Anita Hill: ‘Sexual harassment is not just a matter of private concern’

Baker auditorium packed for talk on sexual harassment’s past and future

Anita Hill, the lawyer and Brandeis University professor best known for accusing then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment and testifying against him during confirmation hearings in 1991, is “not a figure frozen in time,” said Helena Michie during her introduction to Hill’s lecture at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy March 25.

Helene Michie, director of the Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, introduced Anita Hill alongside Alan Matusow, academic affairs director at the Baker Institute, and Melanie Gray, who helped sponsor the Gray/Wawro Lecture Series. (Photos by Jeff Fitlow)

“She is very much a voice of and in the present,” said Michie, the director of Rice’s Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality, which brought Hill to campus to speak about the #MeToo movement as part of its ongoing Gray/Wawro Lecture Series in Gender, Health and Well-being.

In the 28 years since delivering her testimony in front of an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee, Hill has become a devoted activist fighting sexual harassment and violence in all forms, especially in the workplace and on college campuses. She leads theHollywood Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace and travels the country speaking to audiences like the 400-plus people who packed the Baker Institute’s auditorium — with many more watching an online livestream.

“Sexual harassment is not just a matter of private concern,” Hill said, although many certainly saw it that way in 1991. And she noted it wasn’t seen as a civil rights issue despite the fact that it is born from an imbalance of power, perpetuates that imbalance and imperils the safety and well-being of its victims for years afterward.

Back then, Hill told the audience, “judges very often concluded that even horrific cases of sexual extortion and verbal abuse was not a legal matter. These were personal matters. And their claims were often thrown out.”

Although sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it took years to be taken seriously as either a form of discrimination or a form of violence. Twelve years after Title VII, Hill noted, Redbook magazine reported that nine out of 10 women still experienced sexual harassment at work.

Why would an attorney cite a 1976 issue of Redbook in a lecture?

“Because even scholars weren’t doing research into this, except women’s magazines,” Hill said. “They brought our attention to it.”

Another dozen years did little for the struggle, Hill said. Government agencies, college campuses and workplaces had barely begun to develop enforcement guidelines for cases of sexual harassment by the 1990s. And although Title IX protections became law in 1972, Hill said, “for the remainder of the decade, colleges paid little attention to preventing sexual harassment.”

“I think we are at this moment of great possibility where we can disrupt the power imbalances that have been locked in place,” Hill said.

But today, Hill said, she has hope for greater change in the future as the #MeToo movement gains even more momentum — this despite proposed changes to Title IX that would weaken its protections and the recent echo of history that Hill called a “setback”: Christine Blasey Ford’s 2018 testimony against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, in which she accused him of sexual assault.

“I think we are at this moment of great possibility where we can disrupt the power imbalances that have been locked in place,” Hill said. “But only if we make a real investment in changing the way we think.”

Change is difficult, she said, but not impossible.

“I suspect that many of you have this kind of idea that things are so entrenched that we can’t make change,” said Hill, who noted that she was born two years after Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

“I know that those of you who are my age have seen change,” she said. “Ten of my siblings started and graduated from segregated schools. I’ve seen the change in the actual lived experience of my family.”

Crucial to making these changes, Hill said, is an ongoing effort to continue implementing policies and procedures to prevent or act against instances of sexual harassment and violence.

“We have to engage more men,” Hill said. “This is not just a women’s issue. Sexual violence affects men, too.”

Most important, she said, is understanding sexual violence as more than just a political issue or talking point.

“It’s a human rights issue and that’s how we have to see it,” Hill said, adding that  responses to sexual violence must be similarly stringent.

“People should be dismissed for egregious behavior,” she said. “You are talking about behavior that undermines the integrity of the entire organization, including all of the co-workers involved.

“Some people will never return to positions of power and that’s OK,” Hill said. “In order to keep our society, we have to be careful never to ration justice. When we suffer, our democracy suffers.”