What students at U. Penn wanted Anita Hill to talk about in 1992

The term “sexual harassment” was so new in the news that the anchors seemed confused as to whether to pronounce it har-ASS-ment or HAR-ass-ment

Back in 1992, I was on the board of the campus group at the University of Pennsylvania that selected speakers to come to campus and give speeches each semester. We usually had a decent sized budget that we could either spend all on, say, one former vice president or head of state, or divvy it up among a few politicians and artists. For spring 1992, we invited Prof. Anita Hill, who six months earlier had been grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding her claims of sexual harassment by now-Justice Clarence Thomas. She had served as his attorney-advisor at the U.S. Department of Education and then as his assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before leaving in 1983. In 1991, she told the committee that he frequently aimed salacious comments at her and boasted of his sexual prowess.

“Americans were shocked by both the frankness of Hill’s lurid testimony and the unsympathetic response of the all-male committee, some of whom were openly antagonistic toward Hill,” summarizes History.com.

Hill has been in the news again, responding to then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chair and current presidential candidate Joe Biden’s…