Cheryl Boone Isaacs intends to step aside from Academy board

CAIRO – 13 May 2017: President of the Academy's Board of Governors Cheryl Boone Isaacs announced that she is stepping aside, and has no intentions to seek re-election, in a statement on Friday.

Boone served as the Academy's first African-American president for four years, and the third woman to become Academy president.

“It's been my greatest honor serving on the Academy’s Board of Governors in numerous capacities for more than two decades, and it will be a privilege to provide the opportunity for new voices to have a seat at the table," Boone Isaacs said in the statement.

It was said that Isaacs’s decision came after a controversy over the diversity of the Oscars awards and the confusion in announcing the Best Film award during last year’s ceremony, despite the fact that she did not clearly announce the real reason.

The Academy was exposed to much criticism in the past three years; criticism increased after the academy announced its Oscar nominees for the year 2016, which were only white actors and actresses. This lead to creating the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite on Twitter.