Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [170]
Apparently, on the theory that I would have to leave the state if I had no job, Sullivan finally proposed legislation to abolish the law school at the University of Oklahoma altogether. During the day the proposed legislation was to be considered, Million canvassed the halls of the capitol building declaring, “This is about Anita Hill, and it won’t stop until we get rid of her.” Behind the scenes, Boren told individuals he welcomed my return. But his reported meeting with Sullivan “to settle differences Sullivan had” suggested otherwise to the public, and I doubted very much the sincerity of his welcome.
Coupled with his refusal to meet with me, Boren’s action suggested that politics controlled his decisions—not surprising given that he had just arrived on campus from a career in politics. I used no political clout to demand such a meeting, as some suggested. It was for me an academic matter, to be settled within the boundaries of the academic community. When our paths did cross, it was completely by accident at a university function where we sat at adjacent tables with our backs to each other. Budge Lewis approached Boren and asked if he would like to meet me. “Of course,” he responded. “I did not know that she was here.” He turned to where I was seated no more than four feet away and greeted me with the hearty declaration that he would be “restoring tradition to the law school.” Thinking back to the tradition that had brought the most attention to the school, I found the remarks particularly insensitive. Though he probably meant traditions of quality, he simply assumed that I would see tradition in the same way he did, forgetting that when he was a student, there were few women and few students of color, and no black or female faculty. Not a tradition to which I want to return.
As I pulled into Shirley’s driveway and parked my car adjacent to the For Sale sign, I questioned my own decision to return to the University of Oklahoma in the fall of 1995. I was certain that my participation in the normal campus activities would never be the same. The activities in whose involvement I had been welcomed—faculty committees, faculty awards and recognition, university projects, summer research grants—may in fact be off limits, judged by a standard and procedure limited to me, as had been my application for leave and sabbatical. A group of female students from the class before had met with me for lunch and encouraged me to return. Several colleagues had visited with me to do the same. I had even heeded the accusation of one friend who suggested that to leave would show my accusers that I lacked toughness and another who said that my requests for assurances from the university that I not be singled out for different treatment were just efforts to receive “special treatment.” In the end I chalked up much of these latter comments to the perspective of those making them.
It seemed incredibly macho to me to remain in a situation of discrimination simply to prove to those who vilified me that I could “tough it out.” In addition, I was aware that calls for equal treatment are often seen as calls for “special treatment” in situations where discrimination has become the norm. My chief concern at the moment was that I not become complicitous in my own denigration—that by staying I not implicitly show my approval of the institution’s choice to let politics prevail over academic principles and interests. Nevertheless, I decided to return. In many ways it was a default decision but I was driven by the fact that the professorship had