Tag: Anita Hill

Five sitting senators voted on Clarence Thomas’s nomination. Four supported it.

Credit: Philip Bump, The Washington Post

In an essay published by the New York Times, Anita Hill included an interesting aside.

Hill, whose allegations that she had been sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas emerged during the process after his nomination to the Supreme Court, was comparing her situation in 1991 to the current moment. Brett M. Kavanaugh, nominated to the bench by President Trump, has been accused of sexually assaulting Christine Blasey Ford in 1982 while in high school.

“As that same committee, on which sit some of the same members as nearly three decades ago, now moves forward with the Kavanaugh confirmation proceedings,” Hill wrote, “the integrity of the court, the country’s commitment to addressing sexual violence as a matter of public interest, and the lives of the two principal witnesses who will be testifying hang in the balance.”

View the complete September 18 article by Philip Bump on the Washington Post website here.

Kavanaugh allegations set stage for Anita Hill sequel

Brett Kavanaugh, a Supreme Court nominee who last week appeared to be cruising toward confirmation, has suddenly found himself in the sequel to the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings of 1991 that rocked Washington and vaulted the issue of sexual harassment into the national spotlight.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is now slated to hear public testimony from Kavanaugh and his accuser, much like senators 27 years ago heard additional testimony from Thomas and questioned Hill about her accusations against the then-nominee.

President Trump’s pick has been accused by Christine Blasey Ford, a Ph.D.-level research psychologist at Palo Alto University in California, of sexual assault more than three decades ago, when she was a 15-year-old sophomore and he a 17-year-old junior.

Longtime observers of Supreme Court confirmation fights see eerily similar parallels between Kavanaugh’s now besieged nomination and the maelstrom that engulfed Thomas in the fall of 1991, which left indelible scorch marks on the Senate.

View the September 18 article by Alexander Bolton on the Hill website here.

Echoes of Anita Hill, but in a Different Era for Women

Anita Hill arriving in 1991 in Washington to testify against Clarence Thomas. Credit: Doug Mills, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — She went public just days before a critical vote and took a polygraph test to bolster her credibility. He unequivocally denied her years-old charges of sexual misconduct. Calls mounted to delay the vote and investigate. It was late September, and a Supreme Court seat hung in the balance.

For those of a certain age in Washington, the past few days have felt like an eerie echo of the confirmation battle that consumed the capital in 1991 when Anita F. Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her. Now it is Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh who faces a hearing on Monday to address explosive accusations by Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers.

While not a perfect parallel, the case has quickly polarized Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation process, once again drawing in all three branches of government for a showdown over sex, truth and politics. Justice Thomas ultimately prevailed, and has been on the Supreme Court for more than a quarter of a century. But this time the battle takes place in a different era, at a moment when the #MeToo movement has brought down many powerful men over accusations of sexual misconduct that were once swept under the rug.

View the complete September 17 article by Peter Baker and Carl Hulse on the Washington Post website here.

Anita Hill’s claims echo in allegation against Kavanaugh. Three decades later, will anything be different?

Anita Hill reflects on her 1991 testimony about sexual harassment, the slow pace of change, and today’s #MeToo movement with The Washington Post’s Libby Casey. (The Washington Post)

In a prologue to their 1994 book, “Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas,” journalists Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson wrote of how “unresolved the conflict” remained between Thomas, a conservative justice, and Anita Hill, a law professor who testified that he had sexually harassed her a decade earlier.

“Rather than dying down, their clash has become part of an active battlefront in America’s culture wars,” the journalists observed of the nomination battle, which elevated Thomas to the nation’s top court in 1991. “The fight has gone well beyond the individuals — who have been reduced to symbols and caricatures — to strike at the heart of American politics.”

Nearly three decades later, as the Senate prepares to vote on another Supreme Court nomination, a contest is taking shape with clear parallels to the controversy that pitted the word of Thomas against that of Hill. An allegation of sexual assault has surfaced against Brett M. Kavanaugh, a nominee put forward by President Trump, who himself has been accused of sexual misconduct. All three Republicans — Thomas, Kavanaugh and Trump, who are dissimilar in background and temperament — deny the accusations.

View the complete September 17 article by Isaac Stanley-Becker on the Washington Post website here.

Joe Biden on Anita Hill’s sexual-harassment testimony: ‘I owe her an apology’

The following article by Derek Hawkins was posted on the Washington Post website December 14, 2017:

Anita Hill reflects on her 1991 testimony about sexual harassment, the slow pace of change, and today’s #MeToo movement with The Washington Post’s Libby Casey. (Video: Billy Tucker/Photo: Malcolm Cook/The Washington Post)

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. Continue reading “Joe Biden on Anita Hill’s sexual-harassment testimony: ‘I owe her an apology’”