The Smear This Time By ANITA HILL

[XXPANTHAXX]

The Smear This Time

By ANITA HILL
Published: October 2, 2007
Waltham, Mass.

ON Oct. 11, 1991, I testified about my experience as an employee of
Clarence Thomas’s at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

I stand by my testimony.

Justice Thomas has every right to present himself as he wishes in his
new memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.� He may even be entitled to feel
abused by the confirmation process that led to his appointment to the
Supreme Court.

But I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to
reinvent me.

In the portion of his book that addresses my role in the Senate hearings
into his nomination, Justice Thomas offers a litany of unsubstantiated
representations and outright smears that Republican senators made about
me when I testified before the Judiciary Committee — that I was a
“combative left-winger� who was “touchy� and prone to overreacting to
“slights.� A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to
be baseless. What’s more, their reports draw on the experiences of
others who were familiar with Mr. Thomas’s behavior, and who came
forward after the hearings. It’s no longer my word against his.

Justice Thomas’s characterization of me is also hobbled by blatant
inconsistencies. He claims, for instance, that I was a mediocre employee
who had a job in the federal government only because he had “given it�
to me. He ignores the reality: I was fully qualified to work in the
government, having graduated from Yale Law School (his alma mater, which
he calls one of the finest in the country), and passed the District of
Columbia Bar exam, one of the toughest in the nation.

In 1981, when Mr. Thomas approached me about working for him, I was an
associate in good standing at a Washington law firm. In 1991, the
partner in charge of associate development informed Mr. Thomas’s mentor,
Senator John Danforth of Missouri, that any assertions to the contrary
were untrue. Yet, Mr. Thomas insists that I was “asked to leave� the
firm.

It’s worth noting, too, that Mr. Thomas hired me not once, but twice
while he was in the Reagan administration — first at the Department of
Education and then at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. After
two years of working directly for him, I left Washington and returned
home to Oklahoma to begin my teaching career.

In a particularly nasty blow, Justice Thomas attacked my religious
conviction, telling “60 Minutes� this weekend, “She was not the demure,
religious, conservative person that they portrayed.� Perhaps he
conveniently forgot that he wrote a letter of recommendation for me to
work at the law school at Oral Roberts University, in Tulsa. I remained
at that evangelical Christian university for three years, until the law
school was sold to Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Va., another
Christian college. Along with other faculty members, I was asked to
consider a position there, but I decided to remain near my family in
Oklahoma.

Regrettably, since 1991, I have repeatedly seen this kind of character
attack on women and men who complain of harassment and discrimination in
the workplace. In efforts to assail their accusers’ credibility,
detractors routinely diminish people’s professional contributions. Often
the accused is a supervisor, in a position to describe the complaining
employee’s work as “mediocre� or the employee as incompetent. Those
accused of inappropriate behavior also often portray the individuals who
complain as bizarre caricatures of themselves — oversensitive, even
fanatical, and often immoral — even though they enjoy good and
productive working relationships with their colleagues.

Finally, when attacks on the accusers’ credibility fail, those accused
of workplace improprieties downgrade the level of harm that may have
occurred. When sensing that others will believe their accusers’ versions
of events, individuals confronted with their own bad behavior try to
reduce legitimate concerns to the level of mere words or “slights� that
should be dismissed without discussion.

Fortunately, we have made progress since 1991. Today, when employees
complain of abuse in the workplace, investigators and judges are more
likely to examine all the evidence and less likely to simply accept as
true the word of those in power. But that could change. Our legal system
will suffer if a sitting justice’s vitriolic pursuit of personal
vindication discourages others from standing up for their rights.

The question of whether Clarence Thomas belongs on the Supreme Court is
no longer on the table — it was settled by the Senate back in 1991. But
questions remain about how we will resolve the kinds of issues my
testimony exposed. My belief is that in the past 16 years we have come
closer to making the resolution of these issues an honest search for the
truth, which, after all, is at the core of all legal inquiry. My hope is
that Justice Thomas’s latest fusillade will not divert us from that
path.

Anita Hill, a professor of social policy, law and women’s studies at
Brandeis University, is a visiting scholar at the Newhouse Center for
the Humanities at Wellesley College.