Excerpts From Anita Hill’s Interview With The Times

Anita Hill spoke by phone this week with The New York Times, reflecting on the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991 that put a spotlight on sexual harassment and treatment of accusers.

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who announced his presidential bid on Thursday, oversaw the hearings as the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Biden called Ms. Hill a few weeks ago to express regret over what she endured. Ms. Hill discussed that call and her feelings toward Mr. Biden in the interview. Here are excerpts from that conversation, transcribed by The Times and lightly edited for content and clarity.

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On first impressions of Biden and the consequences of the Thomas hearings

SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I’d like to begin just a little bit at the beginning to ask you about your interactions with Biden. If you could just walk me through — when was the first time you encountered him? I don’t know if you met him before the hearings? What was your impression of him then — and then as it ended?

ANITA HILL, PROFESSOR AT BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY: The first time I met Joe Biden was really at the hearing. We had talked on the telephone prior to the hearing.

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STOLBERG: Did he promise you anything at that time in terms of the way he was going to conduct the hearing?

HILL: One of the things he did was to go over what supposedly would be the process and that was that I would testify first in the morning and then that Judge [Clarence] Thomas would have a chance to respond. As you know, that didn’t happen that way, and that was merely the first disappointment that I think I had — was that the process got swept up in [inaudible]. Thomas was able to offer a rebuttal before I had ever said a word, and there was an attempt by the Republicans to introduce my statement before I had a chance to present it.

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STOLBERG: I’m wondering what your impression was then of Biden going into the hearing and how it changed coming out of the hearing.

HILL: I think my impression going into the hearing was already disappointed with the fact that he had changed the process. That was how I went into the hearing. I was skeptical at that point and it didn’t change. It didn’t change because, again, I felt that over and over again there were negotiations going on with the Republican members of the committee that really diverted the process from what I thought had the potential to be a fair hearing of my concerns, as well as the concerns of the other witnesses who were not called to testify but who had information to share.

STOLBERG: Did you feel that he lied to you about that?

HILL: I leave you to say whether he lied or not. What he told me turned out not to be the case. If you want to call that lying, that’s fine. I think, at the very least, I would say it was misleading.

STOLBERG: In 2014, you told me that you felt he had done “a terrible job,” and I’m wondering if you can just elaborate on that.

HILL: I can elaborate on it by saying that [inaudible] as the chair, I think there were moments when he could have exercised control over the process itself, over the range of information that the Republicans were presenting. So, for example, when there was no objection when [Senator] Orrin Hatch started waving a copy of “The Exorcist” during the hearing. There was no response from the chair until well into a whole lot of things that had happened, including a press conference where Senator [John C.] Danforth brought forward a physician who had never interviewed me and accused me of erotomania.

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HILL: And let me be clear about this, and I hope you’ll print this. This hearing and all of what went on was certainly about me, because I was the witness, and it was also about the other witnesses who wanted to testify and who were accused of all sorts of things from the Senate floor by the Senate — by the committee members in terms of their charges — but were not called to testify. But it is really about the debasement of the process.

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HILL: The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for a person to sit on the Supreme Court in a lifetime appointment is especially a place where people want the process to have integrity. And what happened was that the process went completely off track, it was not managed well, there was no transparency; there was no clarity as to what information was being shared. And I will just say this: It set the stage — from 1991 — set the stage for what happened in 2018.

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HILL: It set the stage for what people now think are sham hearings, which are supposed to be about truth and about finding the best people for positions for power, testing their character and fitness for those positions. But instead it set the stage for, “Lets just make political choices that are aimed at more protecting our positions as senators.” More about protecting a calendar which they were saying over and over again, “We’ve got to get this done quickly because we want to move on.” It was more about that than assuring the American public that you have the right people in these offices and on the Supreme Court.

STOLBERG: And do you hold then-Senator Biden personally responsible for all that?

HILL: I hold him responsible certainly for what happened in 1991, and to the extent that many of the same things that happened in 1991 followed in 2018, there is a connection. There is clearly a connection.

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STOLBERG: One of the big differences between your hearing and the Kavanaugh hearing [of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh] — and I assume that’s what you mean when were referring to 2018 — is that you actually had corroborating witnesses but they were not allowed to appear. And Biden has made the case throughout the years that they didn’t want to appear — he’s made it seem as though they didn’t want to appear. I wonder what you think of that.

HILL: I think you just have to refer to what those witnesses have said, or those potential witnesses have said. They have indicated they were ready and available and willing to appear, over and over again. They came into the process on their own; I didn’t invite them in. These were people I didn’t even know. So they came forward to testify on their own. I don’t see any evidence that they then said that they didn’t want to testify other than what we’ve heard from Senator, Vice President, now ex-Vice President Biden. I can only look at what I know and the fact that I heard from the witnesses. But let me just say this: One had to wonder, if he is correct, why they changed their minds about testifying. I would suggest that they changed their minds because they saw a flawed process where they weren’t going to be heard and they might end up being destroyed. I don’t know that that’s the case, but I think that’s a reasonable conclusion to reach — and he was in charge of the process.

STOLBERG: You told me in 2014 that the net effect of all this was that it created a “he said, she said” situation which did not have to exist. I wonder if you still feel that way.

HILL: I feel that way. Again, let’s keep in mind that that hearing was an opportunity for the Senate to show how women who come forward to tell their story about experiencing harassment or sexual assault or rape, how they should be given a fair hearing. Very often what happens is that the people who are opposing them are in fact doing the same thing, trying to create a situation where it is one person’s word against the other. And so they’re trying to limit the amount of evidence that can be presented. This is not unusual. So let’s don’t think of this as just what happened to me in 1991. Let’s think about what is happening to women who are coming forward even today and how the Senate could have been a model for the best way to do this. It still remains a model for what many people — and I’m one of them — think is the worst way to do these kinds of hearings.

On receiving a call from Biden

STOLBERG: Has he apologized to you?

HILL: Senator Biden and I have had a conversation, and I think he said to me exactly what he has said to the American public. And again, you can describe that as an apology, but what I’m more interested in is what are our leaders going to do in the future. What happens in the future?

STOLBERG: When did you have this conversation?

HILL: It’s been a few weeks ago.

STOLBERG: Did he call you?

HILL: We had a telephone conversation.

STOLBERG: Do you consider it an apology?

HILL: Again, I keep saying this. The focus on an apology to me is one thing. But there needs to be an apology to the other witnesses, and there needs to be an apology to the American public, because we know now how deeply disappointed women all over the country were about what they saw — and not just women. There are women and men now who are just — really have lost confidence in our government to respond to the problem of gender violence.

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HILL: I’m hoping that all of our leaders are going to be looking at this and thinking about ways to move the country forward.

STOLBERG: He last month said “to this day I regret I couldn’t come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved, given the courage she showed by reaching out to us.” I wonder how you reacted when he said that to the public?

HILL: Well, right now I react the same way. I react to that by saying, “When the next instance occurs, can you come up with another way? When will you be able to come up with a way to address what happened in 1991?” Because we need leadership to take the mantle on this.

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[Later in the interview]

STOLBERG: I do want to ask you a little more about the phone call, because it has, after all, been 28 years. So I’m wondering: Did it come out of the blue? Were you surprised? Did he have an aide arrange it? How did it happen?

HILL: Oh, yeah. I was surprised when I was first approached that it would happen in that way. It was — somebody approached me about, would I accept a phone call. And again, you’re right, it has been 28 years, and I had in fact moved on, not necessarily expecting an apology and have moved on really, as I had said earlier to being forward thinking about accountability in the future. So we’ll see, I mean, there are some issues that are going to be coming up, whether it’s the Violence Against Women Act, or any number of issues that are going to be on the table around gender equality and just basic fairness. And I think we need to hold all of — everybody who wants to run for president today should have in their minds and on their agenda addressing the concerns of the women and men who have come forward in the movement that has occurred, the #MeToo movement, since 1991. Not just about 1991.

STOLBERG: Did you express to him the things that you have expressed to me, on this phone call, about the shortcomings in the process and how you do hold him responsible?

HILL: Yes.

STOLBERG: And how did he react to that?

HILL: Well, you know, I think you can ask him those questions, I’d rather you ask him.

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STOLBERG: It sounds like you were left unsatisfied by the conversation.

HILL: I won’t deny that my sense of the conversation is also influenced by the whole series of events that have happened in the last few weeks since we talked. But I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, “I’m sorry for what happened to you.” I will be satisfied when I know that there is real change and real accountability and real purpose to correct the issues that are still there.

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HILL: I guess if I have to look at them in the totality, what I’m still wanting to hear is a full understanding of how as a leader he will hold himself — and then be able to hold others — accountable for this behavior.

STOLBERG: And by “this behavior,” you mean?

HILL: The kind of behavior that happened to me, the process that he was in charge of, the kind of personal behavior that he has been accused of. All of it.

STOLBERG: O.K., so those accusations are troublesome to you, what Lucy Flores [Ms. Flores is the former candidate for lieutenant governor of Nevada who said Mr. Biden touched her in a way that made her uncomfortable] and others have said?

HILL: Oh, absolutely. As I think it is to a number of people.

On the Kavanaugh hearings

STOLBERG: That sort of brings us back, in a way, to the Kavanaugh hearings, and I wonder if you could just draw out for me a little bit more of the parallels that you see between these two hearings.

HILL: Well, one of the first things I would note is that there was no process in place in the Senate to address this issue, there was nothing. There was no rule — now that could be because the senators themselves do not hold themselves accountable. The Senate has no process for these kinds of claims. But in the Judiciary Committee, where we know that this has happened before and we know now with two examples how challenging it is for women who have a complaint to come forward, there needs to be a process. There needs to be something put in place. It needs to be thoughtful.

On Biden’s candidacy and comparisons to Trump

STOLBERG: So you know that he is going to announce his candidacy for president. Do you think that his conduct in 1991 or since is disqualifying?

HILL: I don’t think that I am — Uh. I’m biased [inaudible] entirely to say whether everyone should think it is disqualifying. I’m really open to people changing but it’s not enough to say, “I couldn’t have done anything then.”’ What I want to hear from him, and what I want to hear from all of the candidates, is that this problem that we are experiencing now, that we are more aware of than ever before, problems of sexual harassment and sexual assault, women’s integrity to protect their own bodies — that this is a big problem. This is a problem that should be a problem of major public concern. I want to know what every candidate is going to do to address it.

STOLBERG: Would you vote for him?

HILL: If he can address this problem.

STOLBERG: But he has not yet?

HILL: What we have is, we’ve got 20 people running already. So there may be better choices.

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[Later in the interview]

STOLBERG: So, it is possible that the situation will come down, in the end, to a choice between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and I’m wondering, what would you do in that case?

HILL: What would I do in that case? I don’t know what you mean.

STOLBERG: Who would you vote for?

HILL: I don’t really have any control over that. But let me say this: What we should be doing in the interim is to make sure that whoever is the nominee differentiates him or herself from Donald Trump in respect to these issues.

STOLBERG: Do you think it will be difficult for Biden to do that, given his history?

HILL: I don’t know. I’m willing to give him the chance. And I hope he will step up.