The Cloud Over The Grammys: Allegations Of Sexual Misconduct, Vote Rigging

January 24, 2020 1:52 PM ET
ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS

Winners of the 62nd Grammy Awards will be announced Sunday night — but there's a cloud hanging over the ceremony. Last week, Deborah Dugan, the recently installed president and CEO of the Recording Academy — which hands out the awards — was placed on administrative leave. Earlier this week, Dugan filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that includes allegations of sexual misconduct and vote rigging.

The Recording Academy has been struggling for years with criticism that the Grammys were too male, too white, too old and too insular. In came Dugan five months ago, as the Academy's first female leader.

She pledged that the organization could do better, as she told NPR in an interview last month: "We've known as an industry for a long time that we have a monumental problem with gender issues."

Then, just over a week ago and only 10 days before the awards telecast, the Recording Academy abruptly announced that it had placed Dugan on leave pending an investigation into an allegation of bullying that came from a female assistant. But in an interview Thursday, Dugan claimed she was placed on leave as retaliation for accusations she made, and changes she proposed.

Specifically, Dugan says her suspension is the result of a memo she sent in December to the Academy's Human Resources director, which included an accusation that she had been sexually harassed by the Academy's general counsel, Joel Katz. (Katz is also a former Academy board chair.)

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