“There’s so much will and desire to end this problem,” said Anita Hill, who is heading a commission to address sexual harassment in Hollywood. Credit David Paul Morris/Bloomberg, via Getty Images
As a powerhouse producer for Steven Spielberg and now president of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy has for decades tackled some of Hollywood’s most famous monsters: gremlins, poltergeists, T. rexes and the dark side of the Force.

Now Ms. Kennedy has set her sights on perhaps the most pernicious industry villain of all: sexual misconduct and abuse. She is spearheading the creation of an anti-harassment commission, backed by more than two dozen of the entertainment industry’s biggest bigwigs, that, in a stroke of marquee casting, will be led by Anita Hill. Read more>>

 

A commission headed by Anita Hill and composed of and funded by some of the most powerful names in Hollywood has been created to tackle widespread sexual abuse and harassment in the media and entertainment industries.

Called the Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, the initiative was spearheaded by Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm; Maria Eitel, the co-chair of the Nike Foundation; the powerhouse attorney Nina Shaw; and Freada Kapor Klein, the venture capitalist who helped pioneer surveys on sexual harassment decades ago. Read more>>

For the second time in the past month, former vice president Joe Biden has tried to atone for his role in the aggressive questioning of Anita Hill during a now-notorious 1991 congressional hearing.

In an interview with Teen Vogue published Wednesday, Biden said he regretted the way lawmakers treated Hill when she appeared before a Senate panel to detail allegations that then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her former boss, had sexually harassed her.

“I wish I had been able to do more for Anita Hill,” he said. “I owe her an apology.”

During Thomas’s confirmation hearings, Hill testified that he had repeatedly made unwanted sexual advances toward her when she worked for him at the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Thomas denied the allegations.

Hill, who is black, was grilled about her claims by an all-white, all-male group of lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who attacked her credibility and peppered her with lurid questions about her encounters with Thomas. Biden, the committee chairman, did little to temper the accusatory tone in the room.

The episode has received renewed attention as the wave of sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men has grown into a full-blown movement. Hill and her defenders have blamed Biden for letting the hearing spiral out of control.

Speaking with Teen Vogue editor in chief Elaine Welteroth, Biden defended some of his actions but said he wished he would have handled things differently.

“I believed Anita Hill,” he said. “My one regret is that I wasn’t able to tone down the attacks on her by some of my Republican friends. I mean, they really went after her. As much as I tried to intervene I did not have the power to gavel them out of order. I tried to be like a judge and only allow a question that would be relevant to ask.”

Thomas was confirmed 52-48. Biden voted against him.

Hill and others have said Biden was no innocent bystander during the hearing, which featured cringe-inducing exchanges about breast sizes, pornography and Thomas’s anatomy. At one point, Biden questioned Hill about how she felt during an alleged sexually charged moment, asking, “Were you uncomfortable, were you embarrassed, did it not concern you?”

This isn’t the first time Biden has revisited the hearing in the weeks since sexual assault allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein set off a deluge of misconduct claims, outing some of the most recognizable men in media, entertainment and government as alleged sexual predators.

Last month, in a discussion at Glamour magazine’s Women of the Year summit in New York, a reporter asked Biden if there was anything he would have done differently in his handling of Hill’s testimony, according to HuffPost.

Biden responded using some of the same language as in his Teen Vogue interview but seemed to stop short of apologizing outright.

“Let’s get something straight here. I believed Anita Hill. I voted against Clarence Thomas,” he told the audience, adding that he was “confident” that Thomas had sexually harassed his former aide.

Glamour editor in chief Cindi Leive asked a follow-up question, noting that Hill has said she felt like the senators treated her unfairly.

“The message I’ve delivered before is I am so sorry if she believes that,” Biden said, according to HuffPost. “I am so sorry that she had to go through what she went through.”

Hill, now a legal history professor at Brandeis University, was asked about Biden’s remarks at the Glamour event in a Nov. 16 interview with The Washington Post. She was joined in the interview by five current and former Democratic lawmakers who helped persuade the Senate Judiciary Committee to let her testify against Thomas.

Hill said of Biden: “He said, ‘I am sorry if she felt she didn’t get a fair hearing.’ That’s sort of an ‘I’m sorry if you were offended.’”

“But I still don’t think it takes ownership of his role in what happened,” she added. “And he also doesn’t understand that it wasn’t just that I felt it was not fair. It was that women were looking to the Senate Judiciary Committee and his leadership to really open the way to have these kinds of hearings. They should have been using best practices to show leadership on this issue on behalf of women’s equality. And they did just the opposite.”

Published in the Washington Post.

Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, last week. “I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up,” Ms. Haley said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” Credit Brendan McDermid/Reuters
WASHINGTON — Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, said on Sunday that women who have accused President Trump of sexual misconduct “should be heard,” a surprising break from the administration’s longstanding assertion that the allegations are false and that voters rightly dismissed them when they elected Mr. Trump.

Ms. Haley, a former governor and one of the highest-ranking women in Mr. Trump’s administration, refocused attention on the allegations against the president by insisting that his accusers should be treated no differently than the scores of women who have come forward in recent weeks with stories of sexual harassment and misconduct against other men.

“They should be heard, and they should be dealt with,” Ms. Haley said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And I think we heard from them prior to the election. And I think any woman who has felt violated or felt mistreated in any way, they have every right to speak up.”

Her remarks are the latest indication that the president’s behavior toward women — more than a dozen have accused him of unwanted touching, forcible kissing or groping — may not escape renewed scrutiny at a time when an array of powerful men have had their careers derailed because of their improper treatment of women, some of which took place decades ago.

The #MeToo movement has engulfed prominent members of both political parties. Democrats have appeared determined to grab the moral and political high ground, largely forcing their accused party members to resign.

Republicans have been more divided: Even as some accused members have stepped down, the party has largely stood by Mr. Trump. And it remains bitterly split over how to respond to the case of Roy S. Moore, the Republican Senate candidate in Alabama who has been accused of molesting an underage girl and attempting to date other teenagers when he was in his 30s.

Some of the women who first accused Mr. Trump during the campaign last year have expressed a renewed desire to press their case. Three of them will be interviewed by Megyn Kelly on NBC’s “Today” show on Monday.

So far, though, the upheaval in societal norms about sexual conduct in the workplace has swirled around the president but left him largely unscathed.

Undaunted, the president has used Twitter to mock other men who have been accused, including Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, who announced his plans to resign after several harassment allegations. Mr. Trump has defended and endorsed Mr. Moore, calling the claims against him “troubling” but insisting that he is needed in the Senate to advance the Republican agenda.

Through it all, the White House has repeatedly sought to deflect and discredit any attempt to revisit the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump crudely bragged about kissing women and grabbing their private parts, or to examine again the allegations from the women who came forward weeks before the 2016 election to accuse Mr. Trump of crude sexual behavior.

In recent months, Mr. Trump has privately been casting doubt that the “Access Hollywood” tape is authentic, despite publicly acknowledging shortly after its release in October 2016 that “I said it, I was wrong, and I apologize.”

And he has steadfastly denied all of the women’s accusations, calling them “made-up stuff” and “totally fake news.” Asked about the sexual misconduct accusations against the president and whether the women were lying, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said that they were and that “the president addressed the comments back during the campaign.”

Still, Mr. Trump may not have the luxury of waving aside the allegations against him forever as the maelstrom of sexual misconduct complaints that has toppled the careers of politicians, media figures and business executives grows.

In the new and less forgiving environment, Juliet Huddy, a former Fox News anchor, came forward last week to accuse Mr. Trump of having kissed her on the lips when they were riding in an elevator in 2005 or 2006. Ms. Huddy said she did not feel offended or threatened, but said she had matured and now would have rejected his affections.

“He went to say goodbye and he, rather than kiss me on the cheek, he leaned in on the lips,” Ms. Huddy said last week on the “Mornin’!!! With Bill Schulz” podcast. Ms. Huddy, who formerly worked as a host on “Fox & Friends,” has also accused Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News host, of sexually harassing her.

One woman who had previously made allegations against the president, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on Mr. Trump’s show “The Apprentice,” has filed a lawsuit against him, claiming that Mr. Trump and his associates defamed her by dismissing her account, and those of other women, as “lies” and “nonsense.” The lawsuit, if it is allowed to move forward, could provide a legal forum for other women to repeat their allegations.

Among those who could be given a new platform to lodge accusations against the president is Temple Taggart, who claimed that when she was competing in the Miss USA pageant in 1997, Mr. Trump kissed her on the mouth. She expressed dismay recently that her accusations against the president did not have more political effect last year.

“With Trump, it was all brushed under the rug,” Ms. Taggart said.

Jessica Leeds, who last year accused Mr. Trump of grabbing her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt, said recently that she would be happy to tell her story under oath as part of Ms. Zervos’s lawsuit.

The president’s lawyers are seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed. But in the meantime, Ms. Haley’s remarks suggest that the political environment in Washington may be evolving.

In her first year, Ms. Haley has proved herself to be a valued and loyal member of the president’s cabinet, serving as a confidante on foreign policy issues, especially during the debate over whether to declare that Iran was no longer in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal.

Viewed as a rising star in the Republican Party and a potential presidential candidate when she was governor of South Carolina, Ms. Haley was discussed as a possible replacement for Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson when it was thought that Mr. Trump might fire him. And her high-profile service as the nation’s top diplomat at the United Nations could help propel her if she decides to pursue a return to elective office.

But her comments on Sunday suggest she is also willing to depart from the approved White House script. Initially, Ms. Haley talked generally about women who come forward to accuse men of misconduct, saying that “women who accuse anyone should be heard.”

But she went on to specifically refer to the women who came forward in October last year to make allegations against Mr. Trump. Asked whether the election meant the allegations against the president should be a settled issue, Ms. Haley said that was for “the people” to decide.

“I know that he was elected,” she said. “But, you know, women should always feel comfortable coming forward. And we should all be willing to listen to them.”

Correction: December 11, 2017
An earlier version of this article misstated when Juliet Huddy, a former Fox News anchor, accused Donald J. Trump of having kissed her on the lips when they were riding in an elevator. She said it occurred in 2005 or 2006, not in 2011.

Published in the New York Times.

As of December 7 there were 369 women running or planning to run for Congress in 2018, according to Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics, which would be the most women House candidates ever. The number is subject to change, as the filing deadlines for most states are months away.

One reason: Following President Trump’s election, and particularly since the Women’s March, women have been more “energized” and “driven to get involved,” per the the New York Times. Another factor is the sexual harassment awakening that has taken the country by storm over the last several months, and involved the president as well as several male members of Congress.

Emily’s List President Stephanie Schriock told the Times more than 22,000 women have reached out about running since Trump’s election, compared to 1,000 women in the 10 months prior to the election.
More than 15,000 women have contacted She Should Run since Trump’s election, Axios’ Alexi McCammond reported in November.
Anita Dunn, former communications director for President Barack Obama, told the Times: “The year is ending on this note of women who are stepping forward, finding their voices, in many ways doing the classic ‘we are mad as hell and we aren’t going to take it any more.'”

Published on Axios.

On Nov. 16, Anita Hill sat down at The Washington Post offices with five current and former Democratic lawmakers: Nita M. Lowey (N.Y.), Barbara A. Mikulski (Md.), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.), Pat Schroeder (Colo.) and Louise M. Slaughter (N.Y.) — all allies of Hill during her historic appearance at the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991. Hill, now a professor of legal history and public policy at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, alleged at the time that Thomas had sexually harassed her when she was in her mid-20s and worked for him at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The five female lawmakers were part of a larger group of members of Congress who prevailed on their colleagues — including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden (D-Del.) — to allow Hill to testify. Millions of Americans watched on television as the all-white, all-male panel questioned Hill with prosecutorial zeal. Thomas denied the allegations and called the proceedings “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.” He was confirmed 52-48.

26 years after law professor Anita Hill testified to Congress that she was sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, she joins The Washington Post’s Libby Casey to talk about the slow pace of change and today’s #MeToo movement. (Billy Tucker/The Washington Post)

Now, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sexual-assault scandal, Biden has faced renewed scrutiny over Hill’s treatment during the 1991 hearings. At an event hosted by Glamour magazine on Nov. 13, he said he was “so sorry” for what she went through. A few days later, at our gathering — which was set up for a forthcoming issue of The Washington Post Magazine, in which we’re asking a number of political and cultural figures to revisit their roles in seminal Washington moments — Hill said “some part of” Biden’s recent remarks was a real apology, “but I still don’t think it takes ownership of his role in what happened.” (In June, when we began setting up the meeting, we invited Biden, but he declined. On Nov. 20, he declined to comment on Hill’s statement. Thomas declined to comment as well.)

Over the course of a 90-minute conversation moderated by Post reporter Libby Casey, Hill spoke about her experiences testifying, and the lawmakers talked about their advocacy for Hill. What follows is a transcript — condensed, edited, annotated and reordered for clarity — of the exchange. Mikulski, then in her first term as a Democratic senator from Maryland, picks up the story in June 1991.

Mikulski: So Thurgood Marshall resigns. George H.W. Bush nominates Thomas on July 1. We’re in recess. It’s a sleepy time. The Senate starts the hearings September 10. They’re sleepy hearings, and Thomas is very evasive about equal protection under law — the gender aspects of the Civil Rights Act. So a lot of us began to have doubts about Thomas.

The country first learned about Anita Hill’s allegations on Oct. 6, when Newsday and NPR broke the story. Hill gave a televised news conference the next day. On Tuesday, Oct. 8, a group of women lawmakers started making one-minute speeches on the House floor demanding the Senate delay Thomas’s confirmation. Then, Schroeder, Norton, Lowey, Slaughter, Jolene Unsoeld (D-Wash.), Barbara Boxer (a congresswoman at the time and future Democratic senator from California) and the late Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii) decided to try something else.

Rep. Nita M. Lowey Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, former senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Anita Hill, former congresswoman Pat Schroeder and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. (Stephen Voss for The Washington Post)

Schroeder: As I recall, a group of us walked in, and you know how you can do the one-minute speeches on the floor? So we each got up and we’re doing them. And that then inspired us to go over to see the wonderful Senate, because they were having lunch as they always do on Tuesday. So we marched over there to go see them, because we were dumbfounded.

Norton: It was so spontaneous.

A photographer captured several of the congresswomen marching up the steps of the Capitol on their way to try to speak to Senate Democrats at their caucus lunch.

Casey [holding up the photo]: So this is such an iconic photo for so many people — all of the women marching.

Slaughter: We think it’s sort of like Iwo Jima. [laughter]

Casey: Why?

Slaughter: Because we weren’t going to be turned.

Schroeder: Storming it.

Slaughter: We were not going to give up on this. We knocked on the door.

Lowey: They did not let us in. They were so rude.

Schroeder: We were literally told that they didn’t let strangers in.

Mikulski: I’m the only Democratic woman in the Senate. I didn’t know they were marching over. There’s George Mitchell, our Democratic leader, and somebody hands him a note and he says there are congresswomen outside. They want to speak. I said let them in. Others were saying okay.

Schroeder: Barbara, since we weren’t in the room and you were, was there any discussion in the room about what was going on?

Mikulski: The phones were beginning to ring. There was a sense that the whole process, if not spinning out of control, was getting very chaotic. My voice was, “You don’t get this is really going to be big. You need to meet with the women. Slow down the damn process.” There were others saying, “Yeah.”

Mitchell agreed to meet with the lawmakers in his office.

Slaughter: We didn’t even sit down. We stood up in his office and made ourselves perfectly clear. He was pretty angry.

Schroeder: He explained to us how it worked in the Senate and that you defer to your chairman, and we had a very fine chairman.

Casey: In Senator Biden.

Norton: And it shows the extent to which the Senate is a club, but it was a boys’ club.

At Glamour’s Women of the Year summit on Nov. 13, former Vice President Joe Biden said he believed Anita Hill’s testimony that she was sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, and said “I am so sorry if she believes that” the hearing process was not fair. (Glamour)

Hill: Can I just say this about Senator Mitchell’s approach? It may have been an opportunity to meet, but, throughout, what I found in the entire procedure was, “Let’s triage.” Let’s control, let’s keep things under control, under his control with the entire Senate and with the Judiciary Committee. It wasn’t about, “Let’s give an opportunity to be open and transparent.”

Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, now in private practice, responded in a written statement to the comments by Hill and the lawmakers. He wrote, in part: “Unknown to the House Members, early that morning Senator Biden had asked me to try to get the agreement to vote on [Thomas] that evening changed, to allow time for further hearings and for Ms. Hill to testify. I asked for such a change, but Republican senators refused. That’s where things stood as of the time of my meeting with the House Members. I was careful in my response to them because it seemed unlikely that we could get a delay. As soon as the meeting concluded Senator Biden and I resumed our effort and spent the rest of the day working to devise and implement a strategy to obtain a delay. Ultimately we succeeded. The Republicans agreed to the delay and to further hearings.”

Casey: Professor Hill, did you have any idea that all of this was happening in Washington?

Hill: No. I read the newspapers the next day and saw the photo. That was the first time I knew. I was sitting in Norman, Oklahoma, still waiting to find out what was going to happen in the next few days. Really the first real contact that I had with an elected official was a call from Biden saying that there was going to be a hearing.

Slaughter: We’d never seen Anita until the hearing.

Hill: I didn’t just spring up in October. The Senate Judiciary Committee had been contacting me.

Slaughter: When did they call you?

Hill: They called the first time maybe as early as July. But certainly they had called by August. I didn’t want to be part of some kind of fishing expedition with some vague question that they had asked me. And I said, “You’ve got to be more specific.” And when they first called, I thought, “Well, there probably are other women and they should invest in pursuing these other women,” because, you know, they didn’t have any idea of what was going on. And they didn’t really seem interested. They only seemed interested in pursuing me. And it was in August that they finally came forward and said, “Well, we understand that you had experienced this behavior.”

Norton: Who told them about you?

Hill: I do not know. I said, “Okay, yes, I will respond to your questions, but I want an investigation.” When the Senate Judiciary Committee started going to the press, they made the claims that I had called up anonymously.

Schroeder: Oh, that’s right! And they called you.

Hill: I will say this: If it had been up to the Senate, I would not have even had a written statement. Because what they wanted to do was to use the FBI to do the investigation and then the FBI was going to report. And I said, “I will agree to an FBI interview, but I want to do my own statement.”

Norton: Did they say you couldn’t?

Hill: No, they didn’t. But they certainly hadn’t invited me to. So I wanted to be on the record. I wanted it to be in my words. I didn’t want it to be filtered through the FBI.

Hill arrived in Washington on Wednesday, Oct. 9, and huddled with a small group of legal advisers — including Emma Jordan and Susan Deller Ross of Georgetown University and Charles Ogletree of Harvard — to prepare for the hearing.

Hill: We understood that this was a big moment in terms of the issue of sexual harassment, but also we understood that there was a direct relationship between what I had to say and his competence and fitness to sit on the Supreme Court. You’re talking about somebody who is going to be making decisions on these kinds of cases and who now has exhibited the same behavior that he’s going to be judging.

Norton: I was in the room with Professor Hill and some of her lawyers, and the reason I was in the room is because as chair of the EEOC I had promulgated the guidance. Before I came to the EEOC, it was not clear that sexual harassment was a violation of Title 7 of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That guidance was subsequently confirmed by the Supreme Court.

Hill: This was a big moment that I literally had one day to prepare for. I traveled one day. I got in from Oklahoma. I was mostly sequestered except for that day going into the conference room with these other attorneys. For a day it was just them sort of prepping me: “These are the kinds of questions that you can expect to be asked.” There was some element of a trial that they prepared me for, but nothing like what was coming from the members of the committee — particularly Alan Simpson and Orrin Hatch and Arlen Specter in terms of the cross-examination.

On Friday, Oct. 11, Thomas testified first, followed by Hill. Thomas testified again that evening and the following day. Schroeder and Slaughter attended in person. The morning of Oct. 11, they were not sure whether Hill would testify and felt the process was being rushed. They spoke to Biden.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee confer during a break after testimony from Hill on Oct. 11, 1991. (John Duricka/AP)

Schroeder: We went to see Biden, because we were so frustrated by it. And he literally kind of pointed his finger and said, you don’t understand how important one’s word was in the Senate, that he had given his word to [Sen. John Danforth (R-Mo.), Thomas’s chief sponsor] in the men’s gym that this would be a very quick hearing, and he had to get it out before Columbus Day.

Slaughter: We had a serious discussion that this had to happen.

Schroeder: It was really, really ugly.

Danforth did not return messages seeking comment. According to Mikulski, the venue for Biden and Danforth’s apparent agreement — the gym — played a notable role in the life of the Senate.

Mikulski: Remember what gym you are talking about. You are talking about the United States Senate gym.

Casey: Right.

Mikulski: There are two women there. [Kansas Republican Nancy] Kassebaum and — do I look like a gym rat to you? [laughter] So the whole point of that is that’s where they do a lot of their conversations. I never — I went to the gym once to look around. I felt like they were taking me to a gulag or something.

Casey: It wasn’t your place to hang out.

Mikulski: That’s the negative part. The other part is that’s where they often do the bipartisan stuff.

Casey: Okay, there can be some benefit there.

At the hearing, Hill sat alone at a table in front of a long row of white male senators.

Hill: Even if somebody had been sitting at the table with me, nobody could speak but me, and the chairman was not controlling what was going on. So it was worse than being put on trial, because in a trial you’ve got legal protections. In the hearing, there was none of that.

Casey [to the lawmakers]: Did you attend the hearing?

Lowey: I found for me that is the memory I had that I will never forget, sitting there and looking at the faces of the men questioning. They were just blank faces I found.

Casey: Were you surprised by the lack of Democrats on the panel providing that voice you were hoping for?

Schroeder: Yes, we were. Absolutely. I mean we were just stunned at our [makes air quotes] liberals that were on the Judiciary Committee.

Slaughter: I remember Alan Simpson talking about all that stuff coming across the transom in his office, some awful things about Anita.

Hatch did not return messages seeking comment. Simpson, a Republican from Wyoming who is now retired from the Senate, defended his role in the hearings in a phone call with The Washington Post. “If it was a trial, it was a good one, one by their own party,” he said. Biden, he recalled, “did about the fairest job I can ever imagine” as chairman.

Simpson said he sees a difference between Hill’s claims and physical assault. “Not once, at any point, did he force himself upon her, did he try to kiss her, try to molest her, touch her physically — not once.” However when asked if Hill’s testimony described harassment, Simpson said, “To her it was. If that was sexual harassment to her, I don’t know if it matters to anyone else. . . . And it opened the door to protection for women against sexual harassment.”

The former senator also said that he and Hill had since spoken and “made our peace.” Responding to Slaughter’s comment, he said, “Louise Slaughter has been after my tail for years! All those gals were doing it. They ripped into Biden, they ripped into me. It was a force.”

Casey: So that was a Republican senator. But also, the Democrats. Did you leave the hearings with a sense of feeling angry, feeling defeated, feeling confused even?

Schroeder: I felt very angry, very confused.

Mikulski: With the traditions of the Senate and the committee, Biden thought he was going to conduct a hearing, but the Republicans knew — led by Arlen Specter — that they were going to conduct a trial. And Professor Hill would be the one on trial.

Schroeder: And they let them do it.

Casey: I want to also mention the human element of this, too. Because the chairman kept changing the timing of when you would speak, your family wasn’t even in the room when you began. They were outside, so you were really alone. You’ve talked about how telling the world this and experiencing it are two of the most difficult experiences of your life.

Hill: Yes, it was the most difficult moment.

Casey: You were saying things that would embarrass me to say to anyone, much less my mother.

Judge Clarence Thomas pauses during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Greg Gibson/AP)

Hill: The day when we were preparing, they said, “You’re going to have to be explicit.” And the first thing that I thought of was my parents. They were 79 years old. They had lived their lives on this farm in Oklahoma. My father had never even been to Washington, D.C., and they didn’t really know anything about this process. They were just good people who were getting sucked into this. I hadn’t told them about my experience. And so when I told them that I was coming, I told them there are some things that you don’t know and it’s going to be difficult. But I have to say I was so proud of them. When they came into the room was the moment when I knew that I could do this because they never wavered.

Mikulski: So you found it fortifying for them to be there?

Hill: Absolutely. I knew they were going to be shocked and that they were going to be hurt that I had had to experience it. Not only the second time in the hearing but that I had had to go through this. I’m the youngest of 13 children. And so much of not only my parents but all of my older brothers and sisters, some of whom grew up in the Jim Crow South, they had to sort of put so much into me and my success and they believed that I had really made it. You don’t want to tell them, “No, it’s not wonderful.” You want to sort of protect them from that, because they need to believe that all of their work was worth it. There were a whole lot of factors that went into making it not just a public hearing. I’ll just say two things about that though. First of all, that public hearing would not have happened had it not been for these women in the room with me today. The other thing that I will say is that even though it was terrible to have a public hearing I am so glad it happened as a public hearing. Because I can only imagine what they would have done in private.

Norton: If they had had an in-house hearing.

Hill: Or even if they had never allowed me to speak at all, they could have attacked me, ruined my reputation. The story was already out there.

Casey: And this way America got to see you.

Hill: And at least they got to see me. So much of the strategy of the Republicans that unfortunately maybe Biden didn’t see through — or just didn’t feel empowered to control — was to control the amount of information that got out about me. I was told by Chairman Biden that I would speak first. And at the last minute that changed.

Casey: And why is that significant in terms of the message?

Hill: Because they wanted Clarence Thomas to do a preemptive strike against me.

Norton: You are hearing the rebuttal before you hear the accusation.

Hill: And no way is that ever appropriate in any kind of fair process. In fact, they were pushing to get me to release my statement even before I testified so that he could rebut it point by point even before the world saw me. That’s the same thing that happened to the other witnesses. Angela Wright came forward to say, “The experience happened to me.” Sukari Hardnett. Rose Jourdain. Three women who had worked at different times than I had at the EEOC came forward. Clarence Thomas was able to attack Angela Wright. Claimed that she was a disgruntled employee. She never even got to testify to defend herself.

Anita Hill in 1991. (Greg Gibson/AP)

Angela Wright, Rose Jourdain and Sukari Hardnett had also worked under Thomas at the EEOC. Wright said Thomas made inappropriate sexual comments to her and Jourdain corroborated Wright’s account. In an affidavit, Hardnett said, “If you were young, black, female and reasonably attractive and worked directly for Clarence Thomas, you knew full well you were being inspected and auditioned as a female.” Thomas during his testimony said he had fired Wright. The women’s statements were entered into the record, but they were not called to testify.

Slaughter: That was a terrible thing that the corroboration was not there.

Hill: Well, I had the four witnesses that I had talked with at the time about the abuse. They did testify. Over the weekend, not in prime time.

Casey: Were you all blown away by her ability to stay so calm?

Schroeder: The Republicans were just so out of control. She was totally being fire-hosed and she was remaining totally calm.

Norton: It seemed impossible that a young woman who had never been in the public eye could come before essentially the power structure of the Senate.

Hill: And the presidency.

Norton: Yes, and unwaveringly present her own case and say, “Take that.” The room silenced when she finished speaking. Was hushed while she was speaking.

On Oct. 15, the Senate voted 52-48 to confirm Thomas to the Supreme Court.

Casey: So, you know Mr. Biden just this week was asked at an event about his perspective on this and he said, “I believed Anita Hill. I voted against Clarence Thomas.” And then he goes on to say, “The only issue in the Anita Hill case was whether or not there could be information submitted in a record without a name attached to it anonymously accusing someone of something,” referring to other women. And he said that he’s confident that Thomas did sexually harass Hill and “Anita Hill was victimized. There’s no question in my mind.” Does that make you all feel any better?

Hill: You didn’t read his full apology. He said, “I am sorry if she felt she didn’t get a fair hearing.” That’s sort of an “I’m sorry if you were offended.”

Casey: “The message I have delivered before is that I’m sorry if she believes that. I’m so sorry that she had to go through what she went through.” He also said, “Think of the courage that it took for her to come forward.”

Norton: Some of that is a real mea culpa.

Hill: Some part of it. But I still don’t think it takes ownership of his role in what happened. And he also doesn’t understand that it wasn’t just that I felt it was not fair. It was that women were looking to the Senate Judiciary Committee and his leadership to really open the way to have these kinds of hearings. They should have been using best practices to show leadership on this issue on behalf of women’s equality. And they did just the opposite.

Casey: So he says, “Anita Hill was victimized. There’s no question in my mind,” but I think the takeaway from a lot of women’s groups and members of Congress was that the victimization may have been twofold. Many people think that the victimization continued when you had to undergo this hearing.

Hill: Right.

Casey: So you’re not hearing an apology for that, though?

Hill: Or responsibility for it. That’s what I want to hear.

Norton: Well, she needed to undergo the hearing. She needed to speak out, but this process —

Hill: But you cannot just bring people forward into a process where you know they’re not going to be treated fairly. That’s not being heard. That’s something that we are struggling with right now. Women are coming in to make a complaint, and the process is unfair and employers are saying, “Well, we have a process.” Well, that’s not enough.

Casey: Senator Mikulski did bring up an important thing, the power of the media. So let’s hear what you have to say on that.

Mikulski: The power of visual media. When this dignified, brilliant woman was trying to tell her story, the women of America believed you. And then she was being harassed by the United States Senate, the picture of the all-white guys — that caused stories. People calling, crying on the phone, saying, “You know it happened to me when I was a law clerk or whatever.” And so on. Our phones were deluged. And the men were getting these same phone calls. And then their wives were telling them about what had happened to them. Their daughters were telling them. But to come back to the media, when they saw the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee in their interaction with Professor Hill —

Casey: That led to the year of the woman.

Mikulski: Don’t get mad, get elected.

In 1992, 24 women were elected as new members to the House and four to the Senate, more than in any previous decade. Many cited anger over Hill’s treatment during the Thomas hearings as a reason for running.

Hill: There’s another media part to this. During the hearing, the coverage was really the Washington press corps, and they had a political angle that they were following. And I think that’s important to know. They were asking questions like, “Who supported her? Who’s behind her? What group is she associated with?” That was the way that they were telling the story.

Mikulski: And the way they think.

Hill: They also had the benefit of Republican senators who were feeding stories to the media. And the White House — that machine was going on. But then afterwards the media shifted to talking about sexual harassment in the workplace. And I think that was a segue into the year of the woman, because then that story started to be about women’s experiences and how they were not being represented in Washington, D.C., by these guys.

Casey: Professor Hill, did you have that takeaway at the time? So you go home to Oklahoma and Clarence Thomas is confirmed. Do you have the big picture perspective yet?

Hill: No. I didn’t have the year of the woman in mind. I wanted to just go back and teach my classes and get my life back.

Norton: The year of the woman surprised everybody. Yes. Because we more than doubled the number of women in the Senate. Of course, there were very few to begin with.

Schroeder: After the year of the woman, there are all these women getting sworn in. And they’re about 10 percent. Big deal, right? But anyway, one of the old bulls came over and said to me, “Well I hope you’re happy, Schroeder.” I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “This place looks like a shopping mall.” And I said, “Where do you shop?” [laughter]

Casey: So Professor Hill, as you reflect on this time, have things evolved?

Hill: Things have evolved. I’ve heard from thousands of women and some of them tell me very good stories about what has changed. But there needs to be more than just process on the books. Women are still experiencing this problem. It’s still a teachable moment where we can learn from what happened in 1991. Just having somebody come forward is not enough. You’ve got to be able to come into a system that respects and values our experiences and our work and our integrity. And we’re not there yet.

Annys Shin has been a staff writer at the Washington Post since 2004.

Libby Casey is the on-air reporter and anchor covering politics and accountability for The Washington Post. She started her journalism career in Alaska working for public radio.

Published in the Washington Post.

I would love to say that I organically came to the realization of how Anita Hill was being left out of the current narrative about sexual harassment, but I am not that woke. The realization came while I was listening to a podcast called “KCRW’s Left, Right & Center” where one of the hosts, Lawrence O’Donnell mentioned that he was bothered that the Anita Hill Testimony during the confirmation of Clarence Thomas did not teach men what they should have known about behavior in the workplace. It was like a flip was switched in my brain: why haven’t we been talking about more Anita Hill?

Realizing that the Anita Hill testimony happened the year before I was born and that some people may have missed the resurgence of interest in the subject last year with the HBO film Confirmation, here is what you need to know for those who are not aware of Hill and how she brought sexual harassment to the national stage.

In 1991, Clarence Thomas was nominated by George H.W. Bush to fill the seat on the Supreme Court that was previously occupied by Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court Justice. The election of Thomas a deeply controversial decision because he was largely appointed because he was black (despite what they said at the time) and Bush Sr. wanted to fill in the spot that would skew the court into a more conservative way. An action that led to outrage from both feminist and black activist groups who were aware they were being pandered to.

During his confirmation hearing, Anita Hill was asked about her previous work experience with Thomas and if that included sexual harassment from Thomas. She said that it did occur and ended up writing an affidavit on the issue. When Anita Hill was called to testify before a Judiciary Committee that was called to deal with the accusations before a final confirmation vote, it was a shit show from the very beginning.

Firstly, the committee was all-male and all-white including future vice-president Joe Biden. Biden allowed Thomas to speak first in an unorthodox decision, which screwed everything up because without Hill’s testimony there was nothing to question Thomas about. When Anita did finally get to testify she was very clear about the explicit and vile things Thomas would say both to her and around the office. There is a written transcript of the testimony as well as video of the hearing and the statement, but here are some key excerpts:

“After approximately three months of working there, he asked me to go out socially with him. What happened next, and telling the world about it, are the two most difficult things-experiences of my life.

I declined the invitation to go out socially with him and explained to him that I thought it would jeopardize at -what at the time I considered to be a very good working relationship. I had a normal social life with other men outside the office. I believed then, as now, that having a social relationship with a person who was supervising my work would be ill-advised. I was very uncomfortable with the idea and told him so.

I thought that by saying no and explaining my reasons, my employer would abandon his social suggestions. However, to my regret, in the following few weeks, he continued to ask me out on several occasions.

He pressed me to justify my reasons for saying no to him. These incidents took place in his office or mine.

After a brief discussions of work, he would turn the conversation to a discussion of sexual matters. His conversations were very vivid. He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or rape scenes.

He talked about pornographic materials depicting individuals with large penises or large breasts involving various sex acts. On several occasions, Thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess.

Because I was extremely uncomfortable talking about sex with him at all, and particularly in such a graphic way, I told him that I did not want to talk about this subject. I would also try to change the subject to education matters or to non-sexual personal matters, such as his background or his beliefs.

My efforts to change the subject were rarely successful.”

Anita remained composed, but it was clear that she felt deeply comfortable with having to speak about all these explicit things and repeat them. Hill was a strong witness and held herself in a very calm, logical, and respectable manner. Yet, people were split on the issue and a lot of it had to do with the media circus that surrounded the trial. Hill was forced to relive her trauma on a national stage to a bunch of men, half of them were working actively against her and the other half doing little to help her. They keep trying to trip her up and make it seem as if it was Anita’s fault for not speaking up sooner and stopping Thomas from having a higher position.

Hill’s testimony was the first time sexual harassment was brought to the national stage in such a way and in some ways it is unsurprising that a group of older white men would lack both the empathy, knowledge, and bravery to say and do the right thing, but it is still upsetting.

Arlen Specter, R-Pennslyvania, especially took a lot of cheap shots at Anita saying that since Thomas did not ask her own directly, or say he wanted to sleep with her directly that her conclusions were essentially invalid, despite the sexual nature of the conversations she was describing. Watch the interrogation is especially disgusting now because we have a much better understanding of what sexual harassment in the workplace is, but at the same time it is hard to see a black woman being raked over the coals by people who do not understand what she is talking about and are actively working to ensure Thomas is confirmed because it suits their party.

When Thomas was allowed to defend himself after the testimony and played the race card (and yes I, as a black woman, am gonna say it don’t @ me) so masterfully, I would be impressed if he weren’t also a sexist, incompetent, underqualified pig. He called the entire media experience around him a “Hi-tech Lynching for uppity blacks.” Probably the most he has ever spoken about race or in defense of his race in his entire career of literally filling up space in the chair of a superior black man.

In the end, Thomas was confirmed because the public opinion was split so drastically that it would be politically safe for the senators who were voting for him. Thomas was confirmed 52 to 48 and is still wasting space and oxygen in the Supreme Court.

26 years following the Anita Hill testimony, it is more readily acknowledged that Hill was right to come forward and her doing so directly resulted in a huge number of women getting into political office. Still, she had to deal with a lot of continued harassment including when Pundit David Brock described Hill as “a little bit nutty and a little slutty.” Classy. Hill’s final statements made in her initial testimony still ring true:

“As I said, I may have used poor judgment. Perhaps I should have taken angry or even militant steps, both when I was in the agency or after I left it. But I must confess to the world that the course that I took seemed the better, as well as the easier, approach.
I declined any comment to newspapers, but later, when Senate staff asked me about these matters, I felt I had a duty to report. I have no personal vendetta against Clarence Thomas . I seek only to provide the committee with information which it may regard as relevant .
It would have been more comfortable to remain silent. It took no initiative to inform anyone-I took no initiative to inform anyone. But when I asked by a representative of this committee to report my experience, I felt that I had to tell the truth. I could not keep silent.”

She could not remain silent, just as the women coming forward now can no longer be silent. It is shocking that considering how important this incident was to the early 90s that men across industries still continued to harass women in the workplace. Anita Hill should have been the watershed. But it probably only reinforced that same bad behavior. After all Thomas “won.” He was confirmed into one of the most important positions in our country.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be shocked that we have a sexist in the White House and in almost every industry, they have been told they can get away with it publically (sic) time and time again. Sadly, just like with Hill unless victims speak out nothing can be done…and even then there is no promise of justice. History will be kind to Anita Hill and she deserves it because without her first steps we would be even further behind than we are now when it comes to discussing sexual harassment, so the battle she fought should not be ignored or forgotten.

Published in The Mary Sue.