Hollywood Faces the DEI Cliff

How Hollywood's diversity initiatives are failing—and a better way forward

The DEI cliff is real. 

Since I first called out the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) over its “inclusion standards” five months ago, both the Academy and the public punching bag formerly known as the Walt Disney Company have faced a calamitous onslaught of public relations embarrassments, all related to their “diversity and inclusion” efforts.

It’s emblematic of a reckoning facing the entertainment industry at large, and for which there appears to be no solution in sight. Only there is—but before we address it, let’s revisit how we got here. 

AMPAS

The Academy’s current woes center around the flagship Academy Museum which should have been a public relations lay-up when it opened in the Fall of 2021. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who attended the opening, was blunt in his assessment: “As I walked through, I literally turned to the person I was there with and said to him, ‘Where are the Jews?’” 

What many expected to be a self-celebratory movie history museum was instead unveiled as a self-abasing propaganda outpost, deliberately designed to diminish the Jewish immigrants who created Hollywood. Guided by the “Inclusion Advisory Committee,” insiders like Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs Doris Berger conceded that rewriting history was precisely the point: “We opted not to tell a chronological history… Our goal is to tell complex stories and question film history – so much of which has been forgotten and underrepresented. We are questioning a canon and creating a canon.”

In other words, erase actual Hollywood history and replace it with a fabrication. 

In March of 2022, however, the Museum backtracked, promising to develop a new exhibit: "Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital.” 

Surely, the long-awaited “Hollywoodland” exhibit would right the ship? Hardly. More than two years after it was announced, “Hollywoodland" opened this past May to renewed fury. Michael Kaplan, writing for The Algemeiner, observed that the exhibit was “the smallest of any exhibit in the museum” and that the biographical panels on Hollywood’s founders were decidedly negative, characterizing Jack Warner as a “womanizer,” Harry Cohn as a “tyrant and a predator,” citing Carl Laemmle for his “nepotism” and slandering them collectively for their studios’ “prejudices."

The next morning, a bombshell: Academy Museum director Stewart, who had succeeded previous director Bill Kramer in July of 2022 after he ascended to CEO of the Academy, would be “returning to her faculty position at the University of Chicago.” Stewart’s “departure” (aka "firing") did not quell the anger. The following week, Los Angeles Magazine joined the pile-on. Television scribe Patrick Moss was blunt:

“The exhibit is a lazy and insidious condemnation of Hollywood's founders… The focus is not on the founders' achievements—but on their sins.”

United Jewish Writers—formed in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel—then rallied more than three-hundred signatures to an open letter calling on the Museum to revise the exhibit, and less than two weeks after Stewart’s ouster, the Museum agreed. 

But critics weren’t done. The nonprofit StopAntisemitism has since entered the fray, calling for the firing of curator Dara Jaffe. 

Oddly quiet throughout the whole affair? The inaptly named "Inclusion Advisory Committee” which, like the Academy’s Inclusion Standards, has been exposed as a failure. 

DISNEY

Since Bob Iger handed the CEO reins to Bob Chapek in February of 2020, the house that Walt built has begun to look less like Sleeping Beauty’s Castle than a real life Game of Thrones. 

It began in March of 2022 when Chapek sought to forge a more politically neutral path than his predecessor by refusing to condemn Florida’s recently passed Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by detractors. Days later he was reversing himself and apologizing to employees, committing to work for the bill’s repeal.  

Within weeks, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis retaliated by promising to undo Disney’s 55-year-old self-governing Reedy Creek Improvement District. Chatter that Chapek’s job was already in jeopardy reached a fever pitch that June when he unexpectedly fired Chairman of Walt Disney Television Peter Rice, widely seen as his most likely replacement. Chapek promptly received a three-year renewal on his contract, but within five months he was gone and Iger was back. 

This time Iger would get no honeymoon. Less than a month after Florida completed its takeover of Reedy Creek in February of 2023, conservative activist Chris Rufo published whistleblower-furnished video depicting high-ranking Disney executives and creatives discussing "exploring queer stories” and "canonical trans characters,” the inclusion of “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories” and the imposition of a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” on the company’s animated television content. 

Three months later, Chief Diversity Officer Latondra Newton was on her way out and by September of 2023 Iger had once again reversed the company’s messaging, assuring investors that Disney would “quiet the noise” on culture war issues, reinforcing that position in November at the New York Times DealBook Summit where he told Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin: "We have to entertain first. It’s not about messages.” A brutal October 2023 skewering of Disney DEI casting practices on South Park was also a likely factor.  

Iger’s turnaround was also motivated by new troubles. Activist investor Nelson Peltz and his Trian Group had been sniffing around the company since July of 2022 when Chapek looked most vulnerable. Later that year it was revealed that Peltz had taken an $800 million stake in the company and was threatening a proxy fight to secure himself a board seat. In a fit of panic, the board fired Chapek and re-hired Iger. 

A harsh critic of the company’s detour into the culture wars, Peltz backed off in January 2023 to give Iger time to right the ship. By November, his patience had worn thin and the proxy threat was back on, forcing Iger to find sacrificial lambs like veteran executive Sean Bailey, widely blamed for race-flipping casting controversies surrounding The Little Mermaid and Snow White. The latter faced further public relations embarrassments over its casting and then non-casting of little people followed by star Rachel Zegler’s denigration of the original animated classic. 

Weeks later the knives were out again when the New York Times reported that the company’s “Stories Matter” team had flagged Peter Pan characters Tinker Bell and Captain Hook as “potentially problematic” owing to Tink's “body issues” and the depiction of a person with a disability as a villain. The backlash was brutal, re-energizing the #boycottdisney and Dump Disney campaigns begun during Chapek’s tenure. 

Finally, on June 20, Guerrilla journalist James O’Keefe dropped the first of an expected series of undercover videos showing Disney Senior Vice President Michael Giordano complaining that Disney engages in hiring discrimination not just against caucasian men, but against mixed race men and African-American men who don’t look “black enough.” Elon Musk shared O’Keefe’s clips with his nearly 200 million followers, while others took occasion to remind everyone that Alan Ng, Editor-in-Chief of FilmThreat.com, had been methodically exposing Disney’s DEI hypocrisy for months in his D-Files series. 

Bob Iger may believe it’s not Disney’s job to “advance any kind of agenda,” but the rest of the company clearly didn’t get the memo. 

Like the Academy Museum’s “Inclusion Advisory Committee,” the most visibly invisible party here is the Stories Matter team whose job presumably entails forestalling such troubles, not exacerbating them. Once again, the people tasked with resolving problems have become the problem. 

THE FAIR SOLUTION

The Academy doesn’t discuss the composition of its “Inclusion Advisory Committee,” but Disney puts the Stories Matter Advisory Council front and center. Among the organizations comprising the 11-member council are the GLAAD Media Institute, Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, African American Film Critics Association and disability representation watchdog RespectAbility. Had any of them shown as much interest in helping Disney navigate the treacherous waters of the culture’s collapsing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion regime as they did in advocating for the on-screen representation of their various constituencies, the company’s troubles might have been forestalled.  

Increasingly, it's journalists and artists of color, like Film Threat’s Alan Ng, who are blowing the whistle. Writing for the New York Times Magazine this past March, Kabir Chibber took the industry to task for fabricating a “magical, colorblind past” in movies and series like Netflix’s Bridgerton, which he argues only end up erasing the histories we most need to learn and learn from. Last June it was Oscar-winning New Zealand-born filmmaker Taika Waititi venting about corporate DEI initiatives at companies like Disney. “We have to include a person from every single race, and every single background, and every single part of the human experience in every show or everything that we make. That’s not reality, and it's not authentic.”

It’s easy to become cynical about the corporate nature of such DEI programs while failing to appreciate the personal conundrum they impose on executives like Disney’s Bob Iger, who is Jewish, and Academy CEO Bill Kramer, who is gay and Jewish. Beyond their professional responsibilities, these are also human beings with natural affinities which fuel a desire to do right by the communities of which they consider themselves a part. In a recent interview with Variety, Kramer was asked whether the Oscars might follow such organizations as the Spirit Awards and the Gotham Awards by making acting categories gender-neutral, a move favored by many on the progressive left as being more “inclusive” of "non-binary gender identities.” Kramer’s attempt at a diplomatic answer only made matters worse. “We are exploring this topic with our awards, membership, equity, and inclusion committees and soon with our Board of Governors,” he said. "It’s in the early exploration stage and one of many conversations about the future of awards and the Oscars. We are still investigating how it could look.” 

Kramer, whose more Herculean task is to reverse the Oscarcast's catastrophic decade-long ratings collapse, would have been well within his rights to retort, “You mean, so we too can alienate half the country and end up with a smaller audience than late night game show reruns?” But being dismissive of "non-binary" identities is considered taboo for anyone under the LGBTQ umbrella, despite the fact that a growing number of LGB activists are growing weary of all things TQ, particularly the elusive, anti-feminist, and misogynistic "non-binary” fad. Kramer might also have pointed out that no less than the Tonys, which is likely the safest safe space on the planet for gay and gender non-conforming performers, has proposed no such change. Just last year the Tonys awarded both Best Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical and Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical to self-declared non-binary black male performers who graciously accepted their honors while acknowledging that all ceremonies are ultimately more about the audience than the recipients. Because the goal of arts and entertainment is to bring people together, not drive them apart. 

Those of us opposing these self-destructive practices have never denied the need for more diversity and inclusion, especially in Hollywood. Our clarion call has been one of unity, to deploy the power of Hollywood in the service of what made it great in the first place, bringing together people of all colors, beliefs, backgrounds and nationalities in a shared human experience, reminding us that our commonalities outweigh our differences. 

The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) was built for moments like these. Since its founding in 2021, FAIR has demonstrated heroic reasonableness in unreasonable times, holding steadfast to its pro-human mission and growing into a community of more than 35,000. While Disney, the Academy and others have struggled, FAIR has thrived, successfully navigating the most divisive period of modern American history with a focus on unity and shared humanity. This is what successful diversity and inclusion looks like. 

Through FAIR in the Arts, the organization has already begun to do the work which Disney and the Academy claim as their goal. As track records go, it’s not even close. Executive Director Monica Harris and FAIR’s Board of Advisors walk the walk. If Disney, AMPAS and others are serious about the issues they claim to prioritize, they will accept this challenge: engage with FAIR and FAIR in the Arts and make them a partner going forward. Thousands of us came to FAIR to find the fellowship to which corporate DEI merely pays lip service. Now is the time for the rest of Hollywood to find it, too.

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