In 1988, the board of trustees of Gallaudet University was preparing to announce its pick for the institution’s next president. That’s not an unusual task for a board. What’s unusual is what happened next, as told in “Deaf President Now!” (streaming on Apple TV+).
Directed by Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim, the documentary plays like a high-stakes political thriller, but in an unconventional venue. The film chronicles the week of turmoil and transformation that followed the announcement of Elisabeth Zinser as president. (DiMarco is a Gallaudet alum.)
Gallaudet University — founded in 1864 as a school for deaf and blind children, through a law signed by Abraham Lincoln — is the nation’s only liberal arts university designed specifically for deaf and hard-of-hearing students, and it’s officially bilingual, with instruction in both English and American Sign Language. In 1988, however, Gallaudet had never had a deaf president. And Zinser, a hearing person with a background in nursing, had been chosen over two deaf, arguably more qualified candidates.
To tell the story, “Deaf President Now!” weaves together archival footage and contemporary interviews with a number of the students and faculty, now middle-aged and older, who led or were involved in the protests. All of the interviewees, filmed against a simple black background, give their answers in ASL, with an off-camera voice (rather than subtitles) providing the translation for hearing audiences.
When the announcement came down, students were incensed. They’d grown up in an era before the Americans With Disabilities Act, a time when deaf people were frequently treated like second-class citizens. Some had watched their deaf parents continually shrink back in a hearing world, accommodating prejudices in order to get by. But at Gallaudet, the students had found a place where they felt “comfortable, safe, like you’re with your family” — where they could speak their own language and celebrate deaf culture. That seemed, to them, like a basic qualification for the job.
The film’s participants are witty, cracking jokes about on-set mics and one another. But it’s clear from the way they recall their feelings that the memory of that time still stings, as when they recount that the board tried to placate them with reassurances that Zinser had their best interests at heart. One participant notes how similarly patronizing those reassurances sounded to “white savior” rhetoric, suggesting that deaf people aren’t capable of advocating for and educating themselves.
The protests ballooned and gained national attention. As the students shut down the campus in protest, they attracted support from outside the university and the deaf world, and the student body president eventually ended up on national TV. The protests started a national conversation about rights for the deaf, about whether deafness was a “defect” to be “fixed” or a culture to be preserved, and whether a hearing person who never learned sign language — like Jane Bassett Spilman, chairwoman of Gallaudet’s board at the time — could be trusted to lead the institution. And “Deaf President Now!” skillfully draws the lines for all viewers. It’s not just a story about a moment in history: It’s also about the ways the movement for deaf education led to the broader disability rights arguments, and how everyone’s rights depend on everyone else’s.
Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005.
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