Speaking Truth to Power (48 page)

It was by now the spring of 1995, and I had to decide whether to return to the university, where, despite the fact that the regents had acted according to stated policy, it was clear that both I and the Hill Professorship were being judged by different standards and procedures. After nearly four years of trying to function in the environment, the behind-the-scenes signals from some members of the university Board of Regents and administrators, along with some of the public debate, made me apprehensive about the prospect of returning. I heard rumors that students on campus were being told by administrators that I was at fault—that by asserting my right to maintain my tenured position, I had forced the university to take a position on the political issue of the Thomas confirmation. I had the support of many colleagues and students but I was keenly aware that they did not run the institution or establish policy.

The Faculty Senate chair, Tom Boyd, requested of President David
Boren, Senator Boren in 1991, that he meet with me to discuss the future of the professorship and my concerns that it and my career and accomplishments were in jeopardy if the disparate treatment I received from the administration continued. A colleague on the law faculty requested that President Boren meet and perhaps have lunch with me. Despite his stated open-door policy, Boren refused both requests initially, citing his fear that meeting with me might attract too much attention and jeopardize the university budget process were conservative legislators to learn of it. Later, after the state legislature completed the budget process, the request went ignored.

Apparently, on the theory that I would have to leave the state if I had no job, Sullivan finally proposed legislation to abolish the law school at the University of Oklahoma altogether. During the day the proposed legislation was to be considered, Million canvassed the halls of the capitol building declaring, “This is about Anita Hill, and it won’t stop until we get rid of her.” Behind the scenes, Boren told individuals he welcomed my return. But his reported meeting with Sullivan “to settle differences Sullivan had” suggested otherwise to the public, and I doubted very much the sincerity of his welcome.

Coupled with his refusal to meet with me, Boren’s action suggested that politics controlled his decisions—not surprising given that he had just arrived on campus from a career in politics. I used no political clout to demand such a meeting, as some suggested. It was for me an academic matter, to be settled within the boundaries of the academic community. When our paths did cross, it was completely by accident at a university function where we sat at adjacent tables with our backs to each other. Budge Lewis approached Boren and asked if he would like to meet me. “Of course,” he responded. “I did not know that she was here.” He turned to where I was seated no more than four feet away and greeted me with the hearty declaration that he would be “restoring tradition to the law school.” Thinking back to the tradition that had brought the most attention to the school, I found the remarks particularly insensitive. Though he probably meant traditions of quality, he simply assumed that I would see tradition in the same way he did, forgetting that when he was
a student, there were few women and few students of color, and no black or female faculty. Not a tradition to which I want to return.

A
s I pulled into Shirley’s driveway and parked my car adjacent to the For Sale sign, I questioned my own decision to return to the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1995. I was certain that my participation in the normal campus activities would never be the same. The activities in whose involvement I had been welcomed—faculty committees, faculty awards and recognition, university projects, summer research grants—may in fact be off limits, judged by a standard and procedure limited to me, as had been my application for leave and sabbatical. A group of female students from the class before had met with me for lunch and encouraged me to return. Several colleagues had visited with me to do the same. I had even heeded the accusation of one friend who suggested that to leave would show my accusers that I lacked toughness and another who said that my requests for assurances from the university that I not be singled out for different treatment were just efforts to receive “special treatment.” In the end I chalked up much of these latter comments to the perspective of those making them.

It seemed incredibly macho to me to remain in a situation of discrimination simply to prove to those who vilified me that I could “tough it out.” In addition, I was aware that calls for equal treatment are often seen as calls for “special treatment” in situations where discrimination has become the norm. My chief concern at the moment was that I not become complicitous in my own denigration—that by staying I not implicitly show my approval of the institution’s choice to let politics prevail over academic principles and interests. Nevertheless, I decided to return. In many ways it was a default decision but I was driven by the fact that the professorship had not been filled and might still be in jeopardy of neglect from an unsupportive administration. Despite the peace of mind that removing myself from the university promised, I was not prepared to suffer another year without a salaried position. For one more year I would make it work for me, I thought to myself.

Almost immediately I realized that very little had changed since I arrived in 1986. Ten years later I was still trying to overcome the resistance to me. When my tenure was granted, after four years of teaching at the University of Oklahoma, I thought the matter of my full membership in the academic community was settled, only to have it raised again in 1991. How tenuous my claims to the certainty of academic freedom and tenure are when politics is interjected. Even the full funding by the State Regents of Higher Education in December 1995 could not erase the acts of unfairness that others dealt to me and others like me. I could keep quiet about it—but had decided against that once and for all.

The ultimate message of how Boren felt about my presence at the university came in the law school itself. In an open forum, a first-year law student stood and asked how he, Boren, planned to address the negative publicity surrounding Professor Hill. Boren responded with a ten-minute monologue on the parking problem on main campus but never mentioned my name—as though they were words he could not bear to let pass over his lips in public.

By the spring of 1996 I was certain that the institution would never view me as a full member as long as I was an embarrassment to its leadership. And so, despite the warm welcome of support and the sincere respect of many in the student body, I knew that the fall of 1996 was my last semester as a faculty member of the University of Oklahoma. As I participated in the hooding of the law school graduating class, a variety of questions and thoughts filled my head. Since the age of six, other than the three years in Washington, I had been a member of an academic community. How was I to function outside of one? But, having escaped the political assaults and threats, seen one more class receive their degrees, and paved the way for research on issues which were crucial to me, it was now time to move on, as my grandparents did, in search of a better place.

W
hat happened in October 1991 should not have happened to me or anyone else. Nevertheless, it did, and is now such an integral part of who I am that I cannot imagine how my life would be today if it hadn’t. My life has been forever changed. I will never again feel as safe and secure as I did before I received the first threats on my life. One day recently in a supermarket in Norman, a friend came up behind me, without identifying himself, and put his hands over my eyes. I panicked and for hours afterward was shaken at the act and the fear it brought to the surface. I reacted in the same way when, two years after the hearing, an NBC news crew rushed toward me in my driveway seeking a comment on the endowed professorship. I had declined the network’s requests for an interview. As they hurriedly approached me, I had no idea who they were or that what they might have wanted was an ambush interview. I only saw three men rushing toward me, and given my experience and the threats, I assumed their intent was bad. My first reaction was fear, but afterward, when the realization that they were simply overzealous journalists sank in, I wondered if I would ever be free to say no with confidence that the choice would be respected. Despite the fact that, as an NBC executive explained to me, the network policy was to use ambush interviews in only the most extreme circumstances, NBC chose to run the footage of me attempting to leave my home on the nightly news.

I am now more apt to speak my mind and show less patience in the face of what I think are injustices large and small. Of course, personal slights today have far less impact when weighed against the insults I suffered at the hands of certain senators and members of the public and press. More significant than the changes is the reflection that the hearing prompted. When my world appeared to collapse in very significant ways, I was forced to consider what was important to me. In an effort to rebuild what was disrupted and destroyed, I contemplated my life as I had never before done. In addition to reconstructing my relationship with various communities of which I had been a part because of my race, gender, and profession, I gained a greater appreciation for my family and friends and my spirituality. “Would you do it again?” I am often asked, and my answer is the same. I would again answer truthfully when asked. I would pursue the matter once I filed my statement. I would testify as frankly and clearly as possible when questioned. I would do it again, but I could only do it because of the great tangible and intangible support I had throughout.

O
ne of my mother’s most impressive domestic skills is her quilting. I marvel at how she takes the scraps of materials left over from sewing or worn-out clothing, cuts them into odd geometric shapes, and pieces them together in a collage of color and patterns. Then in and out her needle goes thousands of times as the top, lining, and backing come together for the completed quilt. A quilt is often my mother’s winter project—her way of passing the time on the long nights she dreads. She is careful never to mix gingham with denim or organdy with wool. The browns are joined with the yellows and greens while blues, pinks, and reds are separately joined. Yet nothing goes to waste. Everything is used—bound for a life destined to continue long after each individual skirt, blouse, pants, or shirt has outworn its own usefulness.

I never learned to quilt. But as I began to patch together my life after the hearing, to pull together all of my experiences and include the one that had most recently imperiled my existence, I thought often of my
mother and her quilting. And as my physical mending concluded, I was left with the task of reconciling my place in various communities of which I was a member because of physical traits or experiences—the African American community, the community of women, and the academic community. In some instances the relationships had expanded. In others they had been badly damaged—all but severed. All of the fragments and pieces had to be put together again to make up my life. In the spring of 1992 I began in earnest to learn to quilt. I decided that I would discard none of my old life—that I was better off embracing it and the changes of my life. As the autumn turned to winter, I hoped, somehow, that I had learned something from observing her.

Since 1991, responsive public reaction to the problem of sexual harassment has far exceeded what the Senate Judiciary Committee displayed at the Thomas confirmation hearing. As awareness of the prevalence and severity of the problem has increased, so has intolerance of harassing behavior. How might the Senate Judiciary Committee have responded to my complaint in a way that would have contributed to their own awareness of the problem as well as public awareness is a lingering question. To say that “they just didn’t get it” is not enough, for it fails to address how they might have behaved had they understood the complexity of the issue. Nor is it enough that they should simply have believed me rather than Thomas, because this fails to establish a process for fairly hearing information about the character and fitness of a nominee. How could the committee (or future such committees) confronted with the issue have been responsive to both the issue of sexual harassment and the nomination process? What the hearing lacked and what I and others found missing was balance in terms of credibility—mine certainly equaled Thomas’ in the matter—and balance in terms of process—the weight of the Senate and the Executive should not have been used against an individual citizen called upon to participate in a public process. Neither the issue of harassment nor the nomination was served by a presumption of my untruthfulness or a process skewed in favor of whoever was able and willing to engage in the dirtiest political “gamesmanship.”
Anything less than a balanced approach condemns women to second-class status and the Court to members who abuse power and authority granted to them in a public trust. Such a person can in no case be the “best man (or woman) for the job.”

Because sexual harassment claims involve issues of substantive law, the nomination process should never be turned into a forum for resolution of such claims. The Senate Judiciary Committee lacks the process, the authority, and the legal competence to hear such. The charge of the committee is to advise on the nominee’s qualifications. Nevertheless, since sexual harassment was central to the nominee’s qualifications, the members of the committee should have educated themselves on the issue before them. Evidence that you failed to do so lies in your use of social myths to explain my testimony, your refusal to utilize information provided by experts on sexual harassment, and your deviation from your own procedural rules in hearing the testimony as presented.

Myths that support harassment and deny legitimacy of such claims abound. Society points to women’s ambition and ingratitude in the face of harassment claims to show that they are insincere or unworthy of public concern. Often, those charged with evaluating a claim explained it away as a response to social or professional rejection despite the lack of factual support for such explanations. Women are accused of using harassment as a scapegoat for a variety of other alleged problems ranging from incompetence to social deficiencies described as sexually aggressive, prudish, man-hating, and erotomaniacal. Often these characteristics are attributed to the same person despite the apparent contradictions. Underlying all is the grand myth that women control male sexuality—whether at home, on the streets, or at work, regardless of the relative physical strength or social power of the participants. Consequently, the presumption is that all sexual behavior is “welcomed” because a woman either invited it or did not prevent it. At some point in the hearing and aftermath, your members employed all of these myths. Along with the public, I watched the hearing as members of your committee attributed to me motives, traits, and characteristics that were designed to further obscure the matter before you rather than shed light on how Clarence
Thomas conducted himself in public office. Your members advanced your theories despite their logical inconsistencies and lack of factual support. In doing so you pandered to myths and misconceptions about women in general and sexual harassment in particular or simply failed to distinguish myth from reality and created a world where sexual harassment is a figment of an accuser’s imagination.