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Sunday
Night
Drama
As the Recording Academy’s war
of words with embattled CEO
Deborah Dugan heats up, the
spotlight on the organization’s
legal expenditures and governance
is threatening to steal the show
BY MELINDA NEWMAN
and GAIL MITCHELL
O
N THE EVE OF MUSIC’S
biggest night — the 62nd
Grammy Awards — the
most compelling drama
may be unfolding offstage as the
Recording Academy’s new CEO,
Deborah Dugan, now on leave, squares
off with the organization’s old guard in
a verbal battle royale — complete with
high-powered lawyers — featuring
allegations of harassment, conflicts of
interest and financial impropriety.
Dugan started just five months ago,
replacing Neil Portnow (who had led
the Recording Academy for 17 years),
and many music industry executives
believed she would modernize a
stodgy institution, scrutinized for
its glaring underrepresentation of
women and artists of color accepting
awards during the televised show
and a secretive nomination process.
Now the leadership — and future —
of the academy has been thrown into
question just as the world turns its
attention to the prestigious annual
awards show that provides most of the
group’s public profile and a consider-
able amount of its revenue.
On Jan. 16, the academy’s board of
trustees placed Dugan on leave after a
senior staffer, understood to be direc-
tor of administration Claudine Little
— Portnow’s longtime right hand —
accused Dugan of alleged misconduct,
including bullying, a source con-
firmed to Billboard. The academy has
hired two independent third-party
investigators to look into the allega-
tions in a process that’s expected to
conclude in early spring.
But weeks earlier, Dugan had sent a
scathing memo to the academy’s head
of human resources, alleging that the
organization was paying exorbitant le-
gal bills, presiding over improper vot-
ing procedures and turning a blind eye
to conflicts of interest among members
of the board of trustees and outside
legal counsel, according to a source.
The academy tells Billboard that on
Jan. 10, Dugan asked to leave her job
with a $22 million settlement. Harvey
Mason Jr., the songwriter-producer
who chairs the academy’s board and
is now acting as interim CEO, wrote in
a Jan. 20 letter to academy members
that Dugan’s attorney “informed the
executive committee that if Ms. Dugan
was paid millions of dollars, she would
‘withdraw’ her allegations and resign
from her role as CEO.”
The academy countered with a mul-
timillion-dollar offer that was
much less than $22 million,
two sources tell Billboard, but
she turned it down. Dugan’s
co-counsel Doug Wigdor said
Dugan declined to comment.
After Dugan was placed
on administrative leave, her
co-counsel Bryan Freedman
said in a Jan. 17 statement,
“When our ability to speak
is not restrained by a 28-page contract
and legal threats, we will expose what
happens when you ‘step up’ at the Re-
cording Academy, a public nonprofit.”
Freedman was referencing the
now-infamous remark Portnow had
made after the 2018 show when he
suggested women in the music indus-
try should “step up” to advance their
careers and receive more recogni-
tion at the Grammys. That comment,
which Portnow said was taken out
of context, led a number of prominent
women in the music industry to call
for his dismissal and the establish-
ment of a task force to review the
academy’s — and the
music industry’s — lack of
inclusion and diversity.
A few months later,
another scandal erupted
when Dana Tomarken, the
longtime MusiCares and
Grammy Foundation vp
who had been terminated
that April, wrote to the
board of trustees to excori-
ate the academy and accuse Portnow
of improperly moving funds away from
MusiCares (he and the academy have
denied any wrongdoing). Tomarken
then sued for wrongful termination;
she and the academy reached a settle-
ment in November 2019.
35%
PERCENTAGE
OF FEMALE
TRUSTEES ON
THE RECORDING
ACADEMY’S
BOARD
Dugan during the
Grammy nominations
announcement in New
York on Nov. 20, 2019.
JO
HN
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JANUARY 25, 2020 • WWW.BILLBOARD.COM 33