Hearings still resonate for Anita Hill

• Tweet

WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Anita Hill, who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his U.S. Senate confirmation hearings, said the ordeal had an "unexpected consequence."

Hill has written a book on gender and race, "Reimagining Equality," and is giving a series of interviews and attending seminars on the 20th anniversary of Thomas' Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the Senate, which she and other people say were a turning point in the discussion of sexual harassment.

"People are really still feeling this," Hill told The Washington Post. "That gut reaction [people felt] in 1991 still has not gone away."

While supporters say Hill is a symbol of the fight against sexual harassment and gender discrimination, others say her testimony was a partisan attack.

"The hearing had for me an unexpected consequence," Hill told the newspaper. "I just didn't have any sense that it was going to resonate in the way that it did. It has been kind of difficult for me."

Hill teaches social policy, law and women's studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts and has joined the law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll as an adviser to its civil rights and employment practice group.