Levi’s President Publicly Quits Over Company’s Attempt to Silence Her Views on COVID Restrictions

Former Levi’s president Jennifer Sey has announced that she was forced out of her post because of her views on COVID-19 and says she rejected a severance package that would have forced her to remain quiet about the internal controversy that led to her resignation. 

Sey announced her departure in a Monday post on writer Bari Weiss’ Substack, Common Sense, in which she proclaimed, “I quit so I could be free.” 

She said that she and the San Francisco-based company were in harmony until COVID-19 struck. “Early on in the pandemic, I publicly questioned whether schools had to be shut down. This didn’t seem at all controversial to me. I felt — and still do — that the draconian policies would cause the most harm to those least at risk, and the burden would fall heaviest on disadvantaged kids in public schools, who need the safety and routine of school the most,” she wrote, noting that her comments stirred anger. 

“In the summer of 2020,” Sey said, “I finally got the call. ‘You know when you speak, you speak on behalf of the company,’ our head of corporate communications told me, urging me to pipe down. I responded: ‘My title is not in my Twitter bio. I’m speaking as a public school mom of four kids.’ 

“But the calls kept coming. From legal. From HR. From a board member. And finally, from my boss, the CEO of the company. I explained why I felt so strongly about the issue, citing data on the safety of schools and the harms caused by virtual learning. While they didn’t try to muzzle me outright, I was told repeatedly to ‘think about what I was saying.'” 

Although she said her liberal activism brought no objections from the company, she got a far different reaction when she wanted Levi Strauss to take a stand against school closures in San Francisco — closures that drove her to move to Colorado, where her kindergartener could attend school in person.