The time has finally come for Hollywood—like Sonic Youth before it—to put its trust and faith in Anita Hill. The New York Times reports this week that Hill—who helped put public discussions of sexual harassment on the map with her early-’90s allegations of lewd behavior against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas—has been placed at the head of a new commission designed to fight back against the entertainment industry’s pervasive harassment problems.
The idea for the group—formally known as the Commission On Sexual Harassment And Advancing Equality In The Workplace—was put forward by some of the biggest names in the industry, including The Nike Foundation’s Maria Eitel, attorney Nina Shaw, and Kathleen Kennedy, the LucasArts president whose shepherding of the Star Wars franchise has made her one of the most powerful people in Hollywood, period. The commission—which will also feature contributions from various bigwigs like Bob Iger and Ted Sarandos—says its goal is to “tackle the broad culture of abuse and power disparity.” It’ll reportedly reconvene early next year, in order to begin developing a broad array of strategies to reinvent a system that’s shown itself to suffer from a systemic susceptibility to abuses of power in recent months.