Read Speaking Truth to Power Online
Authors: Anita Hill
Speaking Truth to Power (45 page)
My return to campus sparked a set of angry letters to the newspaper mostly at the urging of a local politician who wanted to see me fired from my university position. I breathe a sigh of relief as I read the full-page advertisement taken out by the faculty and staff at Utah State University. A lump grows in my throat, as I read the show of support from Senator Hatch’s constituents. The originators of the message wanted me to “know that not everyone in Utah supported Senator Hatch’s treatment” of me.
“This will go a long way in helping get through the next week,” I tell March. At this point, I felt as though I was struggling through life one day at a time and each bit of encouragement helped. This was more than a day’s worth of encouragement; it actually buoyed me up for nearly a month.
S
ince age six, except for the three years in Washington, D.C., I have been a part of an academic community. When I began teaching and interacting with faculty around the country through the Association of American Law Schools, I knew that I had found real colleagues. In particular, the minority law professors and those professors who specialized in contract and commercial law were people with whom I shared interests and experiences. Had it not been for my friends and colleagues in the various academic communities with which I have been associated, the hearing would have been more devastating.
Professor Laurence Tribe telephoned Senator Biden prior to the hearing to tell Biden that “some women law professors” thought that my complaint was not being taken seriously. Either Senator Biden was concerned that he maintain the respect of Professor Tribe or he feared “women law professors,” because only then did he distribute my statement to the Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee. On October 8, 1991, nearly two hundred law professors from around the country sent this message to the Senate:
To The Members of the United States Senate:
The Supreme Court’s place in American government and society depends on unqualified public respect for its members and the institution. In this light, as law professors—including many who have not taken a position on the nomination of Judge Thomas to the Court—we strongly urge the Senate to delay action on the nomination until it can make a fully informed and considered appraisal of Professor Anita Hill’s allegation. To act now would be to risk grave injury to the Court, the Senate and the country.
Sincerely yours,
This response was quick. It arrived two days after the story about my statement aired on public radio.
In the meantime, resolutions and petitions supporting either the delay in the hearing or my credibility and integrity went to the Senate from various groups of individuals. My colleagues at the College of Law along with the College of Law Student Bar Association sent resolutions of support. The University of Oklahoma Faculty Senate sent a resolution which was accompanied by a resolution from the University Student Congress. By October 14, 1991, five hundred women scholars had signed a letter which Nancy Sherman, philosophy professor at Georgetown University, forwarded to Senator Biden.
Dear Senator,
The following 500 women scholars have asked me to forward this letter to you. As signatories, we are acting independently and do not represent any organized group. The signatures were collected over the 30 hour period ending 4 p.m., Sunday, October 13, 1991; the list continues to grow.
We the undersigned are women scholars who wish to express our deep concern over the possible confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. The issue of sexual harassment is one with which many of us have dealt on a personal level. We have been harassed ourselves, or know of others who have been. Because of fear of reprisal and the influence of the men involved in our professional careers, it is common for victims not to report these incidents and to maintain professional contact with their harassers. Accordingly, it is imperative that Prof. Anita Hill’s testimony be taken seriously. We urge you to vote against the confirmation of Clarence Thomas.
Sincerely,
Women from twenty-seven states, Alabama to Wyoming, plus the District of Columbia signed the letter. By the morning of October 15, 1991, their numbers had risen to 750.
The ad appearing around the country from “African American Women in Defense of Ourselves” was organized by and signed in part by women from academic institutions. In part it read:
In 1991, we cannot tolerate this type of dismissal of any one Black woman’s experience or this attack upon our collective character without protest, outrage, and resistance
.
As women of African descent, we express our vehement opposition to the policies represented by the placement of Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. The Bush administration, having obstructed the passage of civil rights legislation, impeded the extension of unemployment compensation, cut student aid and dismantled social welfare programs, has continually demonstrated that it is not operating in our best interests. Nor is this appointee
.
Each of these appeals to the Senate and public reflected and affirmed a different period of my life in some way. The latter, in particular, was of significance because of the portrayal of the issue in the African American community. The academic community has an important role in public discourse. On this issue, it took a solid, substantive position based on experience and principle. It was gratifying. Having my Oklahoma University colleagues’ and students’ support was crucial. They knew me and had shared in the struggle of the media barrage with me. Yet no petition was any more moving than the letter from sixty of my law school classmates around the world.
Dear Mr. Chairman:
It has been our privilege to know Anita Hill professionally and personally since the late seventies, when we were in law school together. The Anita Hill we have known is a person of
great integrity and decency. As colleagues, we wish to affirm publicly our admiration and respect for her. She is embroiled now in a most serious and difficult controversy, which we know is causing her great pain. We make no attempt to analyze the issues involved, or to prejudge the outcome. We do, however, wish to state emphatically our complete confidence in her sincerity and good faith and our absolute belief in her decency and integrity. In our eyes it is impossible to imagine any circumstances in which her character could be called into question. We are dismayed that it has been. We know that it could not be by anyone who knows her.
Anita has imperiled her career and her peace of mind to do what she felt was right. We know we are powerless to shield her from those who will seek to hurt her out of ignorance, frustration, or expediency in the days ahead. But we will have failed ourselves if we did not at least raise our voices in her behalf. She has our unhesitating and unwavering support.
The letter was dated October 10, 1991, the day before I testified. When I read it, my stomach quivers even today. It moves me so because it expresses a caring and concern of people with whom I spent three years and some of the most trying times in my life. Over ten years later they still cared. As timeless and comforting as poetry, it spoke to me as directly as it would had I read it in 1977 when we were together in school.
The entire Yale Law School community was shaken by the hearing. Professor Elias Clark, who taught me and Clarence Thomas, wept in class the Monday following my testimony. The
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
called for Thomas to resign from the Supreme Court the day following his confirmation. A Thomas supporter in the student group the Federalist Society countered with accusations that I was “delusional or acting out of spite.” Ernest Rubenstein, an alumnus in attendance at the annual reunion the weekend of the hearing, reported that no one of
the faculty or former students with whom he spoke doubted my credibility.
In the spring of 1992 Dean Guido Calabresi invited me to visit and to speak at Yale Law School. Carroll Stevens, an associate dean at the law school, arranged the trip. I anxiously awaited the trip to New Haven. I would see my friends Stephen Carter and Enola Aird and meet their two children. It was the first time since I graduated from the school in 1980 that I would return. It was the first, and only, time since I started speaking publicly that I was nearly overcome with stage fright. The experience at Yale had been the pivotal point in my educational and intellectual development. I had made many lifelong friends in law school. Nevertheless, as a woman from rural Oklahoma, I never felt “at home” at Yale.
The day before my evening presentation, I met with students and faculty including a classmate, Roberta Romano. Even then we knew that Roberta was destined to teach. She was always insightful and thorough in ways that separated her from even the brightest of her very bright classmates. Of the other, older faculty who were teaching at Yale when I was a student, Burke Marshall was especially warm. Professor Marshall had been a high-ranking official in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His contributions to the Civil Rights Act enforcement of the 1970s was something we took for granted as students. When I went to Washington, I more fully appreciated his importance to the era. Dean Jim Thomas, one of the most outstanding individuals in law school administration and teaching, was a major influence on my decision to go to Yale. He was as hospitable in 1992 as he had been when I visited the campus in 1977. He invited me to meet the students at the college where he was a master.
During the afternoon I had a chance to walk to my old neighborhood and visit the corner grocery and pizza parlor which I regularly visited. The owner of the grocery recognized me from the hearing. Over a slice of pizza, his treat, he told me that while he and his wife watched the hearing together he remembered me from my visits to his store. I could not imagine that of all the students he must have seen over the years that
he could remember me but I was glad that he felt that he had. But none of this calmed my nervousness about the speech.
That evening the dean introduced me to the crowd of about six hundred; Stephen helped me with questions; my friend Ivy McKinney had driven from her home in Stamford to be in the audience. The scene was set for my ease and comfort. As I stepped up to the podium, I looked out at the crowd in the law school auditorium. In the back of the room, I saw the faces of two of my former professors, Elias Clark and Joseph Goldstein. All at once, I was a nervous, insecure first-year law student again. I had more than the jitters. What befell me did not go away. I progressed through my prepared remarks, never so happy to finish a speech. My only consolation was that I was spared reliving that part of the law school experience where professors ask questions.
I had learned so much at Yale. The intensity of the questioning and probing was such that I learned to expand my reasoning. The experience had given me a sense of certainty about my abilities as I faced the world. It no doubt contributed to my ability to address the Senate Judiciary Committee without being in awe of their prominence. Yet, amazingly, none of that confidence applied during my first time back inside the walls of the law school itself. The experience of being a student was so potent that twelve years later I saw myself in that role. That kind of intensity will certainly take more than one visit to undermine. Perhaps the intensity of the law school experience was what brought me close to many of my classmates, creating friendships that continue today.
Some fellow Yale Law School graduates have been less than sympathetic. In an opinion piece written for the press, one graduate was downright condescending in his sympathy with my history of sexual harassment. He suggested that my history with sexual harassment would explain why I preferred that my students call me Professor Hill rather than Anita and why I objected when a new student upon meeting me for the first time put his arm around my shoulder. But he was wrong. I would have objected to such familiarity regardless of my experience with harassment. I didn’t see the student’s action as harassing. I saw it as
disrespectful. I defy him to recall any situation where, as a student, he had occasion to drape his arm over the shoulder of a Yale Law School professor. Moreover, I doubt if he ever referred to any of them with the familiarity of a given name, at least not while in their presence.
More important, the writer clearly failed to understand the difficulties encountered by all young women professors and particularly women of color in the classroom. More than one of my female colleagues have remarked that the male students are so uncomfortable with the idea of a woman in control of their academic destiny that they rebel and resist treating them with the deference and respect they accord male faculty. My experience at both Oral Roberts and Oklahoma universities bears this out.
Some of my classmates have been more than insensitive to my situation; some have been hostile. One in particular, a man with whom I was close in law school and since, has not returned several telephone calls made since the hearing. The insensitivity represents a slight of little significance. I would not have noticed it except that the writer mentioned in the essay that he, too, was a graduate of Yale. The hostility is hurtful. I have always worked to maintain relationships with friends and family and even acquaintances. Losing one without the benefit of explanation cuts me to the very heart of who I am. This lost friendship is one of only a few which I have suffered because of the hearing. But for me a few is too many.
