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.