All but one member of the president’s Committee on the Arts and Hum...
Sixteen out of 17 members of a White House advisory panel on the arts and humanities resigned en masse Friday in response to President Trump’s divisive comments on the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va.
The move follows the mass exodus of major business CEOs who quit two White House panels this week to protest the president’s response to last weekend’s clashes between far-right groups and counter-protesters.
“Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville,” the 16 wrote in a letter to Trump. “The false equivalencies you push cannot stand.”
“Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values,” it said. “Your values are not American values.”
The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities was created in 1982 under President Reagan, and acts as an advisory committee to the White House on cultural issues.
It draws from Hollywood, Broadway and the broader arts and entertainment community. First Lady Melania Trump is the panel’s honorary chairwoman. The White House did not immediately comment.
The committee works with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, along with other federal partners and the private sector.
