Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Samforgo, so welcome to
Speaker 1: the show. Today. I'm joined by Professor Anita Hill. Anita
Speaker 1: is also an author, lawyer, and the host of a
Speaker 1: new podcast called Getting Even with Anita Hill. The show,
Speaker 1: made by Pushkin Industries, is about equality and what it
Speaker 1: takes to get there. Every Friday, she talks with people
Speaker 1: on the front lines of improving are in perfect world.
Speaker 1: Her most recent episodes include conversations with Don Hudson, CEO
Speaker 1: of the Academy of Motion Pictures, and Kimberly Crenshaw, the
Speaker 1: legal scholar that coined the terms intersectionality and critical race theory.
Speaker 1: You can find Getting Even with Anita Hill on Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
Speaker 1: or wherever you do you're listening. It is well worth
Speaker 1: checking out if you haven't already. Now. When it comes
Speaker 1: to Anita Hill, I think all of us have an
Speaker 1: interpretation of what happened during the confirmation hearing of Justice
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas, But here's an abbreviated history. On October eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, Hill, who was then thirty five, accused
Speaker 1: Judge Thomas of sexual harassment. First while working with him
Speaker 1: at the Department of education, and then later at the EOC,
Speaker 1: she detailed such claims before an all white, all male
Speaker 1: Senate Judiciary committee led by then Senator Joe Biden. Her testimony,
Speaker 1: while deeply powerful, was ultimately unsuccessful in upending Thomas's nomination.
Speaker 1: He was confirmed to the Supreme Court just four days later,
Speaker 1: on October fifteenth of nineteen ninety one. In the immediate aftermath,
Speaker 1: it wasn't clear what effect Hill's testimony would have, but
Speaker 1: in the years to follow, her voice has endured, reverberating
Speaker 1: through those who finally felt heard that day in October,
Speaker 1: a voice that was saying out in public that sexual
Speaker 1: harassment is an all too common feature of being a
Speaker 1: woman in the workplace, that it is real and often ignored.
Speaker 1: And while that incredulous Senate committee may not have heard
Speaker 1: her that day, it's clear that, as Anita often says,
Speaker 1: a can of worms had been opened. We talk about
Speaker 1: the Thomas hearing in great detail in this episode, Along
Speaker 1: with the unnerving parallels between how Anita was treated in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one and how Christine blasi Ford was treated
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen during the Brett Kavanaugh hearing, we also
Speaker 1: unpack Hill's history with President Joe Biden and the importance
Speaker 1: of his nomination of Judge Kaitanji Brown Jackson. But most importantly,
Speaker 1: and I want to just emphasize this before we start,
Speaker 1: because you know, Anita Hill has probably been interviewed a
Speaker 1: thousand times since nineteen ninety one, and if you know
Speaker 1: this show, you know that I've read, listened, or watched
Speaker 1: about nine hundred and seventy five of those interviews. And
Speaker 1: in most of these interviews conducted by political reporters, there
Speaker 1: is something glaringly absent, and that is a sense of
Speaker 1: Anita Hill's humanity, of the human toll of not only
Speaker 1: what she did, but what she continues to do on
Speaker 1: behalf of victims of setual harassment. And so for today,
Speaker 1: our aim was to better understand her. I know that
Speaker 1: sounds simple, but it's clear the Senate Judiciary committee she
Speaker 1: sat before did not try to do that. Many members
Speaker 1: of the press did not try to do that. The
Speaker 1: American public in part did not try to do that.
Speaker 1: Even now, twenty one years removed, there's a very limited
Speaker 1: acknowledgement of Anita Hill's humanity. And so in this episode,
Speaker 1: our aim was to try to understand the tumultuous and
Speaker 1: remarkable life of Anita Hill. I must say it is
Speaker 1: a profound honor to have her on this show. I
Speaker 1: want to thank her for coming on and giving us
Speaker 1: the time she did, and I want to thank you
Speaker 1: wherever you are, whoever you are, for being here. Now
Speaker 1: here is Anita Hill. Anita, what did you have for
Speaker 1: breakfast today? I had granola, much healthier than I would do,
Speaker 1: but I appreciate it. When you get to be sixty five, Sam,
Speaker 1: you might want to switch to granola, but don't push it,
Speaker 1: don't rush it. I feel like by the time I
Speaker 1: reached thirty five, I may want to switch to granola. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: you'll know when it's time. Anita Hill, thank you for
Speaker 1: being here. It's a pleasure to be talking with you. Well,
Speaker 1: I am grateful to have this opportunity to sit with you.
Speaker 1: And I just want to jump right in because you
Speaker 1: have a new podcast called Getting Even with Anita Hill.
Speaker 1: What does getting even in this case mean and look
Speaker 1: like to you? Well, in this case, it means getting
Speaker 1: to equality. I mean the podcast is all about a
Speaker 1: quality and how we can get there. It goes beyond
Speaker 1: looking at inequalities, and there are plenty of those out there,
Speaker 1: and there's plenty of evidence of it. But I think
Speaker 1: in this moment, two years after twenty twenty and which
Speaker 1: was a year of reckoning and clarity on a lot
Speaker 1: of inequalities that we experienced in society, two years later,
Speaker 1: we're ready for solutions, and there are people out there
Speaker 1: with solutions, and I want them to be heard. I
Speaker 1: want them to be on my show. I want people
Speaker 1: to listen and take away a message that change is
Speaker 1: possible and that they can be a part of that change.
Speaker 1: In your first few episodes, you have this mini series
Speaker 1: called Reimagining nineteen ninety one, in which you sit with
Speaker 1: Sakari Hardnett, a witness that was never called to testify
Speaker 1: at the confirmation hearing of Clarence Thomas. You also sit
Speaker 1: with Georgetown law professor Susan Dela Ross, who served on
Speaker 1: your legal team during that hearing. What has that process
Speaker 1: been like revisiting nineteen ninety one in twenty twenty two, Well,
Speaker 1: most recently, I revisited nineteen ninety one in twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: when Christine Blasi four testified and the majority of people
Speaker 1: around the country who were viewing it saw a repeat
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety one in her testimony in the Brett
Speaker 1: Cavanaugh confirmation hearing. It's not as though I'm revisiting nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one for the first time thirty years later. I
Speaker 1: think so often over the past thirty years, we have
Speaker 1: seen reverberations or echoes of nineteen ninety one in public processes.
Speaker 1: So in revisiting, I wanted to take people back to
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one to think about the ways that things
Speaker 1: could have been done differently, Things that were obvious available
Speaker 1: for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hear, but that were
Speaker 1: never allowed into the record, including witnesses who wanted to testify,
Speaker 1: who submitted statements that were relevant to my testimony and
Speaker 1: to their own experiences. That was my way of really
Speaker 1: introducing what we should be doing now. First of all,
Speaker 1: we should be taking all of the evidence in these
Speaker 1: public hearings. We should not be excluding individuals from bringing
Speaker 1: relevant information to our public processes, especially when it comes
Speaker 1: to issues of sexual assault and sexual harassment. We should
Speaker 1: give women and any survivor or victim. Their words should
Speaker 1: have the same weight as the words of the nominee.
Speaker 1: And we've got to put together the processes that will
Speaker 1: make sure that things are weighted evenly. That really does
Speaker 1: kind of go to the heart of getting even How
Speaker 1: do we even the playing field? And we've got to
Speaker 1: understand that the process is important, and if we don't
Speaker 1: pay attention to the process, we are going to repeat
Speaker 1: over and over again the same problems. Well, let's unpack
Speaker 1: some of that process. In nineteen ninety one, on one,
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas was nominated for the Supreme Court by then
Speaker 1: President Bush. Political appointees typically receive an extensive FBI background check,
Speaker 1: but that did not happen between July one of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one and September third of nineteen ninety one. And
Speaker 1: it's that day in September when you first receive contact
Speaker 1: from the staff of Senator Howard Metzenbaum, a Democrat from Ohio.
Speaker 1: As he said in a sworn statement on page twenty
Speaker 1: nine of the Congressional Record for the Senate on October seventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, Anita Hill was one of three women
Speaker 1: who worked with Thomas at the EOC who were contacted
Speaker 1: by my staff. They were asked about a range of
Speaker 1: women's issues, including rumors of sexual harassment at the agency.
Speaker 1: I want to emphasize and point out that Miss Hill
Speaker 1: did not make an allegation against mister Thomas during that
Speaker 1: September third or September fourth conversation. On September fifth, Miss
Speaker 1: Ricky Sideman, a second labor aid working with then Democratic
Speaker 1: Senator Ten Kennedy, called you. As Kennedy said again from
Speaker 1: that Senate record I quoted from the call was a
Speaker 1: systemic review of people who had worked with Judge Thomas,
Speaker 1: and Hill indicated that she needed time to decide whether
Speaker 1: she was willing to discuss the issue, the issue being
Speaker 1: of sexual harassment. Then, on September ninth, you leave a
Speaker 1: message on the phone of James Brudney, the chief council
Speaker 1: of Metzenbaumb's subcommittee. I want to go back to that.
Speaker 1: What were you wrestling with in those four days between
Speaker 1: September fifth and the ninth. First of all, what I
Speaker 1: was wrestling was it was the way that they had
Speaker 1: framed the question. They asked not whether I had been
Speaker 1: sexually harassed, They asked if I was aware of sexual harassment.
Speaker 1: The way the question was framed, I thought that perhaps
Speaker 1: somebody else had come forward and was I aware of
Speaker 1: that person's situation? And I was only aware of my
Speaker 1: own but I wasn't quite sure that that's what they
Speaker 1: were asking for. And I was also grappling with the
Speaker 1: fact that these are political processes. The confirmations for the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court are highly political that it sounds like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's for the Supreme Court. Everybody's concerned about the judiciary
Speaker 1: and the legal system. Well, some people are really concerned
Speaker 1: more about politics and political power and aligning with political power,
Speaker 1: and I was very concerned that this could possible, to believe,
Speaker 1: be one of those situations where there wasn't really any
Speaker 1: concern about sexual harassment, but there was just a tense
Speaker 1: to make political points, and I didn't want my experience
Speaker 1: to be used just for political points. In the end,
Speaker 1: I decided that I would step forward because I thought
Speaker 1: about what the process should be, and what the process
Speaker 1: is billed as is a concerted effort including an investigation
Speaker 1: into the character and fitness of a nominee for a
Speaker 1: position on the highest court in the country, and it's
Speaker 1: a lifetime position. So I decided that I did have
Speaker 1: something relevant to say about my own experience, and that
Speaker 1: if the Senate Judiciary Committee took it seriously as a
Speaker 1: process for vetting an individual's qualification, which to me includes
Speaker 1: integrity and honesty and respect for the law. Then they
Speaker 1: would take my testimony series. So you signed up because
Speaker 1: you had this kind of lingering hope about what the
Speaker 1: process could and should look like, knowing all well that
Speaker 1: the process was likely to fail. You absolutely think about it.
Speaker 1: I'm a lawyer. I was teaching law students at the time.
Speaker 1: I teach my law students to have respect for the
Speaker 1: law and to value process and to really understand that
Speaker 1: they should have an investment in making sure the systems work,
Speaker 1: and that means participating, not standing on the sidelines. That was,
Speaker 1: in part what was driving me. Another thing that was
Speaker 1: driving me was the fact that I grew up after
Speaker 1: the Round Versus Board of Education system. I'm the youngest
Speaker 1: of thirteen children. Ten of my siblings would to segregated schools.
Speaker 1: I and two of my siblings graduated from integrated schools.
Speaker 1: Our lives, our opportunities were different because of those different experiences.
Speaker 1: So I know firsthand the importance of the court. A
Speaker 1: lot of people think of the Supreme Court it's a
Speaker 1: remote out there. They don't understand their process, they don't
Speaker 1: understand their role and they don't see how it affects
Speaker 1: their lives. But I had grown up believing that the
Speaker 1: court affected my life. I saw it was my responsibility
Speaker 1: ultimately to at least challenge the system. You know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about growing up in Oklahoma, the youngest of thirteen children.
Speaker 1: You grew up with the belief that the courts can
Speaker 1: affect change. But I also know that you grew up
Speaker 1: with the belief that, as your uncle George, your mother's brother,
Speaker 1: once said, if you talk about harm done to you,
Speaker 1: those people will use it against you. I wonder how
Speaker 1: much those words lingered inside of you in that window
Speaker 1: of time before deciding to take part in the hearing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those words are part of what we grew up with,
Speaker 1: and it's part of what my family had grown up with.
Speaker 1: And you know, I was born in nineteen fifty six.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty six, their segregation was legal. Schools were
Speaker 1: being desegregated, not quickly, but we didn't have a Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, so jobs were segregated,
Speaker 1: education was segregated. So it wasn't as though I grew
Speaker 1: up in a time where I didn't see that the
Speaker 1: law could do bad as well. As to do good,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, I realized that you have
Speaker 1: to take risk for change. I grew up through the
Speaker 1: Civil rights era. You know, it was happening on television.
Speaker 1: But what I saw whether people were taking risks, and
Speaker 1: for them, the risks meant marching with the risk of
Speaker 1: being beaten up by police. It meant people fighting for
Speaker 1: voting rights, trying to enroll black people to vote in
Speaker 1: Mississippi might die. It meant taking risks, real risk, And
Speaker 1: so I knew that there was risk am I coming forward,
Speaker 1: But I had this model in the back of my
Speaker 1: head that that's what it takes if you want change.
Speaker 1: I took the risk and still held out hope that
Speaker 1: some change would come. And I believe that even though
Speaker 1: the outcomes of the hearings and the vote that it
Speaker 1: clearly wasn't the change that I would have liked to
Speaker 1: have come. But change can come in different ways. That
Speaker 1: we shouldn't necessarily measure our impact by the change that
Speaker 1: comes out of the official process. And that's a lesson
Speaker 1: from nineteen nine any one, because we know that since
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one, we have seen change around the issue
Speaker 1: of sexual harassment, around the issue of sexual assault around
Speaker 1: the issue of many forms of gender violence. We've seen
Speaker 1: people from all ways of life coming forward, people of
Speaker 1: all races, people of all genders coming forward talking about
Speaker 1: their experiences in the Me Tooth movement. And I like
Speaker 1: to believe that nineteen ninety one was a part of that,
Speaker 1: But I don't want to rest on that. I want
Speaker 1: to hold that moment of risk that you took. On
Speaker 1: October eleventh, nine eleven thirty one am you sat alone
Speaker 1: in your blue linen suit in a long table in
Speaker 1: Room three twenty five and the Russell Senate Office Building
Speaker 1: and began your statement in Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearing. Mister Chairman,
Speaker 1: Senator Thurman, Members of the Committee. My name is Anita F. Hill,
Speaker 1: and I'm a professor of law at the University of Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: I was born on a farm in Oakmogee County, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six. I am the youngest of thirteen children.
Speaker 1: When you hear that version of yourself at age thirty five,
Speaker 1: what do you hear? Let the record show that I'm
Speaker 1: looking down now because I'm actually visualizing that. Let me
Speaker 1: just describe what else was going on. Yes, I was
Speaker 1: sitting at that table, and I was alone. It wasn't though,
Speaker 1: that I was alone in the room. As I looked
Speaker 1: to my right, there was a bank of photographers ready
Speaker 1: to take a photo of any move that I made.
Speaker 1: I remember at one point doing a gesture to my
Speaker 1: face or something, or pulling picking up a glass of water,
Speaker 1: and flashes lights flashing, because everyone, I assume, thought they
Speaker 1: were going to capture a moment. I remember, of course,
Speaker 1: the bank of people sitting in front of me, the senators,
Speaker 1: all white, all male, most of them middle aged or older,
Speaker 1: many of whom were entirely incredulous, some very hostile, some ambivalent.
Speaker 1: I think everyone was actually ambivalent. Nobody wanted to be there.
Speaker 1: They didn't want me to be there anyway. But I
Speaker 1: also have a memory of my family sitting behind me,
Speaker 1: and my family and friends were there, and the people
Speaker 1: who supported me had come together like magic because they
Speaker 1: believed that I had the right to be heard. I
Speaker 1: really felt that, because my family was there, because all
Speaker 1: of those people were there, that I, in fact did
Speaker 1: have as close to a level playing field in that
Speaker 1: space as anybody could possibly get. And as long as
Speaker 1: I kept that in my head, then I was ready
Speaker 1: to proceed. You know, you mentioned some of the incredulous
Speaker 1: behavior coming from the Senate Judiciary Committee. If some of
Speaker 1: their comments were considered insensitive in nineteen ninety one, they're
Speaker 1: considered horrifying in twenty twenty two. I'm thinking now specifically
Speaker 1: about Senator Howell Heflin, a Democrat from Alabama. Here he
Speaker 1: is during the confirmation hearing on October twelfth of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. I've got to determine what your motivation might be.
Speaker 1: Are you a scorned woman? Do you have a militant
Speaker 1: attitude relative to the area of civil rights? Do you
Speaker 1: have a modern complex the issue of fantasy has arisen?
Speaker 1: Are you interested in writing a book? People will say, though,
Speaker 1: that he was not well understood his line of questioning.
Speaker 1: He was trying to sort of do this tactic things
Speaker 1: are We'll just put all of these out here. I
Speaker 1: think the real antagonism came from people like Arlen Specter,
Speaker 1: like Alan Simpson, and like Orn Hatch. Yes, Howell Heflin,
Speaker 1: who is a Democrat from the South, and do me
Speaker 1: any favors in a sense, But the direct hostility really
Speaker 1: came from the really snide and snarky in the looks
Speaker 1: of disdain from those individuals, and then the worst of
Speaker 1: it was also from all of the collective decision led
Speaker 1: by Joe Biden for not bringing on extra witnesses, not
Speaker 1: including all of the information. So it was a combination
Speaker 1: of things. It wasn't just one person, It was the
Speaker 1: entire culture of the Senate, and it was their lack
Speaker 1: of understanding and unwillingness to bring in experts who could
Speaker 1: inform them. It was a lack of consideration for how
Speaker 1: this hearing was impacting people around the country and around
Speaker 1: the globe. There were so many things that were wrong.
Speaker 1: I will tell you this story quickly. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been doing some discussions and a podcast and radio shows
Speaker 1: about a book that I wrote. And one woman who
Speaker 1: was watching the hearings in nineteen ninety one called up
Speaker 1: the radio station and said, you know, I remember nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. She said, just hearing your voice makes me
Speaker 1: sick to the stomach now because I recall what you
Speaker 1: went through. So it was all of the above that,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of sent people into this like visceral
Speaker 1: response of what is happening here, what are our leaders doing?
Speaker 1: And can this even be possible? Even in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: I think more people today have that feeling. We've moved
Speaker 1: since in nineteen ninety one. As a public we understand
Speaker 1: that we should not have tolerated all of the innuendos,
Speaker 1: Howell Hefflin's innuendos and suggestions. We are a better country
Speaker 1: for it. And that's why I think now is the
Speaker 1: time for us to move beyond just understanding the problem
Speaker 1: and being aware that it's in existence, but now we
Speaker 1: should be talking about solutions and repairing the harm that's
Speaker 1: been done. Well, I want to talk about the solution
Speaker 1: to one problem which I think you alluded to from
Speaker 1: Senator Hatch and Senator Simpson, which is this recurrent comment
Speaker 1: if she felt unsafe in the fall of nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: one at the Department of Education, why did she go
Speaker 1: with Thomas when he went to the EOC. In April
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty two, here's Senator Simpson, the Republican from Wyoming,
Speaker 1: pursuing the same line of questioning, if what you say
Speaker 1: this man said to you occurred, why in God's name
Speaker 1: when he left his position of power or status or
Speaker 1: authority over you and you left it in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: why in God's name, would you ever speak to a
Speaker 1: man like that the rest of your life? You describe
Speaker 1: some of the psychology of this in your book Believing.
Speaker 1: Can you speak on how that response from Thurman, Hatch
Speaker 1: and Simpson reflects a kind of collective denial of women's
Speaker 1: experiences with abuse and how we may go about fixing
Speaker 1: that problem. Well, first of all, it suggests that the
Speaker 1: behavior is so exceptional that automatically people are going to
Speaker 1: respond and leave it. And the reality is that even today,
Speaker 1: there are people who are experiencing harassment who are continuing
Speaker 1: to live in those situations and work in those situations
Speaker 1: because they don't feel they have any other real choices.
Speaker 1: I knew that Clarence Thomas was an individual who was
Speaker 1: powerful enough to eliminate my livelihood with a single call.
Speaker 1: He could make sure that I did not have a job.
Speaker 1: And I knew that. And at the time that I
Speaker 1: went to the department, I left the Department of Education
Speaker 1: and went to the EOC, some of the behavior had
Speaker 1: actually stopped. It picked up again that part. I don't
Speaker 1: even understand how it picked up again, but I do
Speaker 1: understand that I kept wanting nothing more than the behavior
Speaker 1: to stop, and I knew that leaving would be a
Speaker 1: risk because I would still have to find another job.
Speaker 1: And I knew that leaving wouldn't necessarily mean that I
Speaker 1: would go to another job where there would be no harassment,
Speaker 1: because there is harassment at a lot of jobs. What
Speaker 1: you saw in those senators all very powerful men, all
Speaker 1: of them very wealthy, it would have been in their
Speaker 1: power bubble for so long that they didn't understand vulnerability,
Speaker 1: that they didn't understand any kind of vulnerability, let alone
Speaker 1: the vulnerability of a young twenty five year old working
Speaker 1: in one of our very first professional jobs in a
Speaker 1: place like Washington, DC. And I think that's a huge
Speaker 1: gap between our leadership and where the average worker is
Speaker 1: because I now know the rates of harassment for young people,
Speaker 1: people in that age group that I was in when
Speaker 1: I was working for Thomas. I know how high the
Speaker 1: rates are regardless of whether they move from a job
Speaker 1: or you stay. So I think what is missing the
Speaker 1: conversation about why do women stay? I think what is
Speaker 1: missing is the question of why don't our leaders understand
Speaker 1: the experiences of workers everywhere who are not as powerful
Speaker 1: as they are, who don't have the resources to bounce
Speaker 1: back whose jobs are not as secure as theirs. Leaders
Speaker 1: who can look at situations from the perspective of the
Speaker 1: people who are marginalized or more vulnerable. We should expect
Speaker 1: that of our representation. If it were truly represented in Congress,
Speaker 1: then we would have had somebody who understood what my
Speaker 1: experience was, and they wouldn't have had to ask the
Speaker 1: questions in the way that they asked them, and maybe
Speaker 1: not even had to ask them at all. And if
Speaker 1: they did have to ask them, they should have had
Speaker 1: an expert help them understand. I'd like to better understand
Speaker 1: your experience, because, as you write in your book, believing
Speaker 1: survivors insulate themselves with their own form of denial by
Speaker 1: adamantly rejecting the notion that they are vulnerable. They develop
Speaker 1: a thick skin to defend themselves against being labeled as snowflakes,
Speaker 1: not tough enough, over sensitive, and in some cases that
Speaker 1: means denying that their own pain exists or that it matters,
Speaker 1: either before, during, or after the hearing. Do you think
Speaker 1: you participated in some of that insulation? Oh, absolutely I did.
Speaker 1: That feeling that I'm describing in the book doesn't come
Speaker 1: from our heads. It comes from the culture, the culture
Speaker 1: that tells us throughout our lives that what we're experiencing
Speaker 1: isn't so bad. That tells us, you know, just get
Speaker 1: over it, or don't make a big deal out of it.
Speaker 1: Those are the voices that we have heard, so when
Speaker 1: we encounter these experiences, that's what comes back to us.
Speaker 1: Give this example of the things that we tell children,
Speaker 1: and there is an enormous amount of harassment of children
Speaker 1: in elementary school, and it can escalate as it moves
Speaker 1: up to high school grades and then of course in college.
Speaker 1: But often where there is a male who is being
Speaker 1: accused of being abusive and a female who is a victim,
Speaker 1: you hear two things. One you hear, well, boys will
Speaker 1: be boys, and that's just what boys do. So in
Speaker 1: that instance, we're telling the victim to accept bad behavior
Speaker 1: because it's inevitable, and we're telling the abuser that bad
Speaker 1: behavior is acceptable. So that's one message. The other message
Speaker 1: is that we tell young girls that boys behave in
Speaker 1: these kinds of abusive and sometimes violent ways because they
Speaker 1: like them. And in that sense, we're telling girls that
Speaker 1: they should welcome a certain level of aggressive in even
Speaker 1: violent attention, because it's a sign of their attractiveness and
Speaker 1: that they should be submissive to it. Now, what we
Speaker 1: are also again telling boys is that that's the way
Speaker 1: that you show your interest, and it's an acceptable way
Speaker 1: of showing interest. And so we have to deal with
Speaker 1: this as a cultural issue. Instead of telling boys that
Speaker 1: this is, you know, okay, because you know you're a boy,
Speaker 1: and then you'll just grow out of it. We should
Speaker 1: be teaching more positive ways to interact with folks, that
Speaker 1: aggression is not the answer to social relationships. You know,
Speaker 1: we could talk endlessly just about what's going on in
Speaker 1: our elementary schools if we don't understand three things. First
Speaker 1: of all, the cultural issues that allow for under violence
Speaker 1: and aggression. We aren't understanding the systems that are in
Speaker 1: place that are supposed to be protecting people against it,
Speaker 1: but really are allowing it to happen. Systems like what
Speaker 1: happened in nineteen ninety one and twenty eighteen, and institutions
Speaker 1: that support it, like the US Senate, like the Senate
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee, that support really and sort of house this
Speaker 1: culture in the systems. And so those are the things
Speaker 1: that we have to deal with as a society if
Speaker 1: we're going to get beyond where we are. But right now,
Speaker 1: what we do is we have systems that put the
Speaker 1: entire burden of understanding the problem on the victims, and
Speaker 1: as a society, we don't take responsibility for even understanding
Speaker 1: what they're going through, and that needs to change. But
Speaker 1: I think that there are you know, there are signs
Speaker 1: that we are changing. And response to Christine Blassie Fort
Speaker 1: was very different from the response to me. It took
Speaker 1: a while to get to the response, but the immediate
Speaker 1: response was in Brett Kavanaugh in a majority of the
Speaker 1: population of Brett Kavanaugh should not be confirmed. That didn't
Speaker 1: happen in nineteen ninety one. You know, it's a process
Speaker 1: of the society really listening and understanding and hearing from
Speaker 1: many people who have survived various forms of abuse. I
Speaker 1: think many people watched the twenty eighteen Justice Kavanaugh hearings
Speaker 1: and felt it was eerily similar to nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the cultural response had changed, but something you
Speaker 1: write in your book is that one of the things
Speaker 1: that had not changed were the structures. And if you
Speaker 1: don't change the process, you're going to continue to get
Speaker 1: the same outcomes. Now, of course, the twenty eighteen Senate
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee had more gender and racial diversity, and yet
Speaker 1: in spite of that diversity, they reached the same outcome
Speaker 1: the committee reached in nineteen ninety one. Why do you
Speaker 1: think we often focus on making changes in personnel over
Speaker 1: changes in process because it's easier. It's easier for us
Speaker 1: to believe that all this is is a behavioral issue
Speaker 1: instead of a structural issue. What does that mean, Well,
Speaker 1: it means that we don't even think about the process.
Speaker 1: For one thing. We just think that, okay, if we
Speaker 1: put better people or more sensitive people in a position
Speaker 1: to hear a case, then they'll come up with the
Speaker 1: right decision, because it's just about evaluating behavior. But all
Speaker 1: the evaluations of behavior take place through the lens of
Speaker 1: a process. So in twenty eighteen, when we had an
Speaker 1: investigation into Christine blasi Ford's complaint, you still had it
Speaker 1: filtered through a lens and a process. For an example,
Speaker 1: the President of the United States could say, well, we
Speaker 1: don't have to call any additional witnesses, we don't have
Speaker 1: to take any into context. We are going to limit
Speaker 1: the number of people that the investigators talk to, cutting
Speaker 1: out any number of different voices that might have confirmed
Speaker 1: what she was saying, or maybe even confirmed what are
Speaker 1: you was saying? That is a flawed process. If the
Speaker 1: process is flawed, if you don't give people the information
Speaker 1: that they need, then it doesn't matter who the people are,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be able to necessarily change the outcome.
Speaker 1: I think what we have to do is to create
Speaker 1: structures that will prevent the kind of conflicts of interest,
Speaker 1: the power alignments that occur, not because they don't believe
Speaker 1: a witness or because the information doesn't exist, but because
Speaker 1: it's just easier to side with the powerful people and
Speaker 1: exclude the information if it's inconsistent with what the person
Speaker 1: in power. In twenty eighteen, that person was Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: But think about this. Sam nineteen ninety one, Senator Grassley
Speaker 1: was on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thirty years later, he
Speaker 1: was chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee. In nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: he vowed that he would put in place a process
Speaker 1: that would prevent nineteen ninety one from happening again. In
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, instead of introducing that new process, he doubled
Speaker 1: down on the old one. And he did it because
Speaker 1: he could do it, because the system allowed him to
Speaker 1: do it. I think if we really want to have
Speaker 1: some assurance that this is not going to happen again,
Speaker 1: whether it's a Supreme Court nominee or some nominee for
Speaker 1: another position. If we want some insurance, we will encourage
Speaker 1: our representatives to provide a platform that is a level
Speaker 1: platform so that individuals can come forward. Right now, the
Speaker 1: balance of power is always going to be against victims,
Speaker 1: and we should not have that in our highest bodies
Speaker 1: of the government. Putting a pause on the conversation, we'll
Speaker 1: be right back with Anita Hill coming back. You were
Speaker 1: talking about the time between nineteen twenty eighteen Percenter Grassley,
Speaker 1: but I'm curious about that time between nineteen ninety one
Speaker 1: and twenty nineteen for Joe Biden. In ninety one, he
Speaker 1: was the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: he was weighing a presidential bid for the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 1: In March of twenty nineteen, you sat in a hotel
Speaker 1: room in Houston, Texas, waiting for a conversation that was
Speaker 1: nearly twenty eight years in the making, and then the
Speaker 1: phone rang. What happened on that call between you and
Speaker 1: Joe Biden. Well, the former Vice president Biden introduced himself,
Speaker 1: you're being awfully polite about this. Well, there's a certain
Speaker 1: kind of politeness that occurs. I mean, maybe it's a
Speaker 1: deference to the position of a former vice president. I
Speaker 1: don't know, but maybe it's just my deference to being
Speaker 1: open to hear He had been asked repeatedly by journalists
Speaker 1: when he was going to apologize. He had said that
Speaker 1: he owed me an apology, so I was open to hearing.
Speaker 1: I was approached beforehand about whether I would take a call,
Speaker 1: and I said, of course, I'll take a call. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that it was almost thirty years then,
Speaker 1: and I had really worked through a lot of what
Speaker 1: I had to work through after nineteen ninety one, and
Speaker 1: so I was open to hearing from him. And he
Speaker 1: did say that he was very sorry about what happened
Speaker 1: to me, and that he took responsibility for what happened
Speaker 1: to me in that process. However, I still don't think
Speaker 1: he understood, or he certainly didn't articulate to me that
Speaker 1: he understood what had happened to many other people who
Speaker 1: were watching. And many of those people I had heard
Speaker 1: from since nineteen ninety one, and they had told me
Speaker 1: about how much it hurt to watch those hearings, and
Speaker 1: how they felt that if I couldn't breakthrough, they would
Speaker 1: have no chance of breaking through. I had heard from
Speaker 1: people on a whole whole range of behaviors and w
Speaker 1: including very early on an incest survivor who said that
Speaker 1: that Senate Judiciary committee reminded him of his family when
Speaker 1: he had told his family about being abused by a
Speaker 1: family member and his parents rejected his complaint and sided
Speaker 1: with the abuser, and how that hearing resonated with him
Speaker 1: and brought back those memories. On that phone call you mentioned,
Speaker 1: which came in the winter of nineteen ninety one, he
Speaker 1: said to you, You've opened a whole can of worms. Yes,
Speaker 1: he said, I had opened a whole can of worms,
Speaker 1: because up to that time I had been thinking about
Speaker 1: sexual harassment, and I had heard from any sexual harassm victims.
Speaker 1: But I started to read the letters and I realized
Speaker 1: that they weren't limited to sexual harassment victims. Even before then,
Speaker 1: when I got the call and this man said to
Speaker 1: me that he had been abused and that I had
Speaker 1: opened a whole can of worms, I realized that the
Speaker 1: experience of nineteen ninety one wasn't my experience alone. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just harassment, It wasn't just women, It was a
Speaker 1: whole range of people, and that in that call in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, it just seemed as though Joe Biden didn't
Speaker 1: recognize that, that he thought it was just about me,
Speaker 1: and that he hadn't absorbed the fact that people all
Speaker 1: over the country were hurt by nineteen ninety one, and
Speaker 1: I found later that it wasn't just people around the
Speaker 1: country as people around the globe. That's what I was
Speaker 1: hoping he would understand at that point. He was wanting
Speaker 1: to be President of the United States. As a leader
Speaker 1: of this country, I wanted him to be able to
Speaker 1: address the harm that was done to the country. That
Speaker 1: was my big disappointment that it did not happen that way.
Speaker 1: I accept the apology for what happened to me, but
Speaker 1: I cannot rest knowing that part of the reason that
Speaker 1: the apology was possible was because he could pretend that
Speaker 1: the rest of it didn't matter. Part of your surprise
Speaker 1: seems to come from the fact that he couldn't recognize
Speaker 1: all of those experiences, in part because you received those
Speaker 1: phone calls, not him. You. It was a burden you
Speaker 1: carried that he and the rest of this Judiciary Committee
Speaker 1: thrust it upon you in nineteen ninety one. It was
Speaker 1: your burden suddenly something they created, and I just wonder
Speaker 1: how you sit with that. Well, should have been their burden. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it should have been their burden. It should have been
Speaker 1: their burden. And when someone who says I'm an incest
Speaker 1: survivor and You've opened a whole can of worms, I
Speaker 1: don't take that lightly. I still remember that conversation. I'll
Speaker 1: never forget that conversation. It puts a responsibility because it
Speaker 1: was my testimony, but it was not just my testimony.
Speaker 1: It was their response to my testimony. And that's why
Speaker 1: it should be their burden too. And that's why I
Speaker 1: believe that Joe Biden should be responding to what happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety one. It's never too late to own
Speaker 1: these issues and our roles in them, and he should
Speaker 1: own his. And what that means for somebody who is
Speaker 1: a senator or vice president is different from what it means.
Speaker 1: It's one who is the president who can put in
Speaker 1: place measures, who can call cabinet members to say, we
Speaker 1: need you to put together a plan for not only
Speaker 1: how you're going to address gender violence as it exists,
Speaker 1: but how you are going to work to prevent it,
Speaker 1: especially when we're talking about the situations in elementary schools.
Speaker 1: So we are passing along a problem to a generation,
Speaker 1: and I think that every leader in this country ought
Speaker 1: to be putting together a plan for how they're going
Speaker 1: to make sure that we don't Can I ask you
Speaker 1: just a personal question, that burden that you've carried a
Speaker 1: can of worms that you in fact did not open.
Speaker 1: Has it weighed you down? Oh? Yeah, well yeah, it
Speaker 1: does weigh me down. I feel like people are counting
Speaker 1: on me. But you know, I also think it's a
Speaker 1: great privilege. Again, I go back to the era that
Speaker 1: I grew up in and the fact that you know,
Speaker 1: I've watched people on TV who are bearing burdens heavier
Speaker 1: than mine, at least visibly heavier, during the Civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: and I think it's a great privilege to be able
Speaker 1: to after thirty years, to still be in there trying
Speaker 1: to make it better. And so when I look at
Speaker 1: it that way, I don't focus on the burden so
Speaker 1: much as I focus on the privilege that I have
Speaker 1: and the opportunity that I have to take advantage of
Speaker 1: to move us along so that maybe it happens less,
Speaker 1: or maybe it happens a lot less. I don't spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time thinking about the burden because right
Speaker 1: now I'm maybe at the end of my career, and
Speaker 1: I want to focus as much time and attention as
Speaker 1: I have to making sure that no one else has
Speaker 1: to carry this burden, whether their own individual situation or
Speaker 1: the problem of society as a whole waiting on them.
Speaker 1: We've been circling that phone call with President Biden. In
Speaker 1: your book, you said mostly Biden talked and I listened.
Speaker 1: Do you think his nomination of Judge Katangi Brown Jackson
Speaker 1: is his way of finally listening to you. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would like to think that that's part of it,
Speaker 1: but that's not all of it. That's not all of it. Yes,
Speaker 1: this nomination of Judge Jackson is monumental. I mean, it's historic,
Speaker 1: and I'm elated that we're going to have a different
Speaker 1: kind of representation on the court, because judicial representation does matter,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what kind of judge she'll be
Speaker 1: or how she's going to show up in this space
Speaker 1: as a justice on the Supreme Court if she's confirmed.
Speaker 1: But I know that having a perspective can change everything.
Speaker 1: And oh, we only have to cite Bruce Vader Ginsberg.
Speaker 1: We have to say justice Sonya soderbayor they have changed
Speaker 1: the conversation and sometimes in the descent, putting in place
Speaker 1: reasoning that will move us forward in the future. That's
Speaker 1: one thing, but that's not all of it. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I say just about gender violence,
Speaker 1: generally we look at it in two ways, either as
Speaker 1: a health issue or as a criminal justice issue. Well,
Speaker 1: the issues are well beyond that. You know. The problem
Speaker 1: reflects economic issues, it reflects cultural issues, it reflects transportation,
Speaker 1: it reflects housing, it reflects education, of course, and I
Speaker 1: think we need to do a comprehensive assessment, an audit,
Speaker 1: if you will, of our government agencies and who should
Speaker 1: be in this conversation to address the part of it
Speaker 1: that affects them. Let me give you one example. Ten
Speaker 1: million people will be affected by gentlemen partner violence in
Speaker 1: this country, ten million every year. A third of those
Speaker 1: people will become homeless because of that. Think about all
Speaker 1: of the ways that they're going to be affected. If
Speaker 1: they have children, their education will be affected. If they
Speaker 1: have a job, their job may be affected if they
Speaker 1: become homeless. We don't have a comprehensive plan to address
Speaker 1: even what happens after. But I also think that we
Speaker 1: need to be addressing some things in ways that will
Speaker 1: prevent the problems from happening. And we know that people
Speaker 1: are vulnerable to violence based on income, low income people,
Speaker 1: So how do we make sure that that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: Is it a matter of increasing income. Is it a
Speaker 1: matter of putting into place other kinds of labor protections
Speaker 1: or other kinds of civil rights protections that really speak
Speaker 1: to the experiences of low income people or contract workers.
Speaker 1: So I think that there is so much more to
Speaker 1: be done, but somebody has to be at the top,
Speaker 1: and that person who is at the top has to
Speaker 1: commit to making this a priority. There's so much more
Speaker 1: to be done, and it sounds like, despite everything that's
Speaker 1: happened to you, that you hold out hope that it
Speaker 1: will be done. I do. I've seen a country move forward.
Speaker 1: I know people are ready for change. I mean, we
Speaker 1: had this moment of reckoning around inequalities in twenty twenty
Speaker 1: where all of these inequities were revealed through the pandemic,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that was revealed was through
Speaker 1: a spike in intimate partner violence. Well, what that says
Speaker 1: to me, It is not just that a pandemic causes
Speaker 1: intimate partner violence. What it says is that some people
Speaker 1: are living in situations where something could happen, like a pandemic,
Speaker 1: like a lockdown, like an economic downturn that will put
Speaker 1: them at bodily risk. And so, yes, you know, we
Speaker 1: have this moment where we had the Me Too movement,
Speaker 1: or had Black Lives Matter, where we have this cry
Speaker 1: for a different way to address inequalities. And when it
Speaker 1: comes down to it, gender violence, sexual harassment, sexual assault
Speaker 1: in many ways comes from gender inequality. So how do
Speaker 1: we address those things? I am hopeful because I think
Speaker 1: we have come so far, and I hope that means
Speaker 1: that we are really ready to take the next step
Speaker 1: and demand real change. That hope you have today. I
Speaker 1: wonder how much of that comes from your mother. She
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen eleven in the Jim Crow South,
Speaker 1: in a country that did not recognize her right to vote,
Speaker 1: And yet you say and insisting that her children get
Speaker 1: an education that far exceeded the opportunities available to them
Speaker 1: at the time. She showed her belief that the world
Speaker 1: would change for the better and that her children would
Speaker 1: be prepared to enjoy the benefits. In thinking about your work,
Speaker 1: do you see yourself as continuing the work your mother
Speaker 1: was for you? I'm following in her footsteps. I'm following
Speaker 1: her model, and I'm expanding it. I don't have biological children.
Speaker 1: We were her platform. Our household was her platform. She
Speaker 1: had control over that, and she knew she couldn't control
Speaker 1: all the rest of the world, but she could give
Speaker 1: her children something that would change their lives. I feel
Speaker 1: like I have a platform that she never had. To
Speaker 1: work outside of my own immediate family, I feel I
Speaker 1: have the opportunity. I feel that I have public sentiment
Speaker 1: and support with me, and so, yes, my world is
Speaker 1: different from my mother's, but the model is the same.
Speaker 1: How do we prepare people even though we know that
Speaker 1: the opportunities aren't immediately available. We want them to be
Speaker 1: ready when the future comes and the opportunities are there.
Speaker 1: Throughout her she held on the hope, and you have to.
Speaker 1: No matter how frequently it has been tested, both in
Speaker 1: public and in private, it has remained in you, in
Speaker 1: all of your work. Before we go, I thought perhaps
Speaker 1: we could read a poem on the subject, a piece
Speaker 1: that I know means a great deal to you. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is a poem, Dark Testament. It's verse eight, and
Speaker 1: it's a poem written by Polly Murray. Hope is a
Speaker 1: crushed stack between clenched finger's Hope is a bird's wing
Speaker 1: broken by a stone. Hope is a word and a
Speaker 1: tuneless ditty, a word whispered with the wind, a dream
Speaker 1: of forty acres and a mule, a cabin of one's own,
Speaker 1: and a moment to rest, a name and place for
Speaker 1: one's children and children's children at last. Hope is a
Speaker 1: song in a weary throat. Give me a song of
Speaker 1: hope and a world where I can sing it. Give
Speaker 1: me a song of faith and people to believe in it.
Speaker 1: Give me a song of kindliness in a country where
Speaker 1: I can live it. Give me a song of hope
Speaker 1: and love and a brown girl's heart to hear it.
Speaker 1: What did that poem make you think of? Oh? You know,
Speaker 1: I do focus on that song hope. It's a song
Speaker 1: and a weary throat, and I don't think of myself
Speaker 1: necessarily as an optimist. When I think of that phrase alone,
Speaker 1: I think and concentrate on the song, not the weary throat,
Speaker 1: because we will get weary and there will be chances
Speaker 1: for us to rest. But as long as we have
Speaker 1: a song, we have hope. I will keep singing it.
Speaker 1: I will always remain hopeful, no matter how weary I get. Well,
Speaker 1: I thank you for that song, for all that you've
Speaker 1: done in the last sixty five years of your life.
Speaker 1: I don't know where we'd be without you, but I'm
Speaker 1: very grateful to be passing through in this time with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. That's wonderful. Thank gives me hope. Anita Hill,
Speaker 1: thank you for sitting with me. It's a pleasure. And
Speaker 1: that's our show special thanks to Nicolemarano and of course,
Speaker 1: Professor Anita Hill. You can hear her new podcast, Getting
Speaker 1: Even with Anita Hill wherever you like to listen. To
Speaker 1: learn more about Anita's work, visit our show notes at
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