I first interviewed Anita Hill over 10 years ago for my book What Will It Take to Make a Woman President?: Conversations About Women, Leadership and Power, where we discussed the various factors involved in why the U.S. had not yet elected a woman president and what could be done to move us closer to this milestone, as well as pave the way for more women leaders. Now, as the U.S. is poised to possibly elect Kamala Harris as not only its first woman president but its first Black and South Asian woman president, I wanted to talk to Hill again to get her insights on this potentially history-making moment.
Hill herself is an important figure in our country’s history: Her courageous testimony during the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court led to a national reckoning on sexual harassment, as well as spurred and paved the way for the wave of women running for office in the “Year of the Woman” that followed. A professor of social policy and law at Brandeis University, Hill continues to work toward ending gender-based violence and discrimination, as well as to move the needle on gender and racial equality.
As her testimony made her the target of both racist and sexist personal attacks—which we are now seeing Kamala Harris subjected to in her candidacy—I asked Hill to share her perspective on the biases and challenges Harris faces in her run for president and what we could do to counter them. She also shared her thoughts on what it would mean for the U.S. to elect its first woman and woman of color president, where we are in terms of the status of women today, her advice for young leaders, and more.
Read on for an excerpt from our interview, or listen to my full conversation with Anita Hill on my podcast ShiftMakers.
Marianne Schnall: When you are a woman, and particularly when you’re a woman of color, there are sexist and racist biases that often you wind up being subjected to. You would understand that because you yourself had to confront some of that.
What advice would you have for Kamala Harris or any other diverse leaders that have to encounter sexist and racist attacks, and what can we do to combat this overall?
Anita Hill: That’s the one thing I’m working on in a couple of ways. I’m actually teaching a class on racial constructions over history politically in terms of legal decisions. And I’m really digging in this political campaign during this period of campaigning to really pull those things out and expose them for what they are. The things that have held people back who were very well committed, very well qualified, but who couldn’t get beyond those things.
I’m also looking at it in terms of how AI is presenting her. I worked with a student last year on a project on AI that, again, puts out basically racist and/or sexist materials in its portrayal of women candidates.
And so we’ve got a lot to do, not only culturally, but also in terms of technology that keeps building, keeps spinning out those same kinds of tales and tropes. So that’s a problem I’m working on.
I think the first thing really is to call it out and expose that. I think that there has been a hesitancy to say that these things are racist or sexist, because then the response is, “Oh, they’re always crying or whining about racism or sexism, and this is not what it’s about.” But I think when you hear it over and over, when you hear things like, “She’s a DEI candidate,” or “She slept her way to this position,” it is just hard to ignore what you’re talking about. It’s pure sexism and racism right there in front of you, and we are better than that as a country.
That’s got to be something that we don’t just ignore and say, “Okay, she’ll get by, even though she’s going to face these things; she knows how to handle them.” What we should be aiming for is to make sure that that happens less and less and less. Because I think—and this is where I talk about young people—we want them to want to be part of these processes. But I think for many of them, they are just turned off by this kind of rhetoric, by this kind of language and attacks, and just don’t want to be a part of a system that allows that without challenging it.
One way to point it out when you hear it, and when you ask people who just don’t see the real problem or see it as a huge problem, is to say, “Would these kinds of stories or fictions be created about a white male? Would they be labeled that? Would those be the attack points?”
We can attack people’s records, their behavior, but to attack their identity is something that I think we need to move beyond as a country—whatever the setting is, but certainly in terms of our political leadership.
When you hear things like, ‘She’s a DEI candidate,’ or ‘She slept her way to this position.’ … It’s pure sexism and racism right there in front of you, and we are better than that as a country.
Anita Hill
Schnall: Yeah, it’s kind of stunning how overt it is right now. As you were just talking about some of these comments that Trump has made, whether it’s how she “turned Black” or the “DEI hire” or even the comments about her laugh or how she looked. I love that she’s leaning into the laugh. Part of what’s contagious about her energy is her joy—it’s a positive.
Hill: And why aren’t we asking a question about Donald Trump? I mean, have you ever heard him laugh? Does he understand what laughter is? And how do you relate to somebody who you don’t hear laughing? This to me is a plus: It shows that who we’re dealing with as a real human being with real human sentiments that we all have. We want to be looking at the humanity of our candidates for leadership because humanity then tells us something about their character.
Schnall: What would it actually mean for the girls and boys in our country, or even just for the world, to see us elect not only our first woman president, but our first Black and South Asian woman president? Why is that important?
Hill: Well, here’s a clue that it is important and that it’s being realized: When we talk to young people about this potential presidency, people of all genders are engaged. It’s not just people who identify as male or people who identify as female or neither—there seems to be an energy that transcends a lot of these identities. And I think it’s important because people come with all kinds of identities, and the younger people are understanding that now, more so perhaps than their parents or grandparents.
Now it’s important that our young people, who are going to be the people who are voting for elections for hopefully for the next 50 years, come into voting age with an understanding that they can be represented in and among leadership. That you don’t have to fit a stereotype, a gender or racial or any kind of particular stereotype of leadership—that leadership can come in all different forms, and does, if we open our eyes to the reality of the people who are out there trying to become those leaders.
Schnall: We stand poised to perhaps elect our first female president and break through this huge barrier—yet at the same time, there are places across the country where women literally don’t have control over their own bodies, their own healthcare decisions. How do you feel about where we are in this moment in terms of the status of women?
Hill: It’s really kind of frightening when you think that there are people who are leaders who are willing, and in fact seeming to look forward to, being able to monitor women’s reproduction, their pregnancies. And I think that is well beyond anything that I thought we could ever even contemplate as a country, to have those kinds of privacy issues and medical issues monitored by the state. So if you look at that as a marker, then we are in a very, very frightening place. And I hope that never becomes the law of the land, but I hope it never happens to anyone, any one individual. So we are in a scary place where those kinds of ideas are spoken out loud, and that is something that we really need to be taking into account in terms of how we move forward. I can hardly even speak when I think about the possibility of that.
It’s important that our young people, who are going to be the people who are voting for elections for hopefully for the next 50 years, come into voting age with an understanding that they can be represented in and among leadership.
Hill
Schnall: What would your advice be to young leaders today?
Hill: One of the pieces of advice that I give to young leaders is: There is no one size, there’s no one model for leadership. Anyone can lead, especially on the issues that they care about. So if you want to be a leader, I always use the example of: Don’t think that you have to speak like Martin Luther King, Jr., but think about what really drives you, what you really care about, and what your vision for making it happen is. And then use the particular skills and talents that you have to pursue it. It’s not going to be the same for everyone who’s even pursuing the same issue, but you can always bring something unique to your experiences, to your learnings, to your thinking, to a topic, and you can be a leader in that way.
Visit What Will It Take’s 2024 Election page for more conversations with today’s thought leaders, information on the biases and barriers women candidates face and how to counter them, and links to voting resources and organizations working to advance women’s political leadership in this election and beyond.
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