Anita Hill!
May. 9th, 2024 11:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eve_primeToday I got to see Anita Hill! Our university's Center for the Study of Women and Society is celebrating its 50th year, and when I heard that they were hoping to get Anita Hill as a guest speaker, I was impressed and didn't expect it would really happen. But it did!
For those of you who aren't Americans, I should clarify that in 1991, Anita Hill became a major public figure when she realized she would have to go before the U.S. Senate and testify that her former boss had sexually harassed her; Reagan had nominated him to the Supreme Court. She had never wanted a public role, and she was subjected to an extraordinary level of harassment. (As she said tonight in her talk, she would much rather have spent her career in front of a computer or in a library.) She was a hero, and when she came on stage, my eyes teared up. Anita Hill!
She spoke about recent setbacks in civil rights, then reminded us that the U.S. Supreme Court has made horrible decisions in the past that were eventually overturned, and encouraged us to work together. She is the first to say that she's not a great public speaker, and she did rather better than I expected. That is, she was fine except for having to restart some sentences and occasionally using acronyms that not everyone in the audience knew. We also enjoyed her sense of humor.
I was pretty sleepy today, having woken up early (for me) for the Oregon Bach Festival book club's Zoom meeting with a composer, Sarah Kirkland Snider. I spent another hour on Zoom later, too, as G decided to have a lab meeting in honor of a colleague visiting from Germany. Both were on-camera meetings, so I was extra tired by the time I needed to drive to campus for the talk, but I'm glad I did.
For those of you who aren't Americans, I should clarify that in 1991, Anita Hill became a major public figure when she realized she would have to go before the U.S. Senate and testify that her former boss had sexually harassed her; Reagan had nominated him to the Supreme Court. She had never wanted a public role, and she was subjected to an extraordinary level of harassment. (As she said tonight in her talk, she would much rather have spent her career in front of a computer or in a library.) She was a hero, and when she came on stage, my eyes teared up. Anita Hill!
She spoke about recent setbacks in civil rights, then reminded us that the U.S. Supreme Court has made horrible decisions in the past that were eventually overturned, and encouraged us to work together. She is the first to say that she's not a great public speaker, and she did rather better than I expected. That is, she was fine except for having to restart some sentences and occasionally using acronyms that not everyone in the audience knew. We also enjoyed her sense of humor.
I was pretty sleepy today, having woken up early (for me) for the Oregon Bach Festival book club's Zoom meeting with a composer, Sarah Kirkland Snider. I spent another hour on Zoom later, too, as G decided to have a lab meeting in honor of a colleague visiting from Germany. Both were on-camera meetings, so I was extra tired by the time I needed to drive to campus for the talk, but I'm glad I did.
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Date: 2024-05-14 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-14 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-14 07:29 pm (UTC)What an honor to meet her, lucky you.
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Date: 2024-05-14 11:02 pm (UTC)