Has committee learnt lessons of Hill hearing?
The sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh recall Anita Hill’s accusations against Clarence Thomas in 1991.
The decision to have Thomas and Hill testify publicly before the Senate Judiciary Committee had farreaching implications for US politics and society’s efforts to grapple with sexual harassment in the workplace.
Republicans were perceived as too harsh in their questioning of Hill. Democrats faced criticism for being timid in her defence.
Former Democratic VicePresident Joe Biden, who was the committee chairman in 1991, said last year that he owed Hill an apology and told reporters yesterday that any woman’s public claims of assault should be presumed to be true.
An estimated 20 million people watched in 1991 as Hill, then a University of Oklahoma law professor, accused Thomas of making unwanted advances and lewd remarks when she worked for him at the Education Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the 1980s.
Republicans aggressively questioned Hill, who like Thomas is black, suggesting that she had made up the unwelcome advances.
Thomas won confirmation by a vote of 52 to 48, with 11 Democrats supporting him in a Senate they controlled. The committee was made up of 14 white men. By comparison, the current committee has 11 Republicans, all men, and 10 Democrats, four of whom are women.
Spurred on by the #MeToo movement, sexual misconduct receives much more attention than it did then, and allegations of wrongdoing have toppled powerful men in politics, media, the arts and other fields.
In a statement issued on Saturday, Hill said, “I have seen firsthand what happens when such a process is weaponised against an accuser, and no one should have to endure that again.” —AP