Anita Hill, the law professor who sounded the alarm about sexual harassment a generation ago while testifying against Clarence Thomas, is giving the commencement speeches at two local colleges.
Hill, 61, will give the keynote address at Rutgers University’s Law School commencement in Camden, N.J. on Thursday.
She will also speak to graduates at CUNY’s City College on June 1.
“The sexual harassment cases and #MeToo movement of the past year have brought Hill back into prominence as the woman whose courage in speaking out made sexual harassment a part of the social lexicon,” CUNY said in a release.
Currently a professor at Brandeis University, Hill ignited a national debate about workplace mistreatment after claiming in riveting testimony before the Senate Judiciary Congress in 1991 that Thomas, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush, had sexually harassed her.
Thomas denied the allegations and called the proceedings “a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.”
The Senate narrowly confirmed Thomas to the nation’s top court in a partisan 52-48 vote.
Hill worked for Thomas at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights and later the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before his ascension to the bench.