Anita Hill Says She Will Vote For Joe Biden

Though Anita Hill still believes former Vice President Joe Biden has yet to truly apologize for his handling of her sexual harassment claims against now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the Brandeis University professor said Saturday that she will nonetheless vote for the Democratic presidential nominee.

“Notwithstanding all of his limitations in the past, and the mistakes that he made in the past, notwithstanding those ― at this point, between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I think Joe Biden is the person who should be elected in November,” Hill told CNN.

She added that, if Biden becomes president, she’s “more than willing to work” with him to find solutions to the issues of sexual harassment, gender violence and gender discrimination.

“It’s more about the survivors of gender violence. That’s really what it’s about,” she said of her vote.

Hill said last year that she’d be open to voting for Biden if he ended up on the presidential ballot — even though Biden’s actions during Thomas’ 1991 confirmation hearings botched her testimony against the judge. 

Biden ― who, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had overseen the hearings ― refused to allow testimony from several witnesses who could have corroborated Hill’s sexual harassment claims against Thomas.  

Still, in an NBC News interview last June, Hill said she didn’t believe Biden’s handling of the Thomas hearing had “disqualified him” from becoming president and said he was “perfectly capable of running” for the role. 

But Hill has maintained that Biden has never satisfactorily apologized to her for the way she was treated during the hearing ― despite his insistence to the contrary.

“An apology, to be real and sincere, has to take responsibility for harm,” Hill told CNN.

“He didn’t take responsibility. He didn’t hold himself accountable in any way, except that he was sorry that I felt I wasn’t treated fairly,” she continued, referring to a 2019 phone call between her and Biden, who said he’d apologized to her during the conversation. “He didn’t take ownership of his own role as chair of the committee.”