One-on-one with Anita Hill

>>> professor anita hill testified that then supreme court nominee clarence thomas sexually harassed her in the workplace. the hearing has changed attitudes about job discrimination towards women .

>> he spoke about acts he had seen in pornographic films that he has seen and films showing group sex or rape scenes. on several occasions thomas told me graphically of his own sexual prowess.

>> you are not now claiming that he sexually harassed you.

>> yes, that is my conclusion.

>> i don't understand.

>> let the witness speak in her own words rather than have words put in her mouth.

>> i object to that i'm asking questions here.

>> this is a circus. it's a national disgrace . and from my standpoint, as a black american , as far as i'm concerned it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deem to think for themselves.

>> the testimony of professor hill in the morning was flat out perjury.

>> anita hill is a professor and senior advisor to the helder school for school for management and the author of the book reimagining equality. very interesting subtitle i want to get to that in a moment. let's talk about what we just saw. it brings me back. i was sitting right behind you. it was three days of hell. it must have been excruciating for you to do through that and unresolved in the end.

>> clarence thomas was confirmed to the supreme court so there was a resolution of sorts but that did not resolve the issue of sexual harassment . the pundits said look what happened to anita hill women will never come forward having that in mind of their experience and they were wrong. so in that case, in that situation or in that instance, no, there was not a resolution and even if people thought that women were not going to come forward they were proven absolutely wrong by woman who came forward in record numbers after the hearing.

>> you took a lie-detector test, a polygraph examine from a former fbi official and that was not paid attention to. there were corroborating witnesses not permitted to testify. how did you feel at the time about the way the hearings treated you?

>> i believed they were trying to portray the situation as a he said-she said two individuals having a disagreement when in fact there was as you say much evidence about thomas 's behavior. three other women . one woman got out of the hospital in order to testify. they were not called to testify. there were individuals who knew thomas who were able to talk about his propensities to talk about pornography and they were not called. but it would have been helpful to have an expert talk about sexual harassment to talk about what it is to help the senate and the public to understand what the problem was. that was not available either.

>> in your book you talk about the genesis of the book and you write that you began to feel more at home in america than i had since 1991 when the public rejected the testimony of my life experience. talk about that about finding home.

>> i look at reimagining equality as a compilation of if things that i have learned through the experience of the hearing but my training before as a lawyer and as a law professor in researcher as well as the many years since then. and i look at it through the lens of the crisis we have the foreclosure crisis and the millions of people who are insecure about whether or not day are going to be able to find a home in america.

>> do you think the economic crisis has exacerbated workplace tensions or are we at a stage where the relationships between men and women are really dealt with more seriously in the workplace?

>> both of those things are true. yes. the issue of sexual harassment is dealt with more seriously. i have heard from a number of woman who say after that testimony things changed in my work place overnight. but the problem does still exist. yes, they do still exist and we have to be vigilant about enforcing the laws and women coming forward. but the other part of your question was about the economy. we know that the economy has had a disparate impact on women in particular women who are in -- not high paying jobs.

>> more vulnerable.

>> more vulnerable women , single women with families heads of households. the housing industry or housing collapse has hit them hard just as they were getting a foothold into real estate and property ownership.

>> i want to ask you about clarence thomas as we have seen over 20 years now the fact he acknowledged not disclosing his wife's earnings, $200,000. what do you think about the ethics issue? some argued that the supreme court polices itself and he has been tone deaf to conflicts of interest involving his wife's activism. how do you feel about that?

>> i don't want to comment on that. that is not an issue i have looked at. but for me, my testimony at the hearing in 1991 was really about the integrity of the individual, clarence thomas as a nominee for the supreme court . my testimony as you'll recall i testified about behavior that took place while thomas was chair of the eeoc. and i think -- the equal employment opportunity commission .

>> he was as the chair charged with enforcing enforcing sexual harassment laws and i believe what i said in those hearings reflected on his integrity and his respect for the law and its application to everyone including himself.

>> how is it to live with this, this history? you are now part of history. you have been for 20 years. do you get past that just personally?

>> on a day-to-day basis, i don't experience it sort of in visible ways as i have in the last few days. i turned on the tv the other day and there i was on history tv a picture of me 35-year-old me 20 years ago. so that doesn't happen every day. but you know what i do get regularly that reminds me how important that moment was for so many people what i get probably once a week or routinely, are letters and e-mails from individuals saying specifically what the hearings meant to them. and that reminds me not only that it was important then that that it is important now and that we must keep pushing forward on the issues until we really feel that we have eliminated sexual harassment in the workplace.

>> anita hill , a living legacy, thank you for your book and thank you for being here. thank you.

>> thank you.