Ben Cohen is publicly criticizing the sale of Ben & Jerry's to Unilever and pushing to get the brand back, which the panel calls hypocritical since he cashed the original check.

• Cohen is leading a Free Ben & Jerry's campaign with 130,000 petition signatures pressuring Magnum to spin the brand off to mission-aligned owners.
• He says Unilever has stifled the brand's political activism and that selling to a corporation that does not share your values destroys what made the company special.
• The panel pushes back hard, calling it capitalism on the way in and socialism on the way out — Cohen took roughly $40 million in the 2000 sale and now wants the brand back.
• Once you sell, the new owner can do whatever they want, and founders who keep publicly second-guessing the buyer usually look bitter rather than principled.
• The broader lesson: do not sell your company unless you already know what you will do the day after, or you will end up like Cohen, chasing your old brand in your 70s.

Outlook: The Free Ben & Jerry's pressure campaign will keep running, but Unilever is unlikely to hand the brand back, and any spinoff would come on Magnum's terms, not Cohen's.