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| FILE - This Oct. 11, 1991 file photo shows University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. Hill made national headlines in 1991 when she testified that then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her. Now, more than 20 years later, director Freida Mock explores Hill's landmark testimony and the resulting social and political changes in the documentary "Anita." |
NEW YORK (AP)
-- It's been more than 22 years since Anita Hill sat before the Senate
Judiciary Committee in that famous bright blue suit - one she could
never bring herself to wear again - to make the sexual harassment
allegations against Clarence Thomas that transfixed a nation.
And much has changed since then.
But not everything.
"I
hope you rot in hell," went an email that Hill, now 57 and a professor
at Brandeis University, received just a few weeks ago from a member of
the public.
After all this time?
"Yes," Hill says, with a resigned air. "As they go, this one was fairly mild. But it happens. And it'll happen again."
Especially
now. The soft-spoken Hill, who still speaks in the same calm, precise
tone many remember from 1991, has for two decades been living a quiet
academic life, occasionally venturing out to speak about sexual
harassment but often declining interviews.
But
she's about to enter the maelstrom again with the release Friday of a
new documentary, "Anita," by the Oscar-winning filmmaker Freida Mock.
After years of declining requests to collaborate on a film about her
experiences, she said yes.
Why now?
Hill
says she was inspired by the reactions she was getting from people as
the 20th anniversary of those Supreme Court confirmation hearings
approached - particularly in 2010, when news broke that she'd received a
voice mail from Thomas' wife, Virginia, asking Hill to "consider an
apology." (That voice mail opens the film.)
"People
responded with outrage to that," Hill says. "But even more, I realized
that here we are 20 years later and the issues are still resonating - in
the workplace, in universities, in the military. So if 1991 could help
us start a conversation, how then can we move this to another level?
Because clearly we haven't eliminated the problem."
Experts
agree the problem surely hasn't been eliminated. But many cite Hill's
testimony as a landmark event, in both social and legal terms.
"Back
then, this was an invisible issue, until Anita testified," says Marcia
D. Greenberger, founder and co-president of the National Women's Law
Center. Not only did Hill's testimony raise public consciousness about
sexual harassment in the workplace, she says, and spur other women to
make claims, but only months later, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which
addressed issues of employment discrimination, was passed with strong
support.
"That happened in direct response to
the growing realization of what the American public had seen in the
hearings," Greenberger contends.
It's clear
that Hill became, and remains, a heroine to many women. It's also clear
that while she doesn't reject it, she remains somewhat uncomfortable
with the status. In an interview at a Manhattan hotel, she seems almost
more excited to discuss her work preparing a strategic plan for Brandeis
than her public persona.
"In some ways I'm
not very well suited, I think, for that position of heroine," she says.
"People do want that person who is sort of out there and vocal and
adamant about who they are and what they want. But I wouldn't be
credible if I didn't come to this with my own personality."
Hill
says that in her day-to-day life, "1991 just doesn't figure in." Case
in point: At Brandeis, many of her students don't even know about her
past. Hill points out that her grad students were only children in 1991,
and the undergrads weren't even born.
"It
doesn't bother me," she says. "It's important to help them focus on what
their learning objectives are, and not on me as a person."
Reluctant
heroine or not, Hill often evokes a passionate response, says filmmaker
Mock, who has accompanied Hill at film-related events.
"I
had no idea she was a rock star," says Mock. "But it's a routine:
People stand up when she walks in. They shout: `I love you!' and `I
believe you, Anita!'"
"She was a reluctant
witness, and she remains a reluctant public figure," Mock adds. "But she
is proud to be a part of this journey that she never intended to be
on."
In fact, Hill says, before all this,
she'd planned to build a career in international commercial law, perhaps
in Europe. "It would have been a very different life!" she laughs.
A
life, likely, without hate mail. Hill says the worst part wasn't the
actual hours spent testifying about painfully explicit matters, or when
Thomas was ultimately confirmed to the Supreme Court, but what happened
when she returned to her teaching job at the University of Oklahoma.
"I
was getting threats," she said. "People were trying to get me fired.
Friends of mine were fired." At the same time, she was getting bundles
of letters of support from across the country. But the threat of losing
her job felt more immediate.
Hill left the
university in 1996, and landed at Brandeis soon after. In 2007, she was
back in the news when Thomas wrote a book, "My Grandfather's Son," in
which he described her as rude, a mediocre worker, a liar, and his "most
traitorous adversary." She wrote a New York Times op-ed piece saying
she would not allow Thomas to "reinvent" her.
Hill
has had no contact with Thomas, who had no comment for this article;
she also never answered his wife's phone call. And she's had no contact
over the years with the former senator who ran the hearings, Vice
President Joe Biden, of whom she has been critical (though she says
she's a supporter of his boss.)
The sight of that all-white, all-male panel, in clear contrast to Hill, is one of the more striking visuals in "Anita."
"Can you believe it was JUST 22 years ago?" she says. "It's like `Mad Men'!"
"It
was such a harsh contrast between who they were, and me and how I
looked, in that blue suit," she says. "It was a reflection of their
power and privilege. And I think the public saw that and related to me -
though at the time, I just felt isolated."
What
if the hearings were to happen now? Much would be different, Hill
believes, including the language used by the senators. "I do not believe
we would have an (Sen.) Alan Simpson saying `that sexual harassment
crap,' for example," she says. "The conversation has changed. We as a
society have accepted that these are important issues."
Speaking of the suit, we have to ask: What happened to it?
"You're not going to ask me if it still fits, are you?" she asks with mock alarm.
That
suit, she explains, was way too loaded with meaning to ever wear again.
The Smithsonian recently asked to display it, but she wasn't ready yet.
"One day, the time will be right," she says.
