Anita Hill focuses on electoral, Supreme Court issues
She teaches at Brandeis, of course, and like most any academic she spends more than a little time doing research and writing. But in the weeks and days leading up to the 2004 presidential election and since, Hill has used her pen to address voting issues and what the future holds for the Supreme Court.
In opinion pieces for such media outlets as the Boston Globe and TIME.com, Hill has challenged the dearth of attention being paid to issues that traditionally matter to women voters, such as health care and education, and the struggle to maintain a family. She took both presidential candidates to task for not talking about those issues enough. And she has challenged the GOP's presidential election strategy for its impact on minority voters.
With President Bush's reelection she has turned her attention toward the future make-up of the Supreme Court, and on bringing her voice to public discussion about how the confirmation process should be handled. That's an area she knows a little something about. Her remarkable - and many say courageous - testimony at the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991 made Anita Hill a household name.
At Brandeis, Hill has been teaching in areas ranging from affirmative action to school vouchers. She has written extensively about international commercial law, bankruptcy, and civil rights. She has offered courses in those areas during a teaching career that began at Oral Roberts University in 1982 and took her to the University of Oklahoma College of Law before she began her affiliation with Brandeis in 1997.
When she is not teaching she can be found beating a path to her next speaking engagement or accepting another award from one of the many groups that want to honor her or link their names with hers. Or she's mulling yet another media request. Most recently she has appeared on CNN's American Morning to talk about the issues that are important to her. It's not that she wants the media attention. She's been there, done that. And Hill is at heart a private person who most prefers her work and simple entertainment and relaxation with friends.
From her office in Brandeis' Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Hill also has been mulling whether the laws we establish can force or encourage social change.
"I want to look at law in a new way," she says. "Where does the law end and where does its impact - if any - on people's real lives begin?" In other words, can society be seen to be reforming itself by passing laws? How does what's on the books translate in the real world?
It's not that she's lamenting her Senate testimony ordeal or complaining about the results. The experience gave her a platform for important issues, a book deal, and name recognition that opens doors, if not ears, that otherwise might be hard to crack.
Hill is the author of Speaking Truth to Power, recounting her personal background and experience as a witness in the Senate confirmation hearings. She is the co-editor, with Emma Coleman Jordan, of the book Race, Gender and Power in America, and has written extensively on international commercial law, bankruptcy and civil rights.
Her choice of Brandeis for her new academic base was a very deliberate one, says Hill. "It's the whole emphasis that's on social justice that's here."