Academy Awards changes its membership rules to deal with diversity problems

In an emergency meeting held Thursday night, the Academy pledged to double its number of women and diverse members by 2020, and it’ll immediately increase its diversity by establishing three new governor seats nominated by its president.

President Cheryl Boone Isaacs, the first African-American to lead the organization, made the announcement after critics had hit the academy since it released the list of nominees a week earlier.

Current members can still sponsor new ones, but voting rights will only last for 10 years and members can only retain them after that if they’ve remained active in the industry during that decade. Only those members who have had three 10-year terms or have won or been nominated for an Oscar will have lifetime voting rights.

The Academy’s changes to membership apply to new members, as well as current members retroactively. The group will also add new non-Board members to its executive and board committees in order to “allow new members an opportunity to become more active in Academy decision-making”.

The makeup of the academy’s membership has always been secret; in 2012, the Los Angeles Times published an analysis showing 94 percent of voting members were white and hundreds of members hadn’t worked in movies in decades.

Now – perhaps pushed to action by several celebrities’ plans to boycott this year’s Oscars – the Academy is actually doing something about it.

Actors Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith will boycott the ceremony alongside director Spike Lee.

The nominations for this year’s Academy Awards have been surrounded by controversy, sparking an online campaign with the hashtag OscarSoWhite, as well as a debate about race and the film industry. In a statement, it was revealed the Academy is committing to doubling its amount of women and minorities.

“It was shameful and embarassing that there were two years in a row without a single actor of color nominated”, Damon told Bustle at the Sundance Film Festival premiere of Manchester by the Sea on Saturday. “I do believe that the Academy made a good move yesterday in trying to diversify the ranks in the Academy”. Ava DuVernay, director of last year’s best picture-nominee “Selma”, tweeted that the changes were “one good step in a long, complicated journey for people of color and women artists”. He said that the Academy had not taken any actions and the changes were in theory now.

“I really was disappointed”, she said after the January 14 nominations.

“… I don’t think it’s a problem of who you’re picking as much as it is: How many options are available to minorities in film, particularly in quality films?…I think that African-Americans have a real fair point that the industry isn’t representing them well enough”. “But (the academy) needed to get something out right away”.