Late Friday, the organization announced that its board of directors had suspended Mr. Haskell and would conduct an investigation, reaffirming that it is committed “to the education and empowerment of young women.”
The letter’s signatories include winners of pageants from 1948 to 2017. The pageant itself dates to 1921. The Miss America Organization did not respond to a request for comment.
The others named in the letter include the president of the organization, Josh Randle, and two members of its board, Tammy Haddad and Lynn Weidner. Ms. Haddad resigned Friday, fulfilling an intention announced internally earlier this year, she said.
The emails were shared several months ago with Dick Clark Productions, which produces numerous awards shows, including the Golden Globes, and which ultimately severed ties with the Miss America Organization, for which it had reportedly been a key broadcast partner.
“We were appalled by their unacceptable content and insisted, in the strongest possible terms, that the Miss America Organization board of directors conduct a comprehensive investigation and take appropriate action to address the situation,” the production company said in a statement provided to The New York Times on Friday. “Shortly thereafter, we resigned our board positions and notified MAO that we were terminating our relationship with them.”
The emails indicate that Mr. Haskell had privately shamed one former pageant winner, Mallory Hagan, over her weight and sex life and had engaged in a campaign to fight what he perceived as her attacks, according to HuffPost.
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He had derided Ms. Hagan, who was named Miss America in 2013, as “a piece of trash” to one Miss America Organization employee, Brent Adams, who spoke to HuffPost. Mr. Adams said that he was romantically involved with Ms. Hagan at the time and that Mr. Haskell had instead wanted him to date Mr. Haskell’s daughter.
Other emails cited by HuffPost showed that Mr. Haskell had laughed when an employee suggested that a former pageant winner should be dead and appeared to express delight at the idea of needling yet another pageant winner, Gretchen Carlson, the journalist and author.
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The two board members, Ms. Haddad, a Washington media consultant, and Ms. Weidner, a Las Vegas socialite, had strategized with Mr. Haskell on how to respond to Ms. Hagan, according to HuffPost.
In a statement, Ms. Haddad said that she had spent 14 years as a volunteer member of the organization’s board and praised the women in the program. She also said that she had “the highest regard,” for Ms. Carlson.
In one of the emails, Ms. Weidner appeared to suggest that the organization’s decision to limit the help contestants can receive in preparation for the competition had hurt Ms. Hagan’s coaching business. In a statement to HuffPost, she defended Mr. Haskell, adding that, at the time, he was being “ruthlessly attacked by a handful of disgruntled malcontents.”
In a live recording shared on Twitter early Friday morning, Ms. Hagan, at times emotional, responded to the story, saying that she felt validated and hoped it would lead to changes within the organization.
“My hope is that this story that broke will bring light to the type of behavior that’s been in the leadership of the Miss America Organization and really help us put in place some people who care and who embody the mission of Miss America,” she said.
— Mallory Hagan (@ItsMalloryHagan) Dec. 22, 2017
Ms. Carlson, who won the pageant in 1989 and previously served on the board of the Miss America Organization, said she was “shocked and deeply saddened” by the statements in the HuffPost report.
“No woman should be demeaned with such vulgar slurs,” she told the publication and repeated on Twitter. She declined a request for further comment.
In a statement to HuffPost, the Miss America Organization’s board of directors said it had investigated the allegations of inappropriate comments and then terminated its relationship with the “most egregious author,” whose controversial emails Mr. Haskell appeared to tacitly endorse. A spokesman said that the board, however, had “full confidence in the Miss America Organization leadership team.”
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