Anita Hill speaks on 'the hearings,' race and gender

Anita Hill signed copies of her book, Speaking Truth to Power, and greeted students in Willard Straight Hall April 16 before her evening lecture in Kennedy Hall. Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

By Casey Morse '00

Focusing on issues of race and gender in society, Anita Hill addressed a packed house in the David L. Call Alumni Auditorium of Kennedy Hall during an April 16 lecture titled "Speaking Truth to Power," which also is the title of her new book.

Hill spoke at length about her attitudes toward the sometimes conflicting issues of race and gender and also about her experiences testifying before the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in October of 1991.

At those hearings Hill, then a University of Oklahoma law professor, alleged incidents of sexual harassment by Thomas, with whom Hill had worked in 1981 as special counsel to the assistant secretary of the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights and from 1982 to 1983 as adviser to the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission.

Hill said the "painful experience" of testifying at the hearings helped her to reconcile the conflict of race and gender in her life.

"Because of my experiences with the hearings, I am now more whole and integrated," she said.

And although Thomas eventually was confirmed, Hill, now a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has continued to teach, speak and write about the issues raised during the hearings.

At the time, Hill said, some viewed her and black women who supported her as "traitors to their race" because she was bringing down a black man. But, she said, it is essential for people to fight all forms of bias and not ignore one form that appears to be a threat to another.

"We can't put one issue on hold," Hill said. "We must deal with them as a larger problem in society -- not just as individual problems."

Further, she pointed out, the dynamics of the hearings would have changed completely had she been a white woman testifying about harassment by a black man. "Think about the conservatives and how they might have acted if I was white," Hill said. "Do you think Sen. Strom Thurman would have been so quick to embrace Clarence Thomas if he had harassed a white woman?"

Hill also touched on the recent Paula Jones harassment case against President Clinton. "People all over the country are saying that we've gone too far with this issue," Hill said. "But until we can say we've eliminated the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace, I don't think we can ever say we've gone too far."

She pointed out that the media, while delighting in sensational revelations, has failed to focus on the core issues involved in sexual harassment in the workplace -- "bias and misogyny."

Hill also spoke about the value of family and how her family has been an important support system for her through the years. When asked by an audience member what family values meant to her, Hill answered: "Family is more than just a husband, a wife and kids. Family is about accepting individual family members for who they are, especially when they're living their lives in truth."

She also spoke about the need for a dialogue on race -- beginning at the local level -- in the "post affirmative-action era," while also expressing continued support for affirmative action.

Earlier, in the afternoon, Hill signed copies of her book, Speaking Truth to Power, at the Willard Straight Hall Art Gallery. Her appearance at Cornell was sponsored by the Cornell Democrats, Cornell Advocates for Rape Education, the Project Challenge grant of the U.S. Department of Education and a host of campus units and organizations.