Hill speaks on gender, race discrimination

The woman who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment visited Penn as part of a book tour. Anita Hill predates Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky and Katherine Wiley as the first woman to bring national attention to sexual harassment in the workplace. "I come to you as a woman whose experience with gender bias was profound and life-changing," Hill said yesterday during a speech to approximately 200 students and faculty members in Meyerson Hall. The event, a lecture and book signing by Hill, was sponsored by Penn's African-American Studies Department. Her book, Speaking Truth to Power, was published last October. It tells her story of the 1991 sexual harassment hearings against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, who has since joined the court. Hill, 41, worked as an assistant to Thomas from 1981-83. Thomas was the assistant secretary of education and then became the chairperson of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Hill filed a sexual harassment complaint against Thomas in 1991 when he was nominated for the high court, a charge he denied. Thomas ultimately won Senate confirmation after a bitter and partisan dispute pitting Hill's largely Democratic and feminist supporters against Thomas' Republican backers. History Professor Mary Berry, who introduced Hill last night, was working on the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights in Washington, D.C., when Hill's charges first broke. Berry noted that Hill is an "important icon in the struggle for women's rights," and later said that she is "as least as important as [civil rights pioneer] Rosa Parks." The recent sexual harassment allegations against President Bill Clinton have only increased the demand for Hill to lecture around the country, Berry added. "Her coming here is very timely," echoed Gale Ellison, the program coordinator for the African-American Studies Department. "We were very fortunate that we tracked her down before the Monica Lewinsky situation." Hill discussed society's tendency to isolate race from gender and commented on her individual experiences as a black woman. She described the Thomas hearing as a "way to pit two groups of outsiders against each, and it was effective." Hill added that, "I couldn't choose between [focussing on] race and gender when I wrote my book." Hill spoke about the difficulties hindering the public's understanding of sexual harassment, noting that "the public is much more interested in talking about sex than about discrimination." The issues of racial and gender bias in schools and in the workplace were also addressed by Hill, who stressed the need for a "multi-layered" conversation about race that "must look back in time and also look forward." And although she touched on Paula Jones' recently-dismissed lawsuit against Clinton --Estressing that it was "not realistic [and] not reflective of what's going on in the workplace" --EHill avoided making any specific statements about the president. The majority of the audience responded enthusiastically to Hill. "I think she is right on target about not being able to separate racism and sexism," said Sarah Meyrowitz, a first-year Social Work student. "Oppression being detrimental to the oppressor is a very important point." But others said they were disappointed that Hill mainly discussed abstract race and gender issues, rather than focusing on the 1991 hearings. "I felt discluded from it, it was more about gender and race," College Junior Veronica Scalzo noted. "[Hill] said she was speaking to black women. She avoided the news situation."