Ben Cohen: From a Burlington Ice Cream Parlor to a Career in Activism
Ben Cohen, left, and Jerry Greenfield on The Dylan Ratigan Show in February 2012, announcing a campaign to get money out of politics. Photo: Megan Robertson from New York, NY, United States / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Ben Cohen has spent nearly five decades in the public eye, first as half of an ice cream company that began in a Burlington, Vermont, parlor and later as a campaign-finance reformer, a Democratic fundraiser and a persistent protester. As of early January 2026, he was also in the middle of a dispute over the future of the brand he helped start.
From Long Island to Burlington
Bennett Cohen was born March 18, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in Merrick, on Long Island, by Frances and Irving Cohen. In 1963 he met Jerry Greenfield in a seventh-grade gym class. The two stayed friends. Cohen worked as an ice cream man during his senior year at Sanford H. Calhoun High School.
College did not stick. He attended Colgate University, Skidmore College (mostly taking pottery), New York University and the University Without Walls program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and he left after his sophomore year.
In 1977 Cohen and Greenfield decided to go into business together. They first considered bagels, but the equipment cost too much, so they turned to ice cream. In May 1978 they opened Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream Parlor in Burlington, Vermont. That is the one firm Vermont link in Cohen’s biography, and it is where the company’s story starts.
The chunky style the company became known for traces partly to Cohen’s anosmia, or loss of smell. Because he could not rely on aroma, he wanted texture, and he pushed for larger pieces of candy and cookie in the ice cream.
Building and selling the company
Cohen and Greenfield were named U.S. Small Business Persons of the Year in 1988. The company set aside 7.5 percent of its pre-tax profits for the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation. Cohen resigned as chief executive in 1996. In 2000 he and Greenfield sold the business to Unilever, and the same year the New York Open Center honored him for socially responsible business.
Politics and protest
After leaving day-to-day management, Cohen put much of his energy into political causes. He oversaw TrueMajority and Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, groups that pushed to shift federal spending. He backed Dennis Kucinich in the 2004 Democratic presidential primaries, and John Edwards and then Barack Obama in 2008.
In 2012 he launched the Stamp Stampede, a campaign against the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. In January 2016 he released a flavor called “Bernie’s Yearning” under his own Ben’s Best label to support Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont; Ben & Jerry’s the company said it was not a company product. Cohen and Greenfield were arrested in April 2016 at a Democracy Awakening protest in Washington. In February 2019 Cohen became a national co-chair of Sanders’ 2020 campaign, and that August he produced “Bernie’s Back,” which went to 40 contest winners rather than store shelves.
His activism has drawn criticism and boycott calls from several directions. In 2023 some called for boycotts over his opposition to sending U.S. weapons to Ukraine. He was arrested in July 2023 at a protest against the prosecution of Julian Assange. In May 2025 he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to criticize the Pentagon budget and Ukraine aid. On May 14, 2025, he was arrested after interrupting a Senate hearing at which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was testifying, in a protest over U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza. He was charged with a misdemeanor.
A dispute with the owners
The sale to Unilever left the brand with an independent board, and friction followed. In July 2021 that board stopped sales in occupied Palestinian territory. Unilever disagreed and sold the Israel business to its licensee, Avi Zinger. Cohen and Greenfield later wrote in The New York Times that a person can support Israel while opposing some of its policies.
In 2025 Unilever announced it would spin off Ben & Jerry’s into The Magnum Ice Cream Company. Cohen and Greenfield objected to changes to the board. Cohen has said he wants the company sold to socially responsible investors, an idea Magnum has refused. In October 2025 he said Unilever had blocked a Palestine-themed watermelon sorbet, and he sold it under Ben’s Best instead.
Cohen also funded the Pierre Sprey Award for journalism in 2022 and has been reported as a top donor to the People’s Power Initiative and the Eisenhower Media Network. In March 2023 he was reported to have started Ben’s Best Blnz, a cannabis nonprofit meant to split proceeds among three groups.
At 74, Cohen remains best known for a flavor-driven business that began in a converted Burlington storefront. His later work has been more contested than the ice cream, and how the fight over the brand ends was unsettled as the year began.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Ben Cohen (businessman).”
