Following the current adverse publicities concerning their lack of diversity, officials of the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences revealed changes in its board of governors Saturday. The announcement of the changes came immediately when the AMPAS said they planned to make alterations in their membership policies.
Cheryl Boone Isaacs, AMPAS President, together with Dawn Hudson, CEO, held a press conference at the Producers Guild Awards detailing the changes they made in their membership list.
The two announced that they will introduce new members and strip old members of their membership. This announcement by the Academy, though shocking, is almost expected since it appears that they created the furor themselves. The award giving body was charged with not being diverse enough to allow more colored people in their Oscars nomination lists.
AMPAS instantly experienced the backlash after it revealed its Oscar nominations on Jan. 14. It seems that officials of the awarding body felt the need to initiate bold moves and do them quickly to restore respect to the organization.
The Academy's reputation as an independent and unbiased body is being tainted because of this year's all-white lists of 20 nominated actors. This led to bigger and deeper questions about the Academy's lack of diversity, and of the movie industry itself.
To their credit, both Boone Isaacs and Hudson have been pushing for more diverse membership. In June, 2015, the institution invited 322 new members, from a wider cross-section of the public. But it seems that with a total of 6,261 members, the new members didn't even make a dent in the Academy's usual way of doing things.
AMPAS is a big organization. It maintains 17 branches, and the entire membership votes on who will get the Oscar trophy. And that seems to be one of its difficulties because actors nominate actors; scriptwriters nominate scriptwriters, and so forth.
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