only talk about it, but find a way you can actively change it,” she said.
Whether Ben and Jerry’s will earn their right to speak out freely for topics they believe in remains to be seen.
