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>> host: we want to introduce you to jennifer sey. her book is called "levi's unbuttoned: the woke mob took my job but gave me my voice". jennifer, what was your career path at levi's? >> slow and steady but almost all the way to the top, i started as a marketing assistant entry-level, lowest of the low but worked my way up to chief marketing officer by 2013, held that post for 8 years which is a long time, those people averaged 18, 20 months tenure and get fired but i did a good job, helped the company go public, became the grant president but then i was very outspoken about the need to open public schools during covid and after a two your conflict internally i was told there was no place in the company for me anymore. >> host: what is the job of a chief marketing officer?

>> you are responsible for the brand's image, responsible for generating demand, revenue, profitable revenue, ideally, but really all the communications that goes into establishing what the brand stands for, what the products are from the brand, all of the advertising, pr and the search market, what the website looks like, what the stores look like, a lot of stuff. >> host: was levi's a good corporate citizen? did it live up to its profits through principles? >> no, i would argue absolutely not. >> host: were you pushing that? >> pushing profits their principal? i was. i was proud of that. i believed in that, that's a mantra for people who don't know the company often cites we are all about profits principles, we believe, we,

like i still work there, we can make money and do right by people, offer them great products that make their lives better and treat employees fairly, pay workers fairly. i believe in that and for a very long time, levi's further employed principles i was really proud of, they integrated factories in the south before the law required it, they were the first fortune 500 company to offer same-sex partner benefits. i was proud of these things, this was about extending rights to all employees but in the last 5 to 8 years, that is not how it is. it is really about a conformist culture that demands obedience to a single point of view and everyone else is either silenced or pushed out the door. >> host: what is that conformist point of view? >> left-wing party orthodoxy. simply put. >> what would you have considered your politics to be?

>> left-wing. i would have considered myself left of center my whole life. i voted democrat or further left, sometimes voted green party my whole life but i was, i asked a lot of questions during covid about the policies that were primarily furthered by left-wing governors and mayors, policies around lockdowns and school closures and i've found these policies to be not only completely ill liberal but harmful to the people they were claiming to protect which is true, this is what we've learned, it has harmed, these policies harm children and harm the poorest and most disadvantaged children the most which to my mind was obvious is what was going to happen so it is all antithetical to what it meant to be a democrat to me. we were supposed to be the champions of the underdog and yet we were punishing them, while keeping the spoils for ourselves, sending up their own

kids to private schools. i really found that hypocrisy intolerable and harmful and it made me feel like the entire dogma platform was a lie. >> host: re-reporting to the ceo? tapped to be potentially ceo? >> guest: i was. i was reporting directly to the ceo which is unusual but i became the brand president which meant i went not just from owning marketing and communication but all the product, the jeans, shirts, design, merchandising, the business side of product, bunch of other stuff but that is the main difference. anything you would interact with as a levi's consumer came from me and my team. if you put on a pair of pants, we did that. >> host: who is chip berg?

>> guest: the ceo of levi's, still the ceo. he will probably retire, he's about 65. military guy in his youth, worked at procter & gamble for over 20 years and then moved over to become the ceo of levi's in 2011. i think is politics were probably fairly conservative when he joined levi's. he said that to me directly, but moving to san francisco opened his eyes and he took more and more left-wing stances. anybody wants to do that, i've done so personally as well. forcing that on all your employers, disallowing them to express any dissenting view from that is not good. >> host: do you consider chip berg a friend and mentor? did you at one time? >> not a friend but a mentor.

>> did you trust him at one time? >> guest: not entirely, no. i had a sort of i guess love/hate, no one ever asked me this before, it's a good question. >> host: you write about him a lot. >> guest: i was very grateful to chip in 2011 when i joined. i'd been at the company for 10 or 11 years starting as a young person and managers have a tendency to see you as you were then so i had a hard time breaking through so he saw me with fresh eyes. i don't know what i was at the time, vp of something, and he said she's good and he gave me a lot of opportunities. she also overlooked me for a lot of opportunities that i deserve some of which i didn't include in the book because it is boring, but i was passed over for several jobs he promised me.

so i didn't really trust him but i do believe he thought i was good at what i do. >> host: why did you not get the ceo job? >> guest: i was outspoken about covid restrictions. >> host: on social media? >> yes but i also went to school board rallies, wasn't just a keyboard warrior, i was active in my community. i take my civic response ability seriously so i was participating in that process. >> guest: >> host: did you enjoy your time at levi's? >> guest: i did until the last three years. the last few years were very difficult. i spent two decades, had a lot of friends. you spend that long out of place, go to baby showers, weddings, funerals, these are

people you believe are your friends and not a single person stood by me. >> host: in the subtitle of your book you talk about the woke mob. i want to quote from levi's -- "levi's unbuttoned: the woke mob took my job but gave me my voice," woke capitalism looks to build consumer loyalty through social justice stances rather than what the company makes, woke capitalism tries to convince buyers the companies are in business to do good and make the world a better place, not make money. woke capitalism seeks to brainwash the world with the message the corporations care about employees even when they lay them off at the same time that they are delivering unimaginable wealth to shareholders and executives through dividends and stock price increases. >> >> guest: sounds about right. that's my issue with it. it is a lie. it is reputation laundering. it is stated in boardrooms and

exec of conference rooms that something akin to if we take this stance and align with their values, the consumer or perceived consumer they will like us more and they will purchase more stuff. that is what they say. i was in that room for ten years, that is what they say. the younger employees believe in it. they are true believers. some of the executors believe it. most of them it is a cynical way to wrap themselves in virtue, appeal to consumers, keep all the money for themselves. there's so much hypocrisy in it. i will give you an example eyesight in the book. levi's laid off 50% of the corporate workforce. we said we did with empathy, that is what the headlines read. at the same time, in that same timeframe the ceo cashed out

$43 million, that is not empathy for the common worker. empathy would have been fighting to keep the jobs, fighting to open the stores so they could keep working, that would be the empathetic thing. >> guest: this is a bit of an autobiography, you talk about your early life and what you were doing before levi's but where did you spring from? >> guest: i was an elite gymnast as a child. i wrote about that experience which was a little bit of a whistleblowery account as well. i trained from the time i was 6 until i was 19, loved it until i didn't, it is a cruel and abusive culture, and there is sexual abuse. the case of larry nasser it was with team gymnastics. >> host: you are the national champion in 1986. how much pain reviewing? >> guest: a lot of pain.

i won that on a broken ankle. my ankle was broken that night. >> guest: is that typical? to perform that type of shape? what did that due to you as you grew into adulthood? >> guest: it is soul crushing, to live in that much physical pain is very difficult. to be told at the same time there is nothing wrong and you're being a wimp and a lazy piece of garbage, to have doctors telling you there's nothing wrong because they are influenced by the coaches, it will make you a little crazy and i started to unravel emotionally, physically. i couldn't do the sport at the end. i lost ability to do it because i was mentally unraveling. we were also starving ourselves to death. anorexia is very common in the fourth. it was enforced forcefully by our coaches meaning you need to lose three pounds by tomorrow, i don't care how you do it, these things were literally said to was. i was starving, my ankle was

broken, i was deteriorating by the day and ended up walking away from the sport a few months before the olympic trials in 1988. she did it during the competition, i was advised to do it before, not during. >> how do people react when you walked away as defending national champion? >> guest: i wasn't in 19 is heaven, two years prior. i was not a national champion that was net -- embraced by the community. it was denied i won. she didn't deserve it, she is the worst national champion we ever had. i had a conflicted relationship having won, a 17-year-old kid who never expected this to happen, i was best on that day, whether i was best that year didn't matter, it's a competition. i was the best that day and they tore me down.

i should mention no one expected me to be at the competition because i had broken my femur only 9 months earlier so everyone thought i was out for the count, down for the count in the 1985 world championship but i was the comeback kid. >> guest: how much of your identity from age 4 to 17 or 19 was wrapped up in gymnastics? >> guest: 200%, all of it, i didn't have an identity outside sports. that was what was so difficult, you have no identity outside your sport and then you become a regular person, very difficult. very hard. >> guest: interacting regularly with people was a new thing for you? >> guest: i traveled around the world, lived on my own with a coach. in other ways i was so completely immature. i had never been on a date could don't didn't have normal

social interactions but i went to college, i went to stanford and i was on a mission to be a normal kid and i got a little rebellious which probably helped me. >> host: where you want to gymnastics scholarship? >> guest: no. i didn't go that route. i wanted to get in on my own merits. >> host: after stanford what happened? >> guest: i moved to san francisco in 1992 upon graduation. it was the best place i ever lived in my life. i loved it so much. it was be home for anyone who ever felt like a weirdo, embracing and everyone was welcome and you could be as weird as you wanted to be and i wanted to be weird. i had been so obedient and conformist as a child, i wanted to push the boundaries a little bit. i really loved it. at this time - at the time it was the hardest on young people, that's not true anymore, they can't afford to live there. now is tech millionaires. but i loved it. for so long.

i left san francisco in 2,020 one so my children could attend school and i miss what it was because it is not what it was. >> guest: you took a series of jobs, roommates. >> guest: everybody did. that's what you do when you are young. i lived with for 5 other girls, worked odd jobs. it was fun. i eventually landed in an advertising agency in 1994 and found myself on levi's account which is how that ended up happening. >> host: at what point in your career where you making the kind of money that a cmo or group president would be making to live comfortably in san francisco? >> guest: by 2013. i was batted advocating for myself in terms of compensation. i was terrible at it.

i remember when i became the cmo somebody accidentally sent me, i don't think this is in the book, a spreadsheet with everyone's salary at my level, they didn't mean to send that to me and i was the lowest paid person and i was like what? what am i doing, i'm the highest performer but i've not been very good at that. >> host: you tell the story about meeting with hr and them telling you no increase in pay, take the good job. >> guest: and i agreed to that. that was stupid. >> host: at what point did you start to become known as the troublemaker at levi's? is that -- i hate to -- >> guest: that's a nice way to put it, the weird way would be not a troublemaker but conspiracy theorist is what i became known as.

i started, pretty outspoken right from the start in march 2020 i questioned those measures. i didn't get a call from anyone until september 2020. i knew it was controversial, maybe they are not on twitter. i was wrong. i got a call in 2020 from ip who was head of corporate communications saying people are noticing, they don't like it and i said so? your kids are in school, right? >> host: where they in school? >> guest: private schools opened. >> host: public schools, your kids still at home. >> guest: 60% were low income,

no parent at home, my kids were luckier than most in public school. i was concerned about all the children. >> host: is attempting to go the private route? >> i was never interested. i feel we are part of the city and community we live in and i don't want to be cordoned off from it and it is like raising veal and a pen, when you cordon your children off from real life and their neighbors. i want to be part of the city we live in. we are not better than the people we live around. >> host: back to "levi's unbuttoned: the woke mob took my job but gave me my voice," your inner voice talking to your self when you wrote this. you can -- we care about profits their principles face, you can post about blm and lgbt q and all the other letters but

when the rubber hits the road it is all about the benjamins as they say and desperate to maintain this, harder right over easier wrong, we really care either those, you strike down any of you that veers from the orthodoxy, the san francisco bubble, democratic party orthodoxy because yes, you are about party, not principles, you're about appealing to the woke to sell jeans because they seem cool to you, like they might purchase more and spend more than some midwestern, self allowed patriot. that's the loud part, that the quiet part being set out loud. >> i get to do that now. >> is a refreshing? is it scary to say things like this? >> it is refreshing. obviously i said what i thought on the issue of covid before but i was restrained and i look back and i am proud of how i

comported myself. >> you include a lot of the tweets in the book. >> it's important because any reasonable person reads them now and thinks they are perfectly reasonable. i wanted to make that clear. i would challenge anyone to challenge anything i said. i was lace, diplomatic, restraint, never rude. eyesight data. most people now who are rational look at the things i was posting and i don't get what was wrong with that. exactly. but i'm more free now to let the inside voice out which is freeing, it is liberating. i don't say what are some but are going to think, i've been called every name you can be called. i'm not afraid of what they will call >> who are members of the woke mob that you are for 2? >> there' s various sort cohorts. there are young employees which is a small but punitive

minority sending e-mails to my boss in hr, there's a cohort of employees who call me all manner of racist, bigot, conspiracy theorist, attempted to struggle session these ideas out of me. to do an apology tour and i was briefed before the apology tour. as brand president. i was told i need to do an apology tour. there's actually an e-mail that prepared me for this tour that i found after i wrote the book that adds, basically says you need to prove you are one of us, not one of them, you're one of the good guys, not one of the bad guys, people think you are a racist, a conspiracy theorist, and anti-fax and you need to prove that you are not. >> host: where did the racist part come in with your tweets about covid? >> i will explain that. it's very convoluted but i can

do it quickly. the idea was if you wanted the schools to open, which were disproportionately populated by black and brown children, you did not care if black and brown children died. that was the convoluted rationale. >> were to cue in on fall? >> i don't understand that one. i'm not sure it is real to this day. i don't know. i can't explain that. >> the anti-fax part. are you vaccinated which you talk about in the book? >> i am. but i didn't want to be. i did it because it was mandated. >> for your job. >> yes. >> why did you not want to? >> i looked at my risk profile, it was very low. it seemed unnecessary to me. >> another quote from the book.

don't get me wrong. i'm not against capitalism, far from it. i'm against the charade that is social justice capitalism. i want to purchase stuff because it is the best stuff on the market. win me over with your excellence, i will even pay more for it. i will express my political affiliation with my votes, not my sneakers or soft drink of choice. can you walk through a crowd and identify people's political affiliations buy what they are wearing or carrying? >> certainly if they are wearing, you know, a rainbow solution, which is the nike symbol, that would be their pride month t-shirt. i guess, there's very few brands that are aligned with a more conservative, i'm thinking apparel, i can't think of apparel brands, they are all left, that's why i have no job.

>> host: are you financially secure because of your employment? which is none of my business. >> yes but i can't not work for the rest of my life. i'm not that kind of financially secure. i'm in no danger of my children going hungry and i need a job. >> you left the city of san francisco after all this happened. >> i left in the midst of it because in the spring of 20 one, school still showed no sign of opening. i had a kindergartner who had never set foot in a classroom, four children but my kindergartner had never been in a classroom and his first year at school i didn't want to be such a disaster. i wanted him to have a good experience and a good feeling about school so we moved to denver. our offices were closed, we were working virtually. so that my son could attend school in person. >> host: why denver?

frank micciche wasn't prepared to move to the burbs. i wasn't ready. it was close enough to san francisco that i could get there in a day there and back and i still had some in person meetings with my teens and i like in colorado there's a bit of a libertarian streak. it's very blue right now but they are very welcoming to all the points. i never felt afraid to raise anything and have an open honest conversation with my neighbors. even the governor called himself a democratic libertarian so i like that. >> host: do you talk to anyone from levis anymore, or were you shunned? >> i was shunned. i talked to a few people who have reached out to me since leaving. >> host: as anyone said sorry? >> guest: no.

>> host: how are you able to write what you write here? did you not take a buyout nva? >> no. i was offered when i was told in january 22nd that i needed to leave, you need to go now they said. you've lost the trust of the team and the employees, there's no room for you as a leader in this company. if you've signed this nondisclosure agreement we will give you $1 million. that was the offer. i decided not to do that because i didn't want to sign a nondisclosure agreement, so i could write this book, not for the money. it's not that much money but because i thought it was important to tell the story of censorship. the fact is if i relate it to my story in particular, if we had been able to have an open conversation about kids in schools and lockdowns we would

have reached different decisions, rather than having an open conversation we were demonized and the platforms are and that's very dangerous. >> host: the fact that you were demonized and he platforms rather than having an open, honest discussion, regardless of what the outcome would have been, that is the thing that drives you in a sense? >> guest: yes. in this particular instance, it is a societywide conversation with doctors and epidemiologists, government led talking points, there were people, renowned doctors pushing back, they were censored but if we were permitted to have a conversation we would have reached a different answer, a right answer, and our children in california wouldn't have been out of school for close to 19 months. that caused a lot of harmony. even if we didn't, we still need to have those discussions

on matters of public concern. >> guest: you were demonized for what your husband daniel had to say. is that correct? >> that's a good question. i think so. that's all conjecture but i don't think anybody was asking the ceo what his wife thought about but his wife wasn't probably tweeting a lot like my husband was. nobody was all that concerned. >> host: he was not in favor of the lockdowns and he was making is that known on social media. >> guest: he was very vocal, he was going to anti-lockdown rallies. i kept -- i thought it was a bridge, everybody could get behind, we don't want to harm children, my husband was outspoken more broadly about a range of issues pertaining to covid, a more aggressive and challenging tone than i do but so what? he doesn't work there. who cares. but apparently if you have a

relative that has a viewpoint the company doesn't like, you don't get to work there anymore. i hope everybody thinks about how dangerous this is. what if my dad is a republican and was a trump voter, he's not, but what if he was? 's that mean i can't have a job at levis? is that the world we want to live in? >> host: did you know any conservative republicans who voted for donald trump at levis? >> guest: no. >> host: not part of the company culture? >> guest: the headquarters are in san francisco. it was a matter of did you vote for the mainstream candidate or were you bernie or biden, that was all inbound and accessible. there were no republicans but we had austin, texas, distribution centers in red states in the middle of the country. i'm very certain there were lots of folks in those locales that didn't vote republican or vote trump. i'm also very certain they did

not feel comfortable saying that are making that known to their friends and colleagues. >> host: back to "levi's unbuttoned: the woke mob took my job but gave me my voice," as i write this i am puzzling on where i think the line should be drawn. when is it appropriate for corporations to move beyond protecting the employees to taking overtly political stance beyond the walls of the company, still, wherever that line is it is pretty clear when we along with just about every large corporation in america crossed it. woke capitalism. >> host: what are we talking about here? >> guest: the blm rallies and the accelerated sort of done in ca and of privilege and vowing to fight racism, the rush to hire heads of divisions, hundreds of people's power and influence in these companies. i have no issue with inclusion.

this is not inclusion. if it were inclusive why does it matter what i say and advocate which helps the peoples they say they care about? the student population in the san francisco public schools is disproportionately black and brown. it all just, so many stories of people being canceled and fired in summer of 2020 for some errant comment from 10 years prior that is somehow in today's context perceived as not antiracist enough, there was a witchhunt going on. >> host: do you think you could have withstood this if you hadn't been in gymnastics and in that cauldron for 12 or 15 years and had that pressure on you? >> guest: a good question. i don't think having competed in gymnastics is in this

position because all my peers, i will say of this. when i wrote my first book about gymnastics there was a ton of blowback in the sports community, the olympic movement, i was vilified and dragged across the internet and ultimately it took 10 years i was redeemed, every one said jen was right. that i held close to me. i felt clear eyed about what i was saying and the data, i was logical and rational and i thought people are going to catch up, they are emotional right now but that truth still exists, i did not beat the clock, lost my job before that happened. >> host: through about "levi's unbuttoned: the woke mob took my job but gave me my voice" you bring up what you see as hypocritical behavior by elite executives and the rest. especially when it comes to schools. >> guest: yeah. the crazy part, i don't know

how schools and lockdown, shouldn't have been political, we should have been concerned about the children. it became, it became a woke pillar in the democratic party platform, the deal to get trump out of office. that is what started it and it became part of the answer, even though biden wanted kept going and going and going, and the harm is so great that it became -- going to stand by these policies. there was hypocrisy on the part of the senior executives going to their vacation homes and doing what they wanted claiming we are all in this together which was not true. there kids were in private school and going to europe or hawaii, but you had the

workers, that wasn't the case for them but it was a frenzy, so uniform what people believed and they were fighting the good fight. that's what this is about, the most virtuous person in the world. who doesn't want to feel virtuous for doing nothing. >> host: you talk about keyboard warriors. what is a keyboard warrior, what is the danger of a person like that? >> guest: the keyboard warrior moniker, people who try to cancel people online and think they are doing good activist oriented work because they are tweeting a lot and trying to take good people down. i get accused of it because ultimately my twitter presence

is part of that but doing all these other things. i was attending every school board meeting, worked on the school board which is successful, i like rallies so i was a real-life warrior too. >> host: do you still tweet? >> guest: i do. >> host: what do you tweet about? life? covid? >> guest: i don't have any rules for myself anymore. i tweet about whatever i want and talk a lot about the impact, don't want anyone to forget about this. it cannot happen again. the generation of children, i tweet about issues like censorship and other various things that are happening right now in this country. i don't know. anything that interests me in the news. >> host: with the benefit of a little hindsight and time would

you change anything you did during this period? >> guest: no. i think i did the right thing and i was true to myself. i try to be grateful that i had the freedom to say anything i want. there's nothing anyone could do. i am not hurt by the names they call me now. i don't regret any of it. >> host: who is chris and what happened? >> guest: chris is my brother. we used to be close. so i thought. we did not agree on covid policy. i was anti-lockdown. in the beginning, the first year, we talked about our disagreements, but it became too fraught and we haven't spoken in several years, two or

three years. his wife is a doctor and he finds my views to be dangerously critical of doctors. i find the position, not a doctor individually but doctors in public health collectively to be dangerous had a violation of our civil liberties. >> host: "levi's unbuttoned: the woke mob took my job but gave me my voice," jennifer sey writes i have no issue with rich people. that is capitalism. some people, very few, will make a lot of money. what i do have an issue with is rich people masquerading as social justice warriors and fierce employee advocates while they are laying off 15% of their workforce at the same time as they are adding tens of billions of dollars to their bank accounts, they can't have it both ways. >> guest: i don't like hypocrites. .. a grifter, don't know how they get that, but i'm not a hypocrite. i stand by my word.

there's no grift in what i'm doing. what's. what's the grift part? i'm trying to. i don't know. it's a stupid thing people say online. they somehow think getting like money for taking these stances that i could not authentically believe in the things saying, of course, i believe in them. why would i give up everything? i gave up a lucrative career. i gave up not just the job had, but this future job of ceo which is what have been an incredible honor to be the ceo of a company i'd worked in 23, 24 years, a brand i love and where a brand i'd worn since i was a child. i mean, the money is a brandeis once and says the child. i mean the money is insane. i told you earlier shippensburg cash 43 main dollars of stock. i gave it up so i could use my voice. i mean, if that isn't, i think it's incomprehensible to some people that you would give up money to speak the truth. its income principal so they think you must be getting paid by someone to do it. there's no one paying me.

>> host: jennifer sey, "levi's unbuttoned" is the name of the book. the woke job took my job gave me my voice. >> be up-to-date in the latest in publishing with booktv's podcast "about books" with current nonfiction book releases plus bestseller lists as well as industry news and trends through insider interviews. you can find "about books" on c-span now, our free mobile app or will you get your podcast. >> i'm kevin butterfield but director of the clocks in at the library of congress. it's introduce today's speakers. the kluge center by lewis one of the sponsors of this year's festival. we are proud to help bring america's most beloved writers here to join us. the kluge center works to bring scholars to work in the