DEI, that race-based “diversity, equity and inclusion” agenda used by so many corporations and organizations to establish quotas of blacks, Hispanics, women, even transgenders, long has been a cloud over American industry.
Now it’s darkening the industry of professional musicians, the symphonies that perform in America’s cities.
This fight is being brought by James Zimmerman against the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and charges that its officials illegally discriminated against him because of their DEI ideologies, and then adopted those DEI ideologies in choosing a candidate who apparently was No. 2 in the blind auditions.
BLACKLISTED: In September the Knoxville Symphony invited me to their blind audition for Principal Clarinet, which I won by unanimous vote. Two days later their CEO called and refused to hire me, citing my ousting from the Nashville Symphony six years ago for resisting DEI as the… pic.twitter.com/fmM0B9Lzl1
— slimzim (@jameszimmermann) January 5, 2026
The fight has been profiled by the Federalist, which explains the lawsuit in court in Tennessee accuses the symphony of choosing “an obvious DEI hire who’s still in college” over Zimmerman, who reportedly won the blind audition competition.
Charges include that orchestra officials “discriminated against me because of skin color and hired a non-white player, who was my runner-up in the audition.”
The orchestra cited his opposition to DEI while a member of the Nashville Symphony earlier, a departure that the Washington Free Beacon explained, citing colleagues, was part of a “witch hunt” triggered by that orchestra’s decision to hire an “unqualified” player.
“The conductor didn’t like [the oboist]. Well, none of us liked him. But management liked him. The CEO liked him because he was his golden child, his DEI ticket to success. He’s like, ‘Look, we’re going to parade this guy around everywhere and show everybody how righteous we are.’ He’s a human virtue signal, which, by the way, is quite racist to tokenize somebody and do this, parade them around for their skin color. And I objected to all of this,” Zimmerman, a clarinet player, said in a recent interview with Megyn Kelly.
In an email he reported got from orchestra chief Rachel Ford instructs that she no longer will have “any ongoing communications” on the issue.
The legal action, on which the Knoxville Symphony did not comment, charges that Zimmerman would have been hired if he had not “been a white male, particularly a white male who had previously expressed opposition to DEI.”
The case, apparently the first of its kind in the music industry, drew a comment from U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon.
She suggested her division would have questions for the orchestra.
The concept of blind auditions, where a performer is hidden by sight but not sound from judges, also is under attack in the music industry.
Anthony Tommasini, who then was chief classical music critic at the New York Times, said several years ago that “the audition process has to be altered” to reflect musicians’ “backgrounds and experiences.”
Zimmerman said if his case succeeds, orchestras will have to return to “hiring the best players the way they did before DEI ruined the business.”
