November 21, 2025 • 35 mins
Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, is calling on Unilever to “free” the ice cream brand after years of clashes over its social mission and stance on issues like Gaza.
In this episode of Ways to Change the World, Ben tells Krishnan Guru-Murthy why he believes business has become the strongest force in society - and why it must care about more than profit. Unilever maintains that it’s working to create “a fairer, more socially inclusive world”.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
I don't believe that the majority of Americans want
Trump's version of of America. I think Unilever has become kind
of Trumpified. If a business does not have a
social mission and the current guy in the White House says DEI
(00:20):
bad, OK, DEI bad. Hello and welcome to Ways to
Change the World. I'm Christian Gurimurthy and
this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people
about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have
helped shape them. My guest this week is Ben Cohen,
(00:41):
who Co founded the ice cream company Ben and Jerry's 40 years
ago in Vermont with his school friend Jerry Greenfield.
Now the company was acquired famously by Unilever in 2000,
but Ben and Jerry stayed with it.
And they cut what sounded like an amazing deal to still give
them quite a lot of independenceand the freedom to voice their
(01:05):
feelings about social and political justice and all the
causes that Ben and Jerry's had partly become famous for helping
support. And they have run into trouble
because, particularly over theirtheir feelings and their
campaigning around Gaza, they seem to have come into corporate
(01:28):
conflict with Unilever. And free Ben and Jerry's is a
campaign that Ben started this September to convince Unilever
to free the brand up for sale. Jerry Greenfield felt he
couldn't carry on anymore and has actually left Ben and
Jerry's as an employee, though I'm sure he's still a friend and
close confidant of Ben's, which we will try and discover in the
(01:51):
course of this conversation. So, Ben, thank you very much
indeed for joining us. Yeah, good to be here.
How? How do you want to change the
world? I'd like to make it a more
caring place. I'd like our governments to
start spending our money on things that actually help people
instead of spending, you know, in the US 60 or 70% of our
(02:16):
budget on it's killing people. It's really amazing that there's
enough to go around, you know, for, for small percentages of
the US Pentagon budget. We could provide food for
everybody in our own country andaround the world who doesn't
(02:36):
have enough to eat. We could provide medicines that
that people need. We could make it so that in the
United States, the American dream is still a reality, that
people could actually afford to buy a house, that childcare
doesn't break the bank, that medical debt doesn't, you know,
(02:58):
it doesn't put you into bankruptcy.
It's, it's just incredible to methat and, and the other fact of
the matter is that, you know, people in the United States,
they have no desire to kill people in other countries that
they've never met. Nobody's doing anything to us.
(03:18):
It it's crazy. Ben and Jerry's has always been
this slight conundrum, you know,that you, you managed to marry,
you know, big business, a very successful business that then
sort of got into bed with corporate America through
(03:41):
Unilever. Yet you carried on your sense of
social and political justice. I mean, have you now hit the
wall that tells you these thingsare fundamentally incompatible?
I do not think they're incompatible by any means.
You know, I, I think the issue for Ben and Jerry's right now is
(04:05):
that Ben and Jerry's has a particular social mission which
is as important to, to the company as a financial mission
and our product mission to to make the best ice cream
possible. And you know, that was going
(04:29):
quite well. You know, we got acquired by
Unilever, the Ben and Jerry's was a public company.
I, you know, I was, Jerry and I were both opposed to the sale,
but there was nothing we could do to stop it based on SEC
rules. And but as a, you know, as a
(04:50):
result, during those negotiations, there was a very
unusual structure, governance structure that was formed for
Ben and Jerry's, which was that Unilever became the sole
shareholder, but an independent board of directors comprised at
(05:11):
the beginning of former Ben and Jerry's directors was
established that has legal authority over the social
mission of the brand, over the product quality and over what's
called the essential integrity of the brand, the marketing and
how it's sold. So, you know, that actually
(05:34):
worked pretty well for quite a while until, you know, with the
company, Ben and Jerry's along with Unilever, along with the
independent board, all all decided after after years of, of
research and discussion that Benand Jerry's needed to stop
(05:58):
selling ice cream in the, in theWest Bank of the occupied
territories in, in Palestine because it was inconsistent with
the values of Ben and Jerry's. Can we just sort of rewind and
and go back to sort of what, what does social mission have to
do with ice cream? Where?
Where did that come from and whywas it knitted into the business
(06:20):
from day one? Well, I mean, what does social
mission have to do with anybody's life, All of our
lives, You know, business is really just a combination of a
bunch of people working together.
As as a matter of fact, businesshas now become the strongest
(06:45):
force in our society. You know, it used to be religion
was originally the most strongest force and then it
became nation States. And today it's business.
And the difference between today's most powerful force and
those other two former most powerful forces is that they
(07:08):
were all about improving the quality of life for people.
But business has never had that as part of its remit.
And so, so Ben and Jerry sought to change that and, and
demonstrate that it's it's a myth that it's not possible for
(07:33):
business to help to improve the quality of life in the society
and make money at the same time.And how did you go about it?
I mean, what what were the sort of the policies that you put in
place from the beginning and howdid they develop?
Well, the first thing was to establish that mission
statement, that social mission. Writing it out in that form and
(07:54):
and being so specific about it came from an era in the early
days of the company when there was a lot of conflict between
management and the board and, you know, people having having
different opinions about whetherbusiness had a responsibility to
(08:20):
help to improve the quality of life in the community.
I mean, this was back in 1978. The words, the phrase socially
responsible business did not exist.
And the norm was, you know, this, this, this quote that's
actually taken out of context from Milton Friedman saying that
(08:42):
the only legitimate purpose of abusiness is to maximize profit.
And so that was the predominant belief in the business
community. You know, it's probably still
the dominant belief, although it's not not near as dominant as
it as it used to be there. There came a time when Ben and
(09:06):
Jerry's was decided to come out with a chocolate covered ice
cream pop on a stick. You know, normally you'd put on
the packaging, wow, you're aboutto eat the greatest chocolate
covered pop on a stick ever. And instead, we decided to use
the packaging as media, and thiswas before the end of the Cold
(09:28):
War, and called for the US government to spend 1% of its,
what was called at the time, thedefense budget on peace through
understanding activities betweenthe people of the United States
and the people of the Soviet Union.
(09:51):
And we were going to call it a peace pop.
And it was incredibly controversial within the company
that why should a business, you know, start talking about
international affairs, that thatwasn't part of what we should
(10:12):
do. We should stick to our knitting
and we shouldn't criticize the government.
Eventually we just decided to doit, call it a peace pop.
We we actually got a lot of positive, you know, people liked
it. You know, there was positive
(10:33):
press about it. People felt good about it.
And were you thinking, look, youknow, our customers are going to
be people who agree with our values, which is obviously
limiting your customer base or, or were you thinking, no, this
is for everybody, but we hope they'll also read the message on
the side. Well, my understanding is that
everybody's in favour of peace. You know, people have different
(10:55):
ways of getting there. I mean, the idea of peace
through war is absurd. I don't think that's, I think
we've demonstrated that that doesn't, that doesn't happen.
We weren't thinking about, you know, is this going to, to limit
our, our customer base? I mean, you know, the, the norm
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for business is I don't want to offend anybody.
I don't want to, you know, say something that everybody might
not agree with. Well, that's how you get mush,
the middle mush businesses don'tstand for anything except making
money and, and people understandthat.
(11:44):
I mean, they're buying products from businesses, despite what
the business stands for. And, and the reality is that
business, big business, is incredibly political.
They determine who gets elected by campaign contributions.
(12:05):
They determine our laws through lobbying.
They determine the news we see through ownership.
You know, the, the difference isthat most big businesses that
are operating like that, operating in their own
(12:26):
self-interest, manipulating government, are trying to do it
covertly. They're not, they're not
shouting from the rooftops abouthow, hey, we just paid this
congressman so much money and we've got 2 lobbyists for every,
every, every congressperson in, in the building.
And that's just the weapons industry.
(12:50):
But, and so the difference for Ben and Jerry's is that we're
taking public stands for the benefit of the community in
general. And we're not doing it behind
closed doors. We're we're being open about it.
Our stands are overt, but they're not in our own
(13:10):
self-interest. And and whose stances were they
always going to be? I mean, was it just literally
what you and you and Jerry thought, or was there a more
democratic approach to it withinthe company?
Yeah, that certainly came up in the early years.
At the beginning, it was my values and Jerry's values.
(13:30):
And then we realized that it can't, you know, that we wanted
the business to, you know, last for a long time and, and, and we
needed everybody bought into the, to the values and, and we
(13:51):
made a big effort to, to do thatfor the company to, you know,
kind of to imbue these values throughout the company.
And we, you know, it's a difficult job.
We, we, we certainly were not sure that we'd be successful at
(14:12):
doing it. But, you know, most of those
values are, you know, they're kind of common sense in terms of
what, what people want. People would rather have better
education for their kids then enough nuclear weapons to blow
(14:36):
up the world 10 times over despite the fact that they say
oh a nuclear war must cannot be won and must never be fought and
then they turn around and spend another 2 trillion on more
nukes. Some of the best moments of my
life have been since I I'm no longer operationally involved in
(14:57):
the company, and every once in awhile the company will come out
taking a stand on a social issuethat I had absolutely nothing to
do with that I was joyfully surprised about that.
These guys did it on their own. The the values have been
integrated into the, into the cloth, into the fabric of the
(15:20):
company. Let's Fast forward, I mean, to,
to what's going on right now. I mean, you, you've laid out how
corporate America has always been knitted into politics, you
know, and, but right now things feel different.
I mean, you know, it, it feels as though corporate America is
more cravenly bowing to this administration, making payments,
(15:42):
making donations. Do you think things are
genuinely different right now oror is it just this is the way it
always worked? I think Craven is exactly the
right word. Thank you.
It's worse than it's ever been. What amazed me is that, you
know, is after the death, the murder of George Floyd, all
(16:06):
these businesses that had never shown a sense of social
consciousness before came out with these beautiful statements.
And they, you know, they, they, they began these, these
diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
And during that time is when Benand Jerry's, like I say, as a
(16:28):
surprise to me, came out with, Ithink the most powerful
statement, which was we must dismantle white supremacy.
And but then Trump comes into office and all that stuff is out
the window. All these companies that made
(16:49):
these incredibly beautiful statements about racial justice,
they just threw him out the window.
Trump don't like it, OK, we ain't going to do it.
And and you know, I've, I've thought about that and, and
realized that, you know, if, if you're, if a business does not
(17:12):
have a social mission, if it's, if that's if the social mission
is not, it's a part of its purpose as a business.
If its purpose is just to maximize short term profits and
the current guy in the White House says DEI bad, OK DEI bad.
(17:35):
Yeah, and that's what's happened.
Yeah. So where does that leave, you
know, your attempt or Ben and Jerry's attempt to live with
corporate America, with Unilever?
I mean, you say you were againstit, you know, all along.
Is that because you you knew that this would end up
happening? Yeah, I, I actually thought it
was going to happen sooner. I mean, for, for quite a few
(17:59):
years, the relationship between Ben and Jerry's and Unilever
worked pretty well. And then what happened was that,
you know, after a lot of research and thought, Ben and
Jerry's pulled out of the West Bank and Unilever got got so
(18:27):
much pushback from from Israel that they kind of unilaterally
reversed that decision and sold the rights to Ben and Jerry's to
an Israeli who had been our licensee.
And he continued to sell Ben andJerry's in the West Bank.
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And and that's, you know, and that was a violation of the
acquisition agreement of the powers of the independent board.
And after a bunch of negotiation, they were not able
to come to terms and the independent board was kind of
forced to to sue Unilever. And after that, you know, the
(19:17):
relationship just kind of started getting worse and worse.
And before that time, you know, Ben and Jerry's would, you know,
take these positions and, and doa, a post, a social media post
on it. The procedure was that they
would give Unilever a heads up. They would, you know, if, if the
(19:40):
post was going to be somewhat controversial, they, you know,
they, the two parties felt like,well, just just let us know
before it comes so we can be prepared for it.
You know, after the the West Bank incident that that was no,
that became no longer a heads up, but it became approval and
(20:05):
Unilever stopped approving, you know, posts on racial justice,
on freedom of speech, on Gaza. On Black History Month and.
How does that happen? I mean like, is it literally you
can't say that? That's, yeah, that's my
(20:26):
understanding. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm
not operationally involved, but that's what I'm told is that
the, yeah, the company will prepare a post, send it to
Unilever for what has now becomeapproval, and it gets
disapproved. Do you think that has anything
to do with principal or, you know, and what Unilever
(20:48):
believes, or is it just about political expediency?
You know, don't rock the boat. Don't go up against the
government. Well, I I've been wondering
about that. It's, it's one of the two.
It's either it's just expediencythat we, we don't want to
(21:12):
criticize the government that, that, that if Trump is saying
DEI bad, we don't want to say DEI good.
But I to, so to some extent I, Ithink Unilever has become kind
of Trumpified. But I, I actually believe that
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there's good people at Unilever.I think a lot of them don't
agree with with Trump's, with what Trump is doing, but it
appears that they've decided as a as a business not to be
critical at all of what he's doing and not even to allow this
(22:00):
supposedly independent subsidiary than in juries to
operate according to the legallysigned documents that they
signed at the time of the acquisition.
Unilever said, you know, said inresponse that it was never the
responsibility of the independent board to, you know,
to, to take strategic business decisions, you know, that they
(22:23):
were effectively about, you know, message rather than
business strategy. But I mean, I guess that's where
the, the conflict comes about, you know, as to sort of how, how
you do 1 without the other. I mean, the interesting thing is
that like, you know, the, the issues that you've talked about
and the where Ben and Jerry's has come into conflict are, you
know, these two very, very core areas of conflict in, in
(22:50):
American politics and world politics at the moment, which is
the diversity question that Trump has railed against.
But but bigger than that really is Israel and Gaza.
And you know that that is the, you know, the most controversial
issue that you can sort of dive into at the moment.
(23:10):
So I mean, what? Why is it so important to you
and to Ben and Jerry's, do you think to say what you think
about both Israel's behaviour inthe West Bank and Gaza?
Well, it's just about justice, you know, I think there's this
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quote from, I believe it's Desmond Tutu that in you cannot
be neutral in situations of injustice.
If an elephant is standing on the tail of a mouse and you say
that you're neutral, the mouse will not much appreciate your
neutrality. I mean, I, for me personally,
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you know, if I'm a, if I become aware of a situation of
injustice, you can, I mean, you have three choices.
You can ignore it, you can complain about it or you can do
something about it. I personally prefer to do
(24:16):
something about it. I feel, I feel better if I'm
trying to do something about it.And I think that, you know, the
reality is that we didn't we didn't come up with this social
mission to sell ice cream. But amazingly enough, as we take
more and more of these stands, we sell more and more ice cream.
(24:41):
You know, a, a lot of these stands are just basic human
decency. No, don't bomb women and
children and people in Gaza. Don't destroy the entire
infrastructure there. You know, I mean, this idea that
(25:07):
if there are people who have broken the law, people who have
done, you know, horrible things,find them and bring them to
justice, what right do you have to to kill all their family
members and their neighbors? Because what?
(25:28):
Well, well, it's going to be hard to bring them to justice,
so we'll just bomb everybody. And I mean, obviously both you
and Jerry come from Jewish roots.
I don't know whether you were brought up Jewish in in any way
yourself or, or, or what your Jewish heritage is precisely.
But how? How important is that in how you
(25:50):
feel about what Israelis doing? So I was bar mitzvahed.
I was brought up in a family that my parents would speak
Yiddish to each other a lot. I, I, you know, so to get bar
mitzvahed, you have to go to temple, you know, on a regular
(26:12):
basis. I didn't before.
I was, you know, before I was preparing for bar mitzvah.
I didn't really go and after I was from rich that I didn't go.
So I mean, I, I regard myself asa secular Jew.
I mean, I, I'm not, I'm not particularly religious.
You know, I I'm into peace and love, which they they say
(26:35):
that's, that's a big part of religion.
But do you think being Jewish gives you a a bigger license to
say what you think about Israel's behavior?
Well, I, I think that it's, it'seasier to, to criticize Israel
if if you're a Jew, you run intoa lot of criticism from other
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Jews who believe that, you know,Jews should not criticize
Israel. You know, the history of the
Jews is that they were oppressed, they were slaves and,
and they were, they were exterminated.
The words never again are, are abig part of, of growing up
Jewish. And you know, when I see the
(27:20):
slaughter in in Gaza, I, I, I came to understand that well,
they didn't mean never again. They just meant never again for
us. It, I, I mean, I, I think in
large part it's because of that Jewish upbringing that I have so
(27:47):
much sympathy for people that are oppressed and, you know,
oppressed because of race, oppressed because of income.
That's what my Jewish upbringingtaught me.
And I I just kind of generalize it to everyone, not, not just
Jews. So.
(28:08):
So what do you think? You know, big business and
corporate America should be doing, I mean, I guess you could
just argue, look, the, the, the role of business is to maximize
shareholder value and to be focused on profits.
So they're doing the right thing.
If even if they are just pandering to Trump and the MAGA
(28:28):
agenda, what what do you think they should be doing?
On one level, business is a member of the community.
They just happen to be a very big, powerful, wealthy member of
the community. But members of a community have
a responsibility to each other. And you know, what business
(28:52):
likes to do is to externalize its costs.
So, you know, I'm a business. I'm just looking to maximize my
profits. You know, what I'm doing ends up
polluting, you know, the neighborhood, polluting the
ocean, the seas, the skies, whatever.
But that's that's not, that's not my concern because I'm just
(29:13):
here trying to make as much money as I can.
And and so that leaves it to therest of us to have to pay to
clean up businesses crap. That ain't right.
The general idea of business that we want to pay our people
(29:36):
as little as possible. We want to provide as few
benefits as possible and we wantto we want to charge as much as
possible and and we want to put in office people that will not
(30:00):
regulate us and that will give U.S. tax breaks that that's
destroying our society. You can't have the most powerful
force in the society only thinking about itself and expect
that you're going to have a decent society for everybody
else. I suppose there's an argument
(30:20):
that they could say, well, look,if if we did what you wanted,
you know, it's all very well fora small business to say what it
thinks and to be a campaigning organization.
But we have 10s of thousands of jobs in our hands.
If we go up against the government, if we take on the
Trump agenda, they can tie us upin the courts.
They can damage us with planningdecisions.
(30:43):
They can they can take us apart if they really want to.
And that's, you know, we have a bigger responsibility to a
workforce not just in America, but around the world.
What would be your answer to that?
I would say that it's business that put Trump in power.
You know, look at who's been financing his ballrooms, his,
(31:05):
his inauguration. I don't, I don't think that
would happen. You know, I don't, I don't
believe it's reasonable. And I also believe that if you
don't do it, it's appeasement. And our country is now on a
March toward authoritarianism. Trump has just announced that
(31:25):
he's setting up his own federal militarized federal police force
that's accountable only to him. You know, this is how fascists
come into power. And in terms of the powerful
forces in our society, business is the most powerful 1.
(31:48):
So you're either on the side of,you know, the dissolution of,
of, of our democracy and, or you're fighting for it.
And I, I would, you know, I'd venture to say that if you fight
for it, your customers will reward you.
(32:12):
On the Palestine issue, you've decided to go ahead and make a
watermelon ice cream through your own brand, not Ben and
Jerry's. Just tell me about that and how
it's going to work. You know, I felt like since
since the company was prevented from making this ice cream, you
know, calling for a ceasefire, that I would make my own Ben's
(32:35):
Best ice cream. Which now that we more or less
have a ceasefire is, is calling for the US and Israel.
Now that they've, you know, spent from their bottomless pit
to, to bomb and destroy this country.
Let's find some more money from that bottomless pit to help
(32:57):
Palestinians rebuild it as they want as they want it rebuilt.
How hopeful are you that the pendulum will swing back your
way? You know, America is obviously
not in the place politically or in business terms that you want
it to be right now. And, and lots of people are
predicting, well, you know, theymight stay in power some way.
(33:17):
Trump may find a way to serve a third term.
Democracy is in peril, you know.Are you?
Are you, are you, Are you seeingthe doom?
Or are you seeing hope? I see hope.
I don't believe that the majority of Americans want
(33:38):
Trump's version of of America. It, you know, it, it totally
goes against the founding documents of our country, the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of
Independence, you know, fairness, justice, equality.
I, I believe that, you know, the, the huge majority of
(34:02):
Americans are in favor of that. I, I think that what happened
was that, you know, both political parties are corrupt
and are controlled by the moneyed interests.
And so they run the government to the benefit of the moneyed
(34:23):
interests. And, you know, half the
population is, is kind of struggling to get by because the
system has essentially been rigged.
So Trump is not helping. Trump is hurting that.
And, you know, but his rhetoric is, oh, I'm going to help you,
I'm going to take care of you. And, and I'm, and I'm sure he's
(34:45):
going to throw a few crumbs to the, to the bottom people on the
bottom part of the economic ladder.
But in general, he's, he's making it worse for the, for the
bottom half of the country. And, and, and that's not what
people want. And I, I believe we're going to
(35:09):
see a, a big change in, in the 28th presidential election.
And I'm, I'm hoping that we'll, we'll even see some decent
changes in the, in the 26 midterm.
Well, Ben Cohen, thank you so much indeed for your time.
(35:29):
It's been a pleasure talking to you.
Thanks for sharing your ways to change the world.
You can watch all of these interviews on the Channel 4 News
YouTube channel. Until next time, bye bye.
I don't believe that the majority of Americans want
Trump's version of of America. I think Unilever has become kind
of Trumpified. If a business does not have a
social mission and the current guy in the White House says DEI
(00:20):
bad, OK, DEI bad. Hello and welcome to Ways to
Change the World. I'm Christian Gurimurthy and
this is the podcast in which we talk to extraordinary people
about the big ideas in their lives and the events that have
helped shape them. My guest this week is Ben Cohen,
(00:41):
who Co founded the ice cream company Ben and Jerry's 40 years
ago in Vermont with his school friend Jerry Greenfield.
Now the company was acquired famously by Unilever in 2000,
but Ben and Jerry stayed with it.
And they cut what sounded like an amazing deal to still give
them quite a lot of independenceand the freedom to voice their
(01:05):
feelings about social and political justice and all the
causes that Ben and Jerry's had partly become famous for helping
support. And they have run into trouble
because, particularly over theirtheir feelings and their
campaigning around Gaza, they seem to have come into corporate
(01:28):
conflict with Unilever. And free Ben and Jerry's is a
campaign that Ben started this September to convince Unilever
to free the brand up for sale. Jerry Greenfield felt he
couldn't carry on anymore and has actually left Ben and
Jerry's as an employee, though I'm sure he's still a friend and
close confidant of Ben's, which we will try and discover in the
(01:51):
course of this conversation. So, Ben, thank you very much
indeed for joining us. Yeah, good to be here.
How? How do you want to change the
world? I'd like to make it a more
caring place. I'd like our governments to
start spending our money on things that actually help people
instead of spending, you know, in the US 60 or 70% of our
(02:16):
budget on it's killing people. It's really amazing that there's
enough to go around, you know, for, for small percentages of
the US Pentagon budget. We could provide food for
everybody in our own country andaround the world who doesn't
(02:36):
have enough to eat. We could provide medicines that
that people need. We could make it so that in the
United States, the American dream is still a reality, that
people could actually afford to buy a house, that childcare
doesn't break the bank, that medical debt doesn't, you know,
(02:58):
it doesn't put you into bankruptcy.
It's, it's just incredible to methat and, and the other fact of
the matter is that, you know, people in the United States,
they have no desire to kill people in other countries that
they've never met. Nobody's doing anything to us.
(03:18):
It it's crazy. Ben and Jerry's has always been
this slight conundrum, you know,that you, you managed to marry,
you know, big business, a very successful business that then
sort of got into bed with corporate America through
(03:41):
Unilever. Yet you carried on your sense of
social and political justice. I mean, have you now hit the
wall that tells you these thingsare fundamentally incompatible?
I do not think they're incompatible by any means.
You know, I, I think the issue for Ben and Jerry's right now is
(04:05):
that Ben and Jerry's has a particular social mission which
is as important to, to the company as a financial mission
and our product mission to to make the best ice cream
possible. And you know, that was going
(04:29):
quite well. You know, we got acquired by
Unilever, the Ben and Jerry's was a public company.
I, you know, I was, Jerry and I were both opposed to the sale,
but there was nothing we could do to stop it based on SEC
rules. And but as a, you know, as a
(04:50):
result, during those negotiations, there was a very
unusual structure, governance structure that was formed for
Ben and Jerry's, which was that Unilever became the sole
shareholder, but an independent board of directors comprised at
(05:11):
the beginning of former Ben and Jerry's directors was
established that has legal authority over the social
mission of the brand, over the product quality and over what's
called the essential integrity of the brand, the marketing and
how it's sold. So, you know, that actually
(05:34):
worked pretty well for quite a while until, you know, with the
company, Ben and Jerry's along with Unilever, along with the
independent board, all all decided after after years of, of
research and discussion that Benand Jerry's needed to stop
(05:58):
selling ice cream in the, in theWest Bank of the occupied
territories in, in Palestine because it was inconsistent with
the values of Ben and Jerry's. Can we just sort of rewind and
and go back to sort of what, what does social mission have to
do with ice cream? Where?
Where did that come from and whywas it knitted into the business
(06:20):
from day one? Well, I mean, what does social
mission have to do with anybody's life, All of our
lives, You know, business is really just a combination of a
bunch of people working together.
As as a matter of fact, businesshas now become the strongest
(06:45):
force in our society. You know, it used to be religion
was originally the most strongest force and then it
became nation States. And today it's business.
And the difference between today's most powerful force and
those other two former most powerful forces is that they
(07:08):
were all about improving the quality of life for people.
But business has never had that as part of its remit.
And so, so Ben and Jerry sought to change that and, and
demonstrate that it's it's a myth that it's not possible for
(07:33):
business to help to improve the quality of life in the society
and make money at the same time.And how did you go about it?
I mean, what what were the sort of the policies that you put in
place from the beginning and howdid they develop?
Well, the first thing was to establish that mission
statement, that social mission. Writing it out in that form and
(07:54):
and being so specific about it came from an era in the early
days of the company when there was a lot of conflict between
management and the board and, you know, people having having
different opinions about whetherbusiness had a responsibility to
(08:20):
help to improve the quality of life in the community.
I mean, this was back in 1978. The words, the phrase socially
responsible business did not exist.
And the norm was, you know, this, this, this quote that's
actually taken out of context from Milton Friedman saying that
(08:42):
the only legitimate purpose of abusiness is to maximize profit.
And so that was the predominant belief in the business
community. You know, it's probably still
the dominant belief, although it's not not near as dominant as
it as it used to be there. There came a time when Ben and
(09:06):
Jerry's was decided to come out with a chocolate covered ice
cream pop on a stick. You know, normally you'd put on
the packaging, wow, you're aboutto eat the greatest chocolate
covered pop on a stick ever. And instead, we decided to use
the packaging as media, and thiswas before the end of the Cold
(09:28):
War, and called for the US government to spend 1% of its,
what was called at the time, thedefense budget on peace through
understanding activities betweenthe people of the United States
and the people of the Soviet Union.
(09:51):
And we were going to call it a peace pop.
And it was incredibly controversial within the company
that why should a business, you know, start talking about
international affairs, that thatwasn't part of what we should
(10:12):
do. We should stick to our knitting
and we shouldn't criticize the government.
Eventually we just decided to doit, call it a peace pop.
We we actually got a lot of positive, you know, people liked
it. You know, there was positive
(10:33):
press about it. People felt good about it.
And were you thinking, look, youknow, our customers are going to
be people who agree with our values, which is obviously
limiting your customer base or, or were you thinking, no, this
is for everybody, but we hope they'll also read the message on
the side. Well, my understanding is that
everybody's in favour of peace. You know, people have different
(10:55):
ways of getting there. I mean, the idea of peace
through war is absurd. I don't think that's, I think
we've demonstrated that that doesn't, that doesn't happen.
We weren't thinking about, you know, is this going to, to limit
our, our customer base? I mean, you know, the, the norm
(11:21):
for business is I don't want to offend anybody.
I don't want to, you know, say something that everybody might
not agree with. Well, that's how you get mush,
the middle mush businesses don'tstand for anything except making
money and, and people understandthat.
(11:44):
I mean, they're buying products from businesses, despite what
the business stands for. And, and the reality is that
business, big business, is incredibly political.
They determine who gets elected by campaign contributions.
(12:05):
They determine our laws through lobbying.
They determine the news we see through ownership.
You know, the, the difference isthat most big businesses that
are operating like that, operating in their own
(12:26):
self-interest, manipulating government, are trying to do it
covertly. They're not, they're not
shouting from the rooftops abouthow, hey, we just paid this
congressman so much money and we've got 2 lobbyists for every,
every, every congressperson in, in the building.
And that's just the weapons industry.
(12:50):
But, and so the difference for Ben and Jerry's is that we're
taking public stands for the benefit of the community in
general. And we're not doing it behind
closed doors. We're we're being open about it.
Our stands are overt, but they're not in our own
(13:10):
self-interest. And and whose stances were they
always going to be? I mean, was it just literally
what you and you and Jerry thought, or was there a more
democratic approach to it withinthe company?
Yeah, that certainly came up in the early years.
At the beginning, it was my values and Jerry's values.
(13:30):
And then we realized that it can't, you know, that we wanted
the business to, you know, last for a long time and, and, and we
needed everybody bought into the, to the values and, and we
(13:51):
made a big effort to, to do thatfor the company to, you know,
kind of to imbue these values throughout the company.
And we, you know, it's a difficult job.
We, we, we certainly were not sure that we'd be successful at
(14:12):
doing it. But, you know, most of those
values are, you know, they're kind of common sense in terms of
what, what people want. People would rather have better
education for their kids then enough nuclear weapons to blow
(14:36):
up the world 10 times over despite the fact that they say
oh a nuclear war must cannot be won and must never be fought and
then they turn around and spend another 2 trillion on more
nukes. Some of the best moments of my
life have been since I I'm no longer operationally involved in
(14:57):
the company, and every once in awhile the company will come out
taking a stand on a social issuethat I had absolutely nothing to
do with that I was joyfully surprised about that.
These guys did it on their own. The the values have been
integrated into the, into the cloth, into the fabric of the
(15:20):
company. Let's Fast forward, I mean, to,
to what's going on right now. I mean, you, you've laid out how
corporate America has always been knitted into politics, you
know, and, but right now things feel different.
I mean, you know, it, it feels as though corporate America is
more cravenly bowing to this administration, making payments,
(15:42):
making donations. Do you think things are
genuinely different right now oror is it just this is the way it
always worked? I think Craven is exactly the
right word. Thank you.
It's worse than it's ever been. What amazed me is that, you
know, is after the death, the murder of George Floyd, all
(16:06):
these businesses that had never shown a sense of social
consciousness before came out with these beautiful statements.
And they, you know, they, they, they began these, these
diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
And during that time is when Benand Jerry's, like I say, as a
(16:28):
surprise to me, came out with, Ithink the most powerful
statement, which was we must dismantle white supremacy.
And but then Trump comes into office and all that stuff is out
the window. All these companies that made
(16:49):
these incredibly beautiful statements about racial justice,
they just threw him out the window.
Trump don't like it, OK, we ain't going to do it.
And and you know, I've, I've thought about that and, and
realized that, you know, if, if you're, if a business does not
(17:12):
have a social mission, if it's, if that's if the social mission
is not, it's a part of its purpose as a business.
If its purpose is just to maximize short term profits and
the current guy in the White House says DEI bad, OK DEI bad.
(17:35):
Yeah, and that's what's happened.
Yeah. So where does that leave, you
know, your attempt or Ben and Jerry's attempt to live with
corporate America, with Unilever?
I mean, you say you were againstit, you know, all along.
Is that because you you knew that this would end up
happening? Yeah, I, I actually thought it
was going to happen sooner. I mean, for, for quite a few
(17:59):
years, the relationship between Ben and Jerry's and Unilever
worked pretty well. And then what happened was that,
you know, after a lot of research and thought, Ben and
Jerry's pulled out of the West Bank and Unilever got got so
(18:27):
much pushback from from Israel that they kind of unilaterally
reversed that decision and sold the rights to Ben and Jerry's to
an Israeli who had been our licensee.
And he continued to sell Ben andJerry's in the West Bank.
(18:51):
And and that's, you know, and that was a violation of the
acquisition agreement of the powers of the independent board.
And after a bunch of negotiation, they were not able
to come to terms and the independent board was kind of
forced to to sue Unilever. And after that, you know, the
(19:17):
relationship just kind of started getting worse and worse.
And before that time, you know, Ben and Jerry's would, you know,
take these positions and, and doa, a post, a social media post
on it. The procedure was that they
would give Unilever a heads up. They would, you know, if, if the
(19:40):
post was going to be somewhat controversial, they, you know,
they, the two parties felt like,well, just just let us know
before it comes so we can be prepared for it.
You know, after the the West Bank incident that that was no,
that became no longer a heads up, but it became approval and
(20:05):
Unilever stopped approving, you know, posts on racial justice,
on freedom of speech, on Gaza. On Black History Month and.
How does that happen? I mean like, is it literally you
can't say that? That's, yeah, that's my
(20:26):
understanding. I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm
not operationally involved, but that's what I'm told is that
the, yeah, the company will prepare a post, send it to
Unilever for what has now becomeapproval, and it gets
disapproved. Do you think that has anything
to do with principal or, you know, and what Unilever
(20:48):
believes, or is it just about political expediency?
You know, don't rock the boat. Don't go up against the
government. Well, I I've been wondering
about that. It's, it's one of the two.
It's either it's just expediencythat we, we don't want to
(21:12):
criticize the government that, that, that if Trump is saying
DEI bad, we don't want to say DEI good.
But I to, so to some extent I, Ithink Unilever has become kind
of Trumpified. But I, I actually believe that
(21:34):
there's good people at Unilever.I think a lot of them don't
agree with with Trump's, with what Trump is doing, but it
appears that they've decided as a as a business not to be
critical at all of what he's doing and not even to allow this
(22:00):
supposedly independent subsidiary than in juries to
operate according to the legallysigned documents that they
signed at the time of the acquisition.
Unilever said, you know, said inresponse that it was never the
responsibility of the independent board to, you know,
to, to take strategic business decisions, you know, that they
(22:23):
were effectively about, you know, message rather than
business strategy. But I mean, I guess that's where
the, the conflict comes about, you know, as to sort of how, how
you do 1 without the other. I mean, the interesting thing is
that like, you know, the, the issues that you've talked about
and the where Ben and Jerry's has come into conflict are, you
know, these two very, very core areas of conflict in, in
(22:50):
American politics and world politics at the moment, which is
the diversity question that Trump has railed against.
But but bigger than that really is Israel and Gaza.
And you know that that is the, you know, the most controversial
issue that you can sort of dive into at the moment.
(23:10):
So I mean, what? Why is it so important to you
and to Ben and Jerry's, do you think to say what you think
about both Israel's behaviour inthe West Bank and Gaza?
Well, it's just about justice, you know, I think there's this
(23:30):
quote from, I believe it's Desmond Tutu that in you cannot
be neutral in situations of injustice.
If an elephant is standing on the tail of a mouse and you say
that you're neutral, the mouse will not much appreciate your
neutrality. I mean, I, for me personally,
(23:56):
you know, if I'm a, if I become aware of a situation of
injustice, you can, I mean, you have three choices.
You can ignore it, you can complain about it or you can do
something about it. I personally prefer to do
(24:16):
something about it. I feel, I feel better if I'm
trying to do something about it.And I think that, you know, the
reality is that we didn't we didn't come up with this social
mission to sell ice cream. But amazingly enough, as we take
more and more of these stands, we sell more and more ice cream.
(24:41):
You know, a, a lot of these stands are just basic human
decency. No, don't bomb women and
children and people in Gaza. Don't destroy the entire
infrastructure there. You know, I mean, this idea that
(25:07):
if there are people who have broken the law, people who have
done, you know, horrible things,find them and bring them to
justice, what right do you have to to kill all their family
members and their neighbors? Because what?
(25:28):
Well, well, it's going to be hard to bring them to justice,
so we'll just bomb everybody. And I mean, obviously both you
and Jerry come from Jewish roots.
I don't know whether you were brought up Jewish in in any way
yourself or, or, or what your Jewish heritage is precisely.
But how? How important is that in how you
(25:50):
feel about what Israelis doing? So I was bar mitzvahed.
I was brought up in a family that my parents would speak
Yiddish to each other a lot. I, I, you know, so to get bar
mitzvahed, you have to go to temple, you know, on a regular
(26:12):
basis. I didn't before.
I was, you know, before I was preparing for bar mitzvah.
I didn't really go and after I was from rich that I didn't go.
So I mean, I, I regard myself asa secular Jew.
I mean, I, I'm not, I'm not particularly religious.
You know, I I'm into peace and love, which they they say
(26:35):
that's, that's a big part of religion.
But do you think being Jewish gives you a a bigger license to
say what you think about Israel's behavior?
Well, I, I think that it's, it'seasier to, to criticize Israel
if if you're a Jew, you run intoa lot of criticism from other
(26:56):
Jews who believe that, you know,Jews should not criticize
Israel. You know, the history of the
Jews is that they were oppressed, they were slaves and,
and they were, they were exterminated.
The words never again are, are abig part of, of growing up
Jewish. And you know, when I see the
(27:20):
slaughter in in Gaza, I, I, I came to understand that well,
they didn't mean never again. They just meant never again for
us. It, I, I mean, I, I think in
large part it's because of that Jewish upbringing that I have so
(27:47):
much sympathy for people that are oppressed and, you know,
oppressed because of race, oppressed because of income.
That's what my Jewish upbringingtaught me.
And I I just kind of generalize it to everyone, not, not just
Jews. So.
(28:08):
So what do you think? You know, big business and
corporate America should be doing, I mean, I guess you could
just argue, look, the, the, the role of business is to maximize
shareholder value and to be focused on profits.
So they're doing the right thing.
If even if they are just pandering to Trump and the MAGA
(28:28):
agenda, what what do you think they should be doing?
On one level, business is a member of the community.
They just happen to be a very big, powerful, wealthy member of
the community. But members of a community have
a responsibility to each other. And you know, what business
(28:52):
likes to do is to externalize its costs.
So, you know, I'm a business. I'm just looking to maximize my
profits. You know, what I'm doing ends up
polluting, you know, the neighborhood, polluting the
ocean, the seas, the skies, whatever.
But that's that's not, that's not my concern because I'm just
(29:13):
here trying to make as much money as I can.
And and so that leaves it to therest of us to have to pay to
clean up businesses crap. That ain't right.
The general idea of business that we want to pay our people
(29:36):
as little as possible. We want to provide as few
benefits as possible and we wantto we want to charge as much as
possible and and we want to put in office people that will not
(30:00):
regulate us and that will give U.S. tax breaks that that's
destroying our society. You can't have the most powerful
force in the society only thinking about itself and expect
that you're going to have a decent society for everybody
else. I suppose there's an argument
(30:20):
that they could say, well, look,if if we did what you wanted,
you know, it's all very well fora small business to say what it
thinks and to be a campaigning organization.
But we have 10s of thousands of jobs in our hands.
If we go up against the government, if we take on the
Trump agenda, they can tie us upin the courts.
They can damage us with planningdecisions.
(30:43):
They can they can take us apart if they really want to.
And that's, you know, we have a bigger responsibility to a
workforce not just in America, but around the world.
What would be your answer to that?
I would say that it's business that put Trump in power.
You know, look at who's been financing his ballrooms, his,
(31:05):
his inauguration. I don't, I don't think that
would happen. You know, I don't, I don't
believe it's reasonable. And I also believe that if you
don't do it, it's appeasement. And our country is now on a
March toward authoritarianism. Trump has just announced that
(31:25):
he's setting up his own federal militarized federal police force
that's accountable only to him. You know, this is how fascists
come into power. And in terms of the powerful
forces in our society, business is the most powerful 1.
(31:48):
So you're either on the side of,you know, the dissolution of,
of, of our democracy and, or you're fighting for it.
And I, I would, you know, I'd venture to say that if you fight
for it, your customers will reward you.
(32:12):
On the Palestine issue, you've decided to go ahead and make a
watermelon ice cream through your own brand, not Ben and
Jerry's. Just tell me about that and how
it's going to work. You know, I felt like since
since the company was prevented from making this ice cream, you
know, calling for a ceasefire, that I would make my own Ben's
(32:35):
Best ice cream. Which now that we more or less
have a ceasefire is, is calling for the US and Israel.
Now that they've, you know, spent from their bottomless pit
to, to bomb and destroy this country.
Let's find some more money from that bottomless pit to help
(32:57):
Palestinians rebuild it as they want as they want it rebuilt.
How hopeful are you that the pendulum will swing back your
way? You know, America is obviously
not in the place politically or in business terms that you want
it to be right now. And, and lots of people are
predicting, well, you know, theymight stay in power some way.
(33:17):
Trump may find a way to serve a third term.
Democracy is in peril, you know.Are you?
Are you, are you, Are you seeingthe doom?
Or are you seeing hope? I see hope.
I don't believe that the majority of Americans want
(33:38):
Trump's version of of America. It, you know, it, it totally
goes against the founding documents of our country, the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of
Independence, you know, fairness, justice, equality.
I, I believe that, you know, the, the huge majority of
(34:02):
Americans are in favor of that. I, I think that what happened
was that, you know, both political parties are corrupt
and are controlled by the moneyed interests.
And so they run the government to the benefit of the moneyed
(34:23):
interests. And, you know, half the
population is, is kind of struggling to get by because the
system has essentially been rigged.
So Trump is not helping. Trump is hurting that.
And, you know, but his rhetoric is, oh, I'm going to help you,
I'm going to take care of you. And, and I'm, and I'm sure he's
(34:45):
going to throw a few crumbs to the, to the bottom people on the
bottom part of the economic ladder.
But in general, he's, he's making it worse for the, for the
bottom half of the country. And, and, and that's not what
people want. And I, I believe we're going to
(35:09):
see a, a big change in, in the 28th presidential election.
And I'm, I'm hoping that we'll, we'll even see some decent
changes in the, in the 26 midterm.
Well, Ben Cohen, thank you so much indeed for your time.
(35:29):
It's been a pleasure talking to you.
Thanks for sharing your ways to change the world.
You can watch all of these interviews on the Channel 4 News
YouTube channel. Until next time, bye bye.
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