{"id":3272,"date":"2015-02-24T03:24:52","date_gmt":"2015-02-24T03:24:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/?p=3272"},"modified":"2018-10-11T18:09:37","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T18:09:37","slug":"anita-hill-talks-womens-leadership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/2015\/02\/anita-hill-talks-womens-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Anita Hill Talks to Women’s Leadership"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo Courtesy of Ocean Gao: Women\u2019s Leadership group meets with Anita Hill after her presentation to the entire community earlier in the day<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Wednesday February 18, Anita Hill was welcomed to Fieldston’s Assembly After Dark program. \u201cI remember watching her on TV,\u201d one parent said, \u201cand it was amazing to get to see her speak in person.\u201d Hill\u2019s role in the 1991 hearing of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas not only gave a voice to other victims, but also encouraged women to run for positions of power and highlighted the concept of intersecting social identifiers. \u201cThere were deeper social issues being openly discussed for the first time,\u201d said Hill, \u201cit\u2019s not like this was the first act of sexual harassment, it\u2019s that victims previously had no space – public or private – to talk about these experiences.\u201d Hill spoke about her case in terms of a larger movement towards gender equality, referring to it as “very political\u201d — that is to say, Hill believed there would have been no difference in the outcome if she were white. \u201cThey were not ready to deal with the issue of harassment,\u201d she asserted.<\/p>\n

Hill was not met with any shortage of questions after her talk. One parent asked what people could do now regarding issues of sexual harassment and assault. Hill\u2019s answer was clear: \u201cWe must listen to the victims,\u201d she said, \u201ctheir truth carries mounds of power.\u201d Hill further argued that we needed \u201crigorous and continued enforcement of the law,\u201d referring back to the case of Alexander vs. Yale. \u201cWhile you have young women\u2019s activism today, we have to have the government behind them\u2026 [we must] keep alive the idea of a fair and just society, one where we all feel valued.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hill received a standing ovation following her talk and Q&A session at the Assembly After Dark. \u201cI think [Anita Hill] did exactly what our school is supposed to train us to do,\u201d says Nick Garber (VI), \u201c[which is to] take an individual stand against a perceived injustice despite some pretty massive resistance.\u201d Dejon Bunn-Constant (VI) added, \u201cIt was great to hear someone so educated give a perspective on experiencing sexual harassment as a woman of color. Both are such oppressed groups that people who identify with those demographics tend to be silenced a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, Hill spoke at Fieldston\u2019s Upper School assembly, where she declared, \u201cChange doesn\u2019t happen because many people want it to. It is the select few that can affect change.\u201d Ironically, following Hill\u2019s statement was the sharing of the FSG gender mandate poll results, where it was announced that 38 percent of girls were opposed, in contrast to 73 percent of boys. As a result, the FSG gender mandate was the main subject of conversation when Hill came to speak with Fieldston\u2019s Women Leadership group. We \u201cneed diverse representation,\u201d she declared, \u201cwhich is not happening under the current system. We assume the current structure is the best structure for achieving the goals of the system, but is there something else we can be doing, given what we know about hidden\/unconscious bias?\u201d<\/p>\n

When prompted with the argument that \u201cguys have to find a girl to run with, so the girl is being used for her gender,\u201d Hill asked, \u201cWell, what if girls have to find a guy to run with? Isn\u2019t that how it is now?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday February 18, Anita Hill was welcomed to Fieldston’s Assembly After Dark program. \u201cI remember watching her on TV,\u201d one parent said, \u201cand it was amazing to get to see her speak in person.\u201d Hill\u2019s role in the 1991 hearing of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas not only gave a voice to other victims, but also encouraged women to run for positions of power and highlighted the concept of intersecting social identifiers. \u201cThere were<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":3287,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[],"coauthors":[132],"class_list":["post-3272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/leadership.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3272"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3288,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3272\/revisions\/3288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3272"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fieldstonnews.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}