Anita Hill
Anita Hill Conference Presentation: Our Critical Need to Eliminate Gender Violence and Inequality
The youngest of 13 children from a farm in rural Oklahoma, Anita Hill received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980. She began her career in private practice in Washington, D.C. Before becoming a law professor, she worked at the U. S. Education Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1989, Hill became the first African American to be tenured at the University of Oklahoma, College of Law, where she taught contracts and commercial law. She has made presentations to hundreds of business, professional, academic and civic organizations in the United States and abroad.
As counsel to Cohen Milstein, Anita Hill advises on class action workplace discrimination cases.
Gender-based violence is as present today as it was when Anita Hill first testified at the Thomas confirmation hearing in 1991. However, years of reckoning with gender-based violence have brought us to a better understanding of the problem and closer to eliminating it. We now recognize that gender violence is not just one behavior, but a range of behaviors—from so-called micro-aggressions to horrific crimes. We now know that racism, homophobia, transphobia and ethnic and other biases compound the harm and limit victims’ ability to address it. In this talk, Hill sheds light on the cultural, systemic and endemic nature and impact of gender violence. She also offers solutions, some individual, some public policy, learned from a lifetime of advocacy and her personal search for answers.
Full Bio:
Anita Hill is the Senior Advisor to the Provost, Brandeis University Professor of Law, Public Policy and Women’s Studies, Heller Graduate School of Policy and Management, and an Advocate for equality and civil rights.
The youngest of 13 children from a farm in rural Oklahoma, Anita Hill received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980. She began her career in private practice in Washington, D.C. Before becoming a law professor, she
worked at the U. S. Education Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1989, Hill became the first African American to be tenured at the University of Oklahoma, College of Law, where she taught contracts and commercial law. She has made presentations to hundreds of business, professional, academic and civic organizations in the United States and abroad. As counsel to Cohen Milstein, Anita Hill advises on class action workplace discrimination cases.
Hill’s new book, Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence, is a new manifesto about the origins and course of gender violence in our society; a combination of memoir, personal accounts, law, and social analysis, and a powerful call to arms from one of our most prominent and poised survivors. Anita’s previous book is Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race and Finding Home. She has also written an autobiography, Speaking Truth to Power. With Professor Emma Coleman Jordan she co-edited, Race, Gender and Power in America: The Legacy of the Hill-Thomas Hearings. Professor Hill’s commentary has been published in TIME, Newsweek,
The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Ms. Magazine. She has appeared on national television programs including Good Morning America, Meet the Press, The Today Show, The Tavis Smiley Show and Larry King Live.
Professor Hill has received numerous honorary degrees and civic awards. She has chaired the Human Rights Law Committee of the International Bar Association. In addition, she is on the Board of Governors of the Tufts Medical Center and the Board of Directors of the National Women’s Law Center and the Boston Area Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.