by Caleb Thomas
A speaker rolled into Troy on Tuesday night to give a presentation to students. Flyers sent to students via email described him simply as an “American attorney, author and businessman,” as well as the former CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr..
However, Andy Puzder is much more than that. As CEO of CKE, he ran objectifying ads in which scantily-clad women fed each other and consumed burgers in subjective manners that included crawling and being sprawled out on the hoods of cars. When asked about the ads, Puzder defended them.
“I like beautiful women eating burgers in bikinis, I think it’s very American,” Puzder said to entrepreneur.com. “I used to hear brands take on the personality of the CEO.
“I rarely thought that was true, but I think this one, in this case, it kind of did take on my personality.”
In addition to this, Puzder failed to gain the position of Secretary of Labor after being nominated by former President Trump. There’s too much to mention about Puzder, from making demeaning comments about his employees to the investigation that found under Puzder, Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. had more federal employment discrimination lawsuits than any other U.S. hamburger chain.
Most importantly to his talk on ESG – environmental, social and governance investing – Puzder is a denier of climate change. A brief look at his X, formerly known as Twitter, account shows that he has shared posts referring to the “climate hoax” and in some of Puzder’s original posts, he makes it a point to put quotation marks around “climate change.”
It’s time for some backstory on ESG and how Puzder has anything to do with Troy University.
ESG is a framework for investing which prioritizes companies that have sustainable environmental practices, focus on social issues and have ethical governance, which primarily refers to transparent accounting and pursuit of diverse leadership.
Puzder’s speech on ESG is actually part of the curriculum for the Free Enterprise Scholars program at Troy University. Allen Mendenhall, an associate dean in the Sorrell College of Business, heads the program.
Mendenhall downplayed the significance of Puzder’s controversial comments on women and his workers, as well as his stance on climate change.
When asked about the fact that two people who contribute to the college’s curriculum – Puzder and GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy – have denied the existence of climate change, Mendenhall said: “I don’t think it’s problematic to include people that have divergent views, because we’re certainly not teaching anything about climate change.”
It’s important here to distinguish what an opinion is. It’s not a “divergent view” to believe climate change is a hoax. It’s simply wrong. Being sexist isn’t a different opinion, it’s just hateful. Additionally, this false belief heavily informs Puzder’s and Ramaswamy’s views on ESG.
The program also states on its website that “business leaders should know that an honorable business should not advance social justice to justify its existence.” ESG, which has quickly become a hot-button topic for some conservative politicians, is the main focus of Sorrell’s program.
“ESG is central to the curriculum of the Free Enterprise Scholars program,” Mendenhall said in an interview with the Tropolitan. “[ESG] is presented in most business schools as a positive trend… we want to show how it leads to unethical behaviors among corporate executives.”
The website for the program is full of terms such as “woke” that should be reserved for casual conversations or awkward Thanksgiving moments, not a university program. That’s how Puzder and opponents of ESG attack the investment strategy, by calling it “woke.”
In his presentation on Tuesday, Puzder called ESG a “neo-Marxist form of investment” and claimed that it is used by large asset management firms to “advance a leftist political agenda.”
The overarching argument from Mendenhall and Puzder is that a few extremely wealthy asset management firms are pushing a political agenda by using their rights as shareholders to make proposals which involve what Mendenhall calls “unnecessarily political” actions.
However, that argument involves some selective hearing and broad categories. First off, the Free Enterprise Scholars program uses a misinformed view of what these “leftist political” causes are. They also conveniently look past conservative investors who are trying to influence companies, as well.
The “E” in ESG should not be a political view by any stretch of the imagination. There is scientific consensus that climate change is real. NASA states that: “It’s important to remember that scientists always focus on the evidence, not on opinions. Scientific evidence continues to show that human activities (primarily the human burning of fossil fuels) have warmed Earth’s surface and its ocean basins, which in turn have continued to impact Earth’s climate. This is based on over a century of scientific evidence forming the structural backbone of today’s civilization.”
While there are differing opinions on how to remedy the issue, Ramaswamy, whose books are listed on the program’s website as part the curriculum, openly denies climate change. By denying climate change, people such as Ramaswamy and Puzder are denying all of the scientific research done to back the existence of climate change.
While Mendenhall said he believes climate change is real, the Free Enterprise Scholars program is surrounded by sources who not only deny it but tend to base their criticisms of ESG off of the assumption that it is either fake or not a big deal. To look past that without acknowledging it as problematic is naive at best.
As for the “S” in ESG, there is a wide range of misrepresentation used to dismiss the premise of being socially responsible. When asked to define the social aspect of ESG, Mendenhall gave a list of hot-button political topics that, for the most part, are not what ESG looks like in practice.
“There are a number of social causes that get caught up in there,” Mendenhall said. “In the United States, it could be anything from support of LGBTQ+ causes, or Black Lives Matter or efforts for corporations to give to things that involve defunding the police.”
A quick fact check with the Proxy Preview, a source that reports on shareholder proposals every year, proves him wrong. The 2023 Proxy Preview report only mentions Black Lives Matter to say that some proposals have “focused on U.S. racial justice, taking inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement.”
Proposals related to individuals who identify as LGBTQ+ included: shareholders who requested that businesses stop funding politicians who hold extreme anti-LGBTQ+ opinions, a request for Amazon to stop censoring LGBTQ+ related search results in the United Arab Emirates and China, and an accusation from an anti-ESG group that said Kroger was advancing a “leftwing social agenda” by publishing a guide to support LGBTQ+ employees.
The article makes little mention of police, and the only proposals related to it are: an investment firm’s previously denied request for reports on how the Travelers Insurance Company is underwriting police agencies, and a conservative investment firm alleging that corporate support for civil rights agencies “contributes to crime and undermines the police.”
The Proxy Preview reports that, for the most part, the social aspect of ESG proposals in 2022 included restrictions on animal testing, reductions on political funding in organizations, working conditions, fair pay, diversity in the workplace, healthcare and reproductive rights for workers.
Based on this gross misinformation and misrepresentation of what ESG actually lookslike in practice, the accusations of ESG as “socialism in sheep’s clothing” hold no water. Puzder, Mendenhall and Ramaswamy do not have an accurate representation of ESG and use this straw man fallacy to entirely dismiss the pursuit of these just causes.
In fact, the Proxy Preview points out some things that they forgot to mention. Ironically, it seems that conservative investors have an agenda of their own to push.
The Proxy Preview linked to an article from the Sustainable Investments Institute called “Divided States of America” that found companies disproportionately support Republicans in red states, and some companies even funded politicians that alleged that the 2020 election was a fraud.
Additionally, there are conservative, anti-ESG organizations such as the National Center for Public Policy Research that have filed proposals to “report on risks of racial justice efforts,” “rescind racial justice programs” and “report on biased news media.”
Mendenhall pointed to Strive Asset Management – a firm that Ramaswamy founded – as making proposals to go “back to neutral.”
“You don’t need to support the left, you don’t need to support the right, you just need to do what your business is designed to do,” Mendenhall said on the goal of Strive Asset Management. “You can look at any of those shareholder proposals, and the National Center for Public Policy Research is also doing a lot of those types of proposals and getting engaged during proxy season.”
As previously established, these organizations don’t want to support neutral causes. Their proposals are widely based on right-wing causes, including proposals that protect the firearm industry.
When asked how these entities can be politically neutral and faced with the example of the firearm industry, Mendenhall simply stated he thinks the firearm industry is politically neutral.
“I actually don’t think [the firearm industry] is right-wing,” Mendenhall said. “I don’t even see this as being a right versus left thing.”
Mendenhall said this despite the fact that gun manufacturer Smith and Wesson reportedmore than $250,000 dollars spent on non-deductible political lobbying in 2023.
The real irony comes in when you see how the Free Enterprise Scholars program gets its funding. One source is Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which has given more than $500 million to conservative public policy experiments, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. Source Watch, a subsidiary of the CMD, found that the Bradley Foundation has also made significant donations to organizations that deny climate change.
The real political agenda pushers are the ones that are behind these programs and efforts to get rid of ESG.
However, environmental and social awareness are important, and companies should have a responsibility to take care of them. When it comes it to Mendenhall’s invitation for Puzder to speak: sure, students should be presented with a variety of ideas as a part of their college experience, but exposing students to misinformation spouted off by a man who has little decency when it comes to his employees and people of the opposite sex is just plain wrong.
