Episode 256: The Sins of Arrogance and Stupidity are now Visited Upon the Children with Jennifer Sey

World-class gymnast, author, filmmaker, and next-in-line to become CEO of Levi Strauss, Jennifer Sey talks pandemic-era school lockdowns and the backlash she received for speaking out against the school shutdowns with Bill Walton.

Jennifer was a seven-time member of the U.S. Women's National Gymnastics Team and the 1986 U.S. Women's All-Around National Champion. Her transition from the world of sports to the corporate arena saw her rise to a pivotal leadership role at Levi Strauss, contributing significantly to its resurgence. Along the way, she produced a documentary “Athlete A”  and wrote a book “Chalked up”  exposing the abuse of children and young women gymnasts that spurred radical change in the sport.

Sey was ostracized in deep blue San Francisco for publicly opposing the closures of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. She felt compelled to speak out for the children whose development and education were detrimentally affected by the isolation of virtual school.

Levi Strauss top management and the board told her to shut up or leave. 

So she left.

“I think what people failed to predict, which I saw from the beginning, societally, we sent children the message that their education was not a priority, that they were not a priority, and in fact, if they missed things like having friends and an everyday life and key milestones, like graduations and football games, they were selfish, horrible people. Imagine what that does to a child’s psyche. So, now, the depression, the anxiety persists, not surprisingly, and we’re seeing record high levels of absenteeism,” Sey said.

She is now determined to make these effects clear to the American public with a documentary film titled Generation COVID. The documentary will highlight the stories of ten different families and the struggles of their children in the post-pandemic education environment.

The damage to be wreaked upon children by school closures was abundantly clear to many of us at the time. 

“But the mainstream outlets like the New York Times vilified any dissenters,” reminds Jennifer. “Even renowned doctors, people like Dr. Jay Bhattacharya from Stanford, Martin Kulldorff from Harvard, Sunetra Gupta from Oxford. These are not fringe scientists or fringe epidemiologists, but they were shunned and delegitimized by the mainstream press.”

Yet seemingly forgetting the principal role it played in keeping the lockdowns in place, we now read this from the New York Times:

“The evidence is now in, and it is startling,” it exclaims. “The school closures that took 50 million children out of classrooms at the start of the pandemic may prove to be the most damaging disruption in the history of American education.”

There’s a lot to be answered for here, starting with the amnesiac NYT.

This episode is more than just a conversation; it is a call to arms.