Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [45]
Yet despite some of the same resistance I had encountered at Oral Roberts University, the University of Oklahoma was a place where I could be productive and make a contribution. I felt more a part of the national academic community at Oklahoma, shedding some of the isolation I’d experienced because of the religious ideology rightly or wrongly associated with Oral Roberts University and its provisional accreditation. Some academics had shunned me because of my association with the school, assuming that it was established for the purpose of promoting an indefensible, conservative political agenda. Their somewhat misguided ideological view of the school was a product of the politics of the times.
My involvement with other law teachers, particularly minority law teachers, was a great help to me. When I moved into my office at the law center, waiting for me on my desk were notes and newsletters alerting me to the experiences of other African American faculty who had faced hostility from students. These stories, many from seasoned teachers and experienced scholars, helped me to understand my experience at Oral Roberts and to prepare for what I was to experience at Oklahoma. They also showed me that I would have to overcome the experiences without much assistance from my white colleagues. But by the end of the spring semester of 1988, in my second year teaching at Oklahoma, the students began to accept me as a faculty member. I did not change significantly, but I learned to meet some of their expectations without compromising mine. I took on a tougher and more detached demeanor and a more rigorous approach to classroom exchanges. What I had exhibited as concern had been interpreted by the students as weakness. To some extent, I had to stop showing that I cared about the students. Out of this new approach, I developed a reputation for being demanding. Yet one class of students who admitted that they’d started the year hating me gave me a box of candy on Valentine’s Day. Once again, I’d had to detach myself from the hurtful offenses I suffered. But in this case, a certain level of detachment paid off.
I kept developing my teaching and research, now focusing on contract and commercial law. In the spring of 1989 I taught my courses on an accelerated schedule and went to Europe to do research in German commercial law and practices. I was also able to attend the meetings of the international law body UNIDROIT, which was in the process of drafting international principles of contract law. The assembled international experts looked twice when I first appeared at their sessions, but the United States delegate, Alan Farnsworth, and the organization’s director, Michael Bonnel, were quite encouraging. I was gradually accepted into the group, one of a few women and the only black woman present. These meetings enabled me to follow the development of the body of law from near its beginning to its end in 1994. That same year I taught a commercial law course in the University of Oklahoma’s summer program at Oxford University. Though I occasionally taught a seminar or course in civil rights law, my intellectual and professional life was headed in another direction. Still, I continued to sponsor the black student organization and helped with the formation of the Coalition of Minority Students, an umbrella group that included Asian, Hispanic, Native American, and African American student organizations.
I was so immersed in my experiences at the University of Oklahoma and my interest in commercial and international law that by 1991 I had successfully overcome my experience with Thomas to the point of disregarding