Anita Hill will deliver the 2019 commencement address.
Anita Hill, university professor of social policy, law, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of its Heller School for Social Policy and Management, addressed the members of the class of 2019, and their families and friends, at Wellesley College’s 141st commencement exercises on Friday, May 31, at 10:30 a.m.
About Anita Hill
Anita Hill is renowned for her work with civil and women’s rights, in pursuit of social justice, and to combat sexual harassment. Her voice has been prominent in academia, politics, and the media regarding gender, race, and equality; the Washington Post has called her a “leading face” of the ongoing #MeToo movement.
In her 1997 memoir, Speaking Truth to Power, Hill recounted her 1991 Congressional testimony against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. “Women who accuse men, particularly powerful men, of harassment are often confronted with the reality of the men’s sense that they are more important than women, as a group,” she wrote.
This past September, when Christine Blasey Ford stepped forward to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in high school, Hill penned a New York Times op-ed on the parallels to her own experiences: “With the current heightened awareness of sexual violence comes heightened accountability for our representatives. To do better, the 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee must demonstrate a clear understanding that sexual violence is a social reality to which elected representatives must respond.”
Hill’s most recent book is Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race and Finding Home, published in 2011. She received this year’s Courage Award from PEN America, a literary and human-rights organization that defends and celebrates free expression in the United States. Hill holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Oklahoma State University and a JD from Yale Law School as well as several honorary degrees.