At Time magazine's Person of the Year event, Anita Hill was asked to discuss her thoughts about the sexual harassment allegations against GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain and how they might affect his campaign.
Initially hesitant to respond at all, she ultimately addressed the tenor of the public response to the allegations, saying, "We have evolved tremendously" with respect to reactions to allegations of workplace sexual harassment. She gave the public response to her testimony against Clarence Thomas partial credit for that development.
Read Time magazine's transcript of the conversation here. We have to agree that Hill "took the high road" with this response, especially considering the fact that Cain was cracking up over jokes about her just last week.
RICHARD STENGEL: We're right now, in the middle of a Republican campaign and there's a candidate, Herman Cain, who is going through something like what happened to you in 1991. I wondered whether you have any thoughts about how all that will affect the campaign, any thoughts in particular about what's happening to Mr. Cain right now.
ANITA HILL: You know I've been for the last few weeks on a book tour. I have no comment on Herman Cain.
STENGEL: It will help sell your book
HILL: No it won't. The book is not about Herman Cain.
People believe I follow politics more closely than I actually do follow politics. I'll simply say there are some serious issues out there and we all know what they are, and I think any one of us could speculate about what the outcome would be, but none of us know.
BELINDA LUSCOMBE: I know you said you're not talking about Herman Cain but, you must be gratified that the reactions to the accusations are very different than the reactions from your experience.
HILL: Yeah. Twenty years ago the conversation was entirely different, I mean we all know that. But it has evolved, in the past 20 years, to where we are today. And that's, you know, that’s a good thing.
…
Yes, we have evolved tremendously in discussing these kinds of issues and in one way, in some ways it's just not simply the description of sort of he said/she said, just sort of throwing that out as a way to explain everything, no longer exists. I mean there is some deliberate inquiry and that's what I think should continue to happen.
Read more at the Huffington Post.
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