We need to hear from Annenberg Dean Willow Bay

This is a guest essay. Alan Mittelstaedt is a journalism professor at USC where he teaches a class called American Democracy in Crisis.

The era of expecting wives to atone for the transgressions of their husbands is long gone. 

But when Bob Iger, one of the most prominent players in the entertainment-news universe, caves to President Donald Trump and his acolytes and silences Jimmy Kimmel, we’d expect at least a hint of protest from his wife: Willow Bay, leader of one of the most prominent journalism, communications, and public relations schools in the country.

Every day produces an all-hands-on-deck moment to save American democracy under siege by Trump in his lawless zeal to dismantle and destroy any institution or human who tries to halt his march to authoritarianism. We can’t remain silent on the sidelines or worse — be complicit through our capitulation.

We need Iger and Bay on the front lines of the battle to save America’s flawed democracy.

The Iger of old who toyed with running for president in 2020 as a Democrat and who resigned from Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum in 2017 in protest of his withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. And the Bay who declared on International Democracy Day on Sept. 15 that our job is to sustain democracy, and named activist Jane Fonda to be Annenberg’s commencement speaker last May.

In coming days, Bay may once again proclaim her commitment to free speech, our constitutional rights, and decry Trump’s unrelenting threats to our health, free elections, human dignity, and freedom to criticize our government.

Let’s hope for more than words. Here are two suggestions.

An initiative that Bay supports — the International Women’s Media Foundation — reportedly considered moving its annual fundraiser from her Brentwood home because of her husband’s flagrant disregard of Kimmel’s right to free speech. (The group later denied the report.)

Still: Go ahead and quadruple your monetary donation to the group and invite Kimmel to deliver a keynote speech on your garden patio.

And we need a bigger stage for Kimmel than your backyard. Say, the Shrine Auditorium. See if Kimmel is free May 15, 2026. Yes, invite him to speak at Annenberg’s commencement.

All this will show Bay shares Kimmel's commitment to free speech — and that she drew inspiration from his final monologue. When she tells us she wishes she'd spoken out sooner, we’ll know she’s in the fourth phase of regret: redemption.

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