Renowned Producer Kathleen Kennedy Calls for a Commission Against Harassment

The legendary Hollywood producer, Kathleen Kennedy, who produced such films as Jurassic Park, The Sixth Sense, Rogue One, and The Girl On The Train (she also happens to be president of Lucasfilm), is calling for the creation of a film-industry commission designed to protect women against sexual abuse.

“Increased awareness of the belittlement, objectification, and predation long endured by women who work in film will certainly be one result of the exposure of what Harvey Weinstein did and was permitted to do,” she said at ELLE’s Women in Hollywood event. “Women who were subject to similar criminal treatment in the future will certainly look to the brave women who have come forward to tell what was done to them as these shocking and also horribly familiar events have been brought to light.”

She continued: “For the past few days, I’ve been in discussions with friends and colleagues, and I want to use my few moments of speaking tonight to offer a proposal. The organizations that constitute the American film industry, the studios, the unions, the guilds, and the talent agencies should immediately convene a commission charged with the task of developing new, industry-wide protections against sexual harassment and abuse…

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“This commission should be composed of specialists in labor and management practices, lawyers and legal scholars, sociologists, psychologists, feminists, activists, and theorists, as well as people who work in film and television. The commission should be fully funded by our industry in order to address the task at hand in a thorough-going, comprehensive fashion. The goal of this commission would be to transform our industry in regards to sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace. We must make the film industry an exemplar in this regard, a model for self-regulation that other businesses can emulate.”

She concluded: “We have to act. I am proud to have worked in film my entire adult life and I reject the idea that misogyny is the true heart of this industry. Misogyny is depriving human beings of their humanity and that’s fundamentally antithetical to the empathetic examination of human experience that is, or at least ought to be, the core of what film at its best can be. People in our industry know that we have our own complicity, hypocrisy, and avoidance of this issue to examine and to answer for, but we cannot let that necessary work prevent us from immediately doing what needs to be done to build a better and safer industry. The time to begin that work is now.”

Read the full speech at ELLE.