The Deaf President Now protest was a key moment in American civil rights, deaf empowerment and disability advocacy. The student-led action at Gallaudet University, in Washington, DC, in 1988 resulted in the appointment of the first deaf president of the world’s only third-level institution designed for deaf students.
Decades later, Nyle DiMarco, a deaf activist who has blazed a trail as an actor, author and film-maker – not to mention the first deaf winner of the US version of Dancing with the Stars – set out to make a movie about the thrilling standoff between students and university authorities.
He pitched the idea to Jonathan King, producer of the Oscar-winning film Spotlight.
“He didn’t know about this movement at all, which is pretty common, considering 90 per cent of Americans still don’t know about it,” DiMarco says. “We approached two writers – one hearing, one deaf – and together they put together a script.
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“After the first pass we really weren’t satisfied. After the second it felt even less like what it should be – because the movement isn’t just about a deaf president: it’s representative of centuries and centuries of oppression and discrimination. How could we possibly compact that into a modern-day narrative feature?”
Enter Davis Guggenheim, the film-maker behind the documentaries Waiting for Superman, He Named Me Malala, Still – about Michael J Fox, the Back to the Future and Family Ties star, and his battle with Parkinson’s disease – and the Academy Award-winner An Inconvenient Truth, persuaded DiMarco that Deaf President Now! should also be a documentary.
“I grew up in Washington, DC,” Guggenheim, who became the film’s codirector, says. “The protests happened several miles away. I knew about Gallaudet University. But I didn’t know about these protests – or maybe I knew and forgot.
“If you’re deaf this story is part of your culture, part of your story. The fact that the hearing world has essentially moved on and neglected these protests is an injustice. I just felt it was important to help Nyle tell the story.”
The protests were triggered by the decision of the university – whose charter was signed by Abraham Lincoln, as US president, in 1864 – to appoint a hearing president, Dr Elisabeth Zinser, over two deaf candidates, Dr Irving King Jordan and Dr Harvey Corson.
Zinser didn’t even know American Sign Language – which, with written English, is one of Gallaudet’s two official languages.
Jane Bassett Spilman, chair of the university’s trustees, compounded the rising anger by insisting that “deaf people are not ready to function in a hearing world”. When a protester set off a fire alarm, Spilman complained to the crowd, “It’s awfully difficult to talk above this noise.”
“It’s really mind-blowing,” DiMarco says. “That attitude very much still exists and is very prevalent, but, yeah, it’s unbelievable. Even though Zinser didn’t say that the deaf people aren’t ready to function in the hearing world, she certainly behaved like she did.”
For eight days students barricaded campus entrances, locked gates and took to the streets. Rallies spearheaded by the Gallaudet activists Greg Hlibok, Bridgetta Bourne, Jerry Covell and Tim Rarus received national coverage. The documentary, whose release coincides with a US-wide crackdown on campus protests, offers an exemplary blueprint for civil disobedience.
“My children are in college, and it’s hard to generalise about people,” Guggenheim (who is married to the actor Elisabeth Shue) says. “But I love that the people in our film are listening to each other. They don’t always like each other. But there’s compassion, listening and soul-searching among each of these characters. I think that’s a great lesson right now, when people are so dug in and convinced of their righteousness.”
During the Deaf President Now campaign, protesters demanded the resignations of Zinser and Spilman, the appointment of a deaf president and the reconstitution of the board to include a majority of deaf trustees.
Jordan, a graduate of Gallaudet, and a dean there at the time, was appointed the university’s first deaf president after the protests. Rather than being born deaf, he lost his hearing after a motorbike crash; he signs and speaks during the documentary. Some of his fellow contributors question his deaf credentials.
“That was one of our goals,” DiMarco says. “So often in the hearing world, people look at the deaf community and think that we’re all these precious angels who get along. But we have opinions and very different perspectives.
“Throughout the protests you really see that it was successful despite those internal conflicts, that those are such a normal part of protest. I think it speaks to the environment that we’re in today. With different viewpoints and perspectives, we can come together, speak truth to power and make change happen.”
Guggenheim says he learned important lessons from Fox, his former documentary subject.
“When I was growing up you’d see these movies of the week about someone with a disability. You’d hear violins. ‘Amazing that little Johnny can tie his shoes. How precious and noble.’ When I worked with Michael J Fox he said, ‘No violins!’”
The director has form in this respect. In He Named Me Malala he allowed Malala Yousafzai, the female-education activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17, and her family to narrate their story from a Pakistani perspective. He studiously swerved a white-saviour narrative in Waiting for Superman, a critique of marginalised experiences of the American public-education system.
The themes of Deaf President Now required particular cultural sensitivities.
“When you watch the movie you say, ‘I would never be this terrible person doing terrible things to this other group of people’,” he says. “What I’ve learned making the movie is that these very well-intentioned people can still impede progress.
“My mantra making this picture was: Don’t be Spilman. There were moments when I caught myself and thought, ‘Oh shit: I’m just driving forward like another hearing person.’ I had to stop and reflect every day.”
The film is peppered with examples of “good intentions” dating back to Alexander Graham Bell. In the late 19th century the inventor of the telephone, whose wife and mother were deaf, championed oralism, the belief that deaf people should learn to speak and lip-read rather than use sign language.
“It was a matter of taking the history of oppression that is ingrained into the deaf experience and finding that balance,” DiMarco says. “We had to explain some of the history to know how we ended up at this boiling point in 1988. We needed to show the rise of deaf identity and to paint a picture of why deaf people were so angry. They had had enough.”
With Deaf President Now! we had over 40 deaf folks behind the camera. If the goal is really to see those stories being told authentically, that starts when we’re hiring
— Nyle DiMarco
In 2022 Coda became the first film with a predominantly deaf cast to win the Oscar for best picture. But, save for a tiny number of movies – notably Her Socialist Smile, the documentary about Helen Keller from 2020 – deaf people remain significantly underrepresented on screen.
Eight years ago DiMarco founded Clerc Studio, a production company dedicated to elevating the narratives of deaf and disabled people.
“It really comes down to having representation behind the camera,” he says. “When we watch films about deaf folks we can tell if it’s done by a hearing person. It’s really important for Hollywood to do their homework. We don’t want to encourage stories being told about us without us.”
His documentaries include Audible, about football players at Maryland School for the Deaf, which was nominated for best documentary short at the Academy Awards in 2022, and Deaf U, about contemporary students at Gallaudet.
“With Deaf U, over 50 per cent of our crew came from the deaf community,” he says. “With Deaf President Now! we had over 40 deaf folks behind the camera. If the goal is really to see those stories being told authentically, that starts when we’re hiring.
“I often joke that we’re building a deaf empire, making things rather than waiting for Hollywood to greenlight them. And once we have those stories, I think Hollywood is going to be really upset that they missed out.”
Deaf President Now! is on Apple TV+ from Friday, May 16th
