All but one of the members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities resigned on Friday in response to Donald Trump’s comments on the violence that erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The 16 resigning members of the committee, including actor Kal Penn and artist Chuck Close, were selected by former President Barack Obama during his term and held on to their positions when Trump came into office.
Penn announced that the remaining committee members were resigning in a letter he shared on Twitter. The first letter of each paragraph spells out ‘RESIST’.
‘Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions,’ they wrote in the letter. ‘We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.’
First Lady Melania Trump is the honorary chair of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
The 16 resigning members of the committee, including House actor Kal Penn (pictured), cited Donald Trump’s comments on the violence that erupted at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as a reason for resigning
Artist Chuck Close was among the 16 members of the committee who announced in a joint statement that they were resigning on Friday
The 16 resigning members of the committee were selected by former President Barack Obama during his term and held on to their positions when Trump came into office
Members who have signed the letter include: Penn, Close, Paula Boggs, Richard Cohen, Fred Goldring, Howard L. Gottlieb, Vicki Kennedy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anne Luzzatto, Thom Mayne, Eric Ortner, Ken Solomon, Caroline Taylor, Jill Cooper Udall, Andrew Weinstein, and John Lloyd Young.
The only member not signing was Broadway director George C Wolfe. Representatives for Wolfe at Creative Arts Agency did not have any immediate comment on whether he had resigned.
A number of committee members quit after Trump was elected president in November 2016, and those who remained were all appointed by Obama.
They had agreed to remain on the committee until Trump named their replacements, and eight months into his presidency, he had not done so.
Their letter on Friday said: ‘Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.’
Former Starbucks executive and musician Paula Boggs was one of the 16 to sign the resignation letter
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen (left) and entertainment lawyer Fred Goldring (right) have also resigned on the committee
Investment banker and accomplished violinist Howard Gottlieb (left, with Emanuel Ax and Barbara Greis) also resigned
Lawyer Victoria Anne Reggie Kennedy, who is the second wife and widow of longtime US Senator Ted Kennedy, is also resigning
A day earlier, Trump has abandoned plans to create an infrastructure advisory council, the White House said on Thursday, the day after two other advisory groups were dismantled over the furor caused by Trump’s remarks on white supremacists.
‘The President’s Advisory Council on Infrastructure, which was still being formed, will not move forward,’ a White House official said.
On Wednesday, Trump disbanded two high-profile advisory groups after several chief executives quit in protest over his remarks blaming violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last weekend on anti-racism activists as well as white nationalists.
Trump said he dissolved the American Manufacturing Council and the Strategic and Policy Forum ‘rather than putting pressure’ on its members, although both groups were preparing to disband on their own when Trump made his announcement on Twitter.
The snubs from chief executives raised questions about Trump’s ability to marshal the business community behind his policy goals.
Author Jhumpa Lahiri (left) and chairman of Ovation TV, Ken Solomon (right), also signed the letter of resignation
Anne Luzzatto (pictured center with Gordon Litwin and Victoria Harmon), who also served as Obama-Biden Transition Team review lead for the National Endowment for the Arts, resigned on Friday
Architect Thom Mayne was among the 16 to resign on Friday. The only person not to resign from the council was Broadway director George C Wolfe
Producer and talent manager Eric Ortner (left) and singer John Lloyd Young were among those resigning on Friday
Long-time arts advocate Jill Cooper Udall, left with William Adams, resigned from the committee on Friday
Caroline Taylor, the wife of singer James Taylor (pictured together above) also resigned on Friday
Trump blamed white nationalists and counter-protesters in equal measure for the weekend clashes that left one woman dead.
The president accused the protesters, who rallied against neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, of being ‘very, very violent’.
Trump’s assessment that there was ‘blame on both sides’ for the deadly melee sparked a rare comment on current affairs from his two Republican predecessors, George Bush and George W Bush, who called on Americans to ‘reject racial bigotry… in all its forms’.
Trump’s defiant statements, delivered on Tuesday at Trump Tower and immediately hailed by a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan for their ‘courage’, left many lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats alike, speechless.
The arts and humanities committee was established in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.