{"id":803823,"date":"2020-02-04T18:16:48","date_gmt":"2020-02-05T01:16:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=947864"},"modified":"2020-02-04T18:16:48","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T01:16:48","slug":"recording-academy-fires-back-at-deborah-dugan-as-battle-intensifies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/recording-academy-fires-back-at-deborah-dugan-as-battle-intensifies\/","title":{"rendered":"Recording Academy Fires Back at Deborah Dugan as Battle Intensifies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In the latest development in one of the nastiest ongoing fights in the music industry<\/a>, the Recording Academy<\/a> has a message for recently ousted CEO Deborah Dugan<\/a>: Bring it on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, Dugan sent an open letter to the Academy<\/a> asking for her arbitration clause to be waived, a request that would allow the process to be open to the public. <\/span>On Tuesday, the Academy responded, proposing instead to keep arbitration but waive the confidentiality provision that could potentially bring more public transparency to the arbitration itself.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Dugan signed the arbitration agreement when she took the Academy job, which mandates any legal disputes between Dugan and the Academy to be settled through an arbitrator. Removing the confidentiality provision would allow both Dugan and the Academy to state their allegations and defenses publicly, according to the Academy\u2019s letter. Dugan submitted a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in January accusing the Academy of a corrupt Grammy voting process as well as alleging that Academy general counsel Joel Katz sexually harassed her and that former Recording Academy head Neil Portnow raped a foreign recording artist. (The Academy has defended the voting process<\/a>, and Katz and Portnow both denied the allegations.)<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe Recording Academy has absolutely nothing to hide and, in fact, welcomes the opportunity to tell its story so that the entire music community and the world can hear the truth \u2013 and nothing but the truth \u2013 about what you did to this proud institution during your brief tenure as President\/CEO,\u201d Interim CEO and board chair Harvey Mason Jr. said in the letter. \u201cIn short, we welcome a full public airing of your allegations against the Academy as well as the Academy\u2019s many claims and defenses against you.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Dugan\u2019s request last week to be released from her arbitration agreement, she called the arbitration process \u201csecret and confidential,\u201d adding that \u201cit is no secret that forced arbitration is a barrier to justice for victims of harrassment, discrimination and other misconduct.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In her letter, Dugan also alleged the investigator selected for her arbitration process has conflicts of interest to give a fair investigation as the investigator was recommended by the law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, which Dugan had previously alleged was \u201cin bed\u201d with the academy. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cArbitration has been uniformly recognized by courts and commentators alike as an entirely fair process for achieving justice, while usually being far less costly than full-blown civil litigation,\u201d Mason Jr. wrote in the letter. \u201cIn the recent words of the Supreme Court, arbitration offers the \u201cpromise of quicker, more informal, and often cheaper resolutions for everyone involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Academy requested Dugan\u2019s approval in writing to move forward with waiving the confidentiality provision, but that may not happen right away. In a statement, Dugan\u2019s legal counsel scorned the Academy\u2019s decision to keep the process in arbitration rather than bring it to a juried trial. <\/span>\u201c<\/span>The Recording Academy\u2019s efforts at portraying arbitration as a fair process for employees [are] disingenuous as everyone knows arbitration unfairly favors, protects, and insulates employers from their unlawful actions,\u201d said Dugan\u2019s attorneys Douglas Wigdor and Michael Willemin in a statement. \u201cIt is telling that the Recording Academy is unwilling to allow a jury of Ms. Dugan\u2019s peers decide this matter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you truly want a process with \u2018transparency and accountability,\u2019 then please join us in waiving the confidentiality provision of the contract,\u201d Mason Jr. wrote in the letter. \u201cAs soon as you notify us in writing of your consent, we can proceed with resolving this matter out in the open, and for all the world to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recording Academy Executive Committee Open Letter to Deborah Dugan<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest development in one of the nastiest ongoing fights in the music industry, the Recording Academy has a message for recently ousted CEO Deborah Dugan: Bring it on. Last week, Dugan sent an open letter to the Academy asking for her arbitration clause to be waived, a request that would allow the process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-803823","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-23 17:42:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=803823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/803823\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=803823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=803823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=803823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}