Justice Thomas's Memoir

[Earl Maltz]

Are you seriously claiming that at the time of her appointment Anita 
Hill had a"written record that...compare(s) with the record of others 
appointed to similar posts," i.e., chairs at Brandeis?

At 08:49 PM 12/5/2007, Janet Alexander wrote:
>Of course Professor Hill came to a lot of people's attention as a 
>result of the hearings (and by the way, at least as much because of 
>Arlen Specter's questioning as her own testimony).  What I said is 
>that it is self-contradictory to say in the same breath that (a) she 
>expected to gain professionally and hence economically from her 
>testimony and (b) she did not expect that testimony to become known 
>to anyone outside the Judiciary members and staff.  University 
>appointments processes are replete with layers of review that 
>require appointments to be supported by a written record that must 
>compare with the record of others appointed to similar posts.  No 
>one who has any familiarity with faculty appointments at reputable 
>institutions would think such a conspiracy possible.
>
>         Janet Alexander
>
>At 03:22 PM 12/5/2007, DavidEBernstein at aol.com wrote:
>>Let's go over this one more time.  Michael Zimmer wrote that the 
>>logic of the situation is that Hill was telling the truth. Why? 
>>"Then-Judge Thomas had all to gain by denying Professor Hill's 
>>claim and she had little to gain, but doing her civic duty, bycoming  forward."
>>
>>It's not 100% whether Prof. Zimmer was addressing her initial 
>>claim, made confidentially to the Judiciary Committee, her ultimate 
>>willingness to come forward and testify against him, or both 
>>(though the context implied to me both).  So I addressed both, and 
>>showed that in neither case does "logic" dictate that she was 
>>telling the truth (nor does it dictate that she was lying).  I 
>>should note that she had the choice at both points not to come forward.
>>
>>When the allegation was first made, confidentially, Prof. Hill may 
>>just have been doing her civic duty, or she may have disliked 
>>Thomas for person, ideological, or other reasons.  If the latter, 
>>than she did have something to gain--personal satisfaction at 
>>helping to defeat Thomas--but also nothing to lose, assuming, 
>>fairly I think that she trusted the committee to keep her 
>>allegations confidential.
>>
>>Once the allegations became public, Prof. Hill could have demurrred 
>>from pursuing them further, or she could do what she did.  At this 
>>point, Michael Zimmer's post suggests that he still thinks she had 
>>little to gain.  But she did gain, as is obvious, winning fame, 
>>fortune and adulation (though also, of course, suffering attacks 
>>from the right).  And if she had declined to testify, not only 
>>would she not have gained, some people would have surmised that she 
>>was unwilling to publicly assert her allegations because they 
>>weren't true to begin with, which couldn't have helped her.
>>
>>And, to address another of Prof. Alexander's points, Prof. Hill was 
>>certainly obscure, having no citations in the Westlaw database 
>>(beyond here own two publications and one "thank you") as of the 
>>end of 1990.  That doesn't make her "unqualfied," but it does mean 
>>that she would have been highly unlikely (to put it mildly) to come 
>>to Brandeis's attention but for the Thomas-Hill hearings.
>>
>>Brandeis, after all, simply doesn't go out and recruit law 
>>professors for anything.  No one else on Brandeis's legal studies 
>>faculty is a former law professor, 
>><http://www.brandeis.edu/programs/legal_studies/faculty.html>http://www.brandeis.edu/programs/legal_studies/faculty.html, 
>>and I believe the rest all have Ph.Ds, as I believe was true when I 
>>was an undergraduate there.
>>
>>
>>In a message dated 12/5/2007 5:30:12 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
>>jca at stanford.edu writes:
>>David Bernstein's original post (see below) said that Professor Hill
>>"did gain, big time" in that she is "now a well-known chaired
>>professor and feminist icon at Brandeis" and that "she had nothing to
>>gain, but did gain, big time, doesn't make much sense."  That is, he
>>implies that Professor Hill expected to gain professionally (and
>>economically) by her testimony.  In the very next sentence, he says
>>that she did not expect her allegations to be made public.  So, she
>>expected a payback in the form of a better job from testimony that
>>she was promised would not be made public?  It would be quite a
>>conspiracy that could get an endowed chair for an "obscure" (and by
>>implication unqualified) professor through the appointments process
>>at a university like Brandeis as payback for nonpublic testimony.
>>          Janet Alexander
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>----------
>>Check out AOL Money & Finance's list of the 
>><http://money.aol.com/special/hot-products-2007?NCID=aoltop00030000000001>hottest 
>>products and 
>><http://money.aol.com/top5/general/ways-you-are-wasting-money?NCID=aoltop00030000000002>top 
>>money wasters of 2007.