Anita Hill: Roger Ailes Case Reminds Us to Stop Coddling Harassers
|
Version 0 of 1. While 21st Century Fox (FOXA) attends to the crisis prompted by multiple sexual harassment allegations against Fox News founder Roger Ailes, it's a good time to consider a larger issue. How do we get rid of sexual harassment in the workplace? In a telephone interview late last month, I posed that question to a woman who arguably knows more about the challenges of harassment than anyone: Brandeis University professor Anita Hill. Hill put sexual harassment on the national agenda when she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 that Clarence Thomas had harassed her when he was her boss at two federal agencies. The setting was Thomas's confirmation hearings after being nominated to a position on the Supreme Court. Thomas denied Hill's allegations and got the job. Hill ultimately became a feminist legend for taking the risk of speaking out about her experiences. Today she is a professor of social policy, law and women's studies at Brandeis. She told me that, to begin fixing the problem, we have to stop coddling harassers. "If I could wave a magic wand, I would at the very least make sure that every time there is a finding of harassment, especially for people who are recalcitrant and unapologetic, or serial harassers, there are severe consequences," she said. "We have to be willing to make the hard choices, even with people we otherwise value." Giving Ailes a $40 million severance package is a big-time example of coddling, Hill said. And then there's the absurdity of his resignation letter. When I told Hill that Ailes boasted in the letter that he took "particular pride" in his role advancing the careers of women, Hill let out a little chuckle. "I don't even know what to say to that," she said. "He's not even acknowledging his behavior that so many women described." To chip away at the problem, Hill says it's important that social scientists keep measuring harassment to the degree they can. That's a challenge given the pervasiveness of mandatory arbitration agreements in which companies force employees -- before a job is official -- to agree never to sue. When complaints are heard behind closed doors, there's a lot less data to measure, to say nothing of the ability of harassers to quarantine their records and move on to the next job. (If, that is, they lose their jobs at all). Mandatory arbitration agreements "hide the real numbers and they keep us from being able to gather information that looks at the whole and makes changes," she said. |