I called Hill to discuss her 30-year journey to this moment. I wanted to know how she looks at her Senate Judiciary Committee experience now, and what it was like to testify on sexual harassment at a time when the concept itself was still being defined. “If I could just clearly say what it was that happened, I assumed that would be enough,” she said. We also covered what she wants from President Biden today.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Katelyn Fossett: I want to start with some recent news. Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley has recently announced he’s running for reelection. He was on the Judiciary Committee both during Thomas’ confirmation hearings and during Kavanaugh’s. He’s 88 years old. What do you think the median age of people in our legal and political systems means for how we address gender violence?

Anita Hill: Well, I think that there are people of all ages who really can come to understand this problem and should take responsibility for doing something about it. I don’t think that older people are disqualified because of their age; we can all learn. And I’m hopeful that he has learned. There may be other things that would disqualify him, but I wouldn’t use age as a disqualifier.

Everyone should still be learning this. The world is changing. And if he’s going to represent Iowa, he’s going to represent the victims and survivors in that state. So, he needs to learn.

Fossett: The Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings were 30 years ago now. How does an experience like that affect you? In particular, does it diminish the moral authority of the court at all when you’ve had the kind of experiences you’ve had with someone on the court?

Hill: I think it’s not just me personally that has doubts about the court now. The fact is that we have two sitting Supreme Court justices who have gone through hearings about sexual misconduct — one sexual assault allegation against Justice Kavanaugh, and then there were the Clarence Thomas hearings, which were focused on his behavior, which I would describe as sexual harassment. The question about integrity of the court isn’t just about me and Christine Blasey Ford; it’s about the American public’s confidence in the court. I think it’s been diminished for a lot of people, including myself and including Christine Blasey Ford, but I don’t want to speak for her. But I think for the public, there has been some reduction in belief in the integrity of our court because they don’t necessarily now trust the way people get placed on Supreme Court.

The court really is only as strong as all of the people who are sitting on it. So having two sitting justices whose integrity has been called into question is a blow to the court and the entire judicial system in this country.

Fossett: The Thomas hearings had a big impact on your life path. Addressing gender violence has become your life’s work. And it also introduced you to the American public and defined you to the public for a long time. Has that ever felt like a struggle?

Hill: That’s just the nature of that kind of spectacle — that it does become what defines people. But I think I’ve moved away from that. I really moved into more a world of problem-solving. Not just announcing what a problem is or what has happened to me. But what I’ve moved to in Believing is: What is happening to our society? What’s happening to individuals in elementary schools who are bullied and harassed and sexually harassed in numbers that we don’t even have a full accounting of? What’s happening in colleges and universities? We’re beginning to understand that very recently with students protesting sexual assault in fraternities and asking for the closing of fraternities. And what’s happening in our workplaces? There are examples over and over again. We have, of course, #MeToo, which was driven in part by sexual misconduct of all sorts: rapes, sexual assault and sexual extortion in Hollywood. But then, when it came down to it, the response was from women all throughout our society — 19 million tweets [the number of times the hashtag #MeToo was used as of October 2018]. And even what’s happening in our homes? Ten million people will be victimized by an intimate partner every year in this country. And then there is the secondary impact of that kind of violence. Of course, there’s the health and well-being of people, both physical and psychological, that come out of those circumstances. But there is also the fact that many of those people will become homeless.

So, the problem really is bigger than an individual problem. It’s bigger than one single behavior — sexual harassment — which I think most people associate with me. And what I’m trying to do in this book is to connect all of us. And that’s happened almost organically because I’ve heard from people who have had experiences in each of those institutions. They have helped me to understand that if we don’t address all of those problems, we’re never going to be able to stop one individual problem like sexual harassment in the workplace.

Fossett: Where do you think we should look first in terms of solutions?

Hill: We’re talking about a systemic problem that is reflected in our structures. Can I just give you an example that is recent so it’s on my mind? We recently heard the testimony of four Olympic gymnasts who talked about their experience of being abused by a university doctor, Larry Nassar, when they were children. They reported the abuse to the FBI. And my understanding is that the FBI did nothing to investigate their complaints. In fact, one of the gymnasts said that when she was telling an agent what happened to her, he sat silent, and then at the very end he said, “Is that all?” He dismissed it. This kind of thinking is being built in the very structures that are there to protect us. It’s not just behavioral. If we deal with one person — if Harvey Weinstein goes to jail — the problem’s not going to be over. In the Nassar case, after these girls complained, he went on to molest and abuse 70 to 100 more victims. So, we have systems that have actually enabled this behavior.

It’s going to take multiple layers of responses and multiple solutions to get there. We know that the criminal justice system does not typically respond well to sexual violence. Typically speaking, the rate of arrest for sexual assault is very, very low compared to the number of complaints. We know that rape kits have landed on shelves and gone unanalyzed.

And there’s a problem with the courts — the civil courts — in terms of interpreting sexual harassment laws under the Civil Rights Act. With two decisions, the Supreme Court basically has gutted the Violence Against Women Act and limited the role that the federal government can play in protecting victims and survivors.

There is no simple solution to a complex problem. So, there needs to be governmental solutions. We need to reinvigorate the Violence Against Women Act.

I see gender violence as a public crisis, obviously. We also know that we haven’t done enough to really measure those impacts. We know that you can’t fix what you haven’t measured. So, one of the things that the federal government can do is try to understand what the impact is by finding ways to measure the impact.

The changes should be big, and they should be led by the president. And declaring this a national crisis would help us to do that.

Fossett: In the book, you say that you think that Biden should commit himself to ending gender violence. What do you think that might look like?

Hill: He should create an office that would engage all the different Cabinet agencies to report on the potential impact of gender violence to their operation. There is some work at the Centers for Disease Control around health and violence against women. This kind of response would involve Housing and Urban Development. It would involve the education department. There is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which isn’t Cabinet-level, but it is a commission that is responsible for sexual harassment in the workplace. There are Justice Department issues; there are Health and Human Services issues. There are, in fact, transportation issues. I think that there needs to be a coordinated effort at the highest level to get the federal government behind this and then lead the states.

But I also think that even if that happens, it doesn’t absolve our private sector from addressing the problem at the highest level.

And we also have to understand how other identity-related factors can contribute to the lack of reporting and the actual harm and frequency of violence. We’ve got to deal with racism and transphobia and homophobia in order to really make sure that every survivor is safe.

Fossett: I want to ask about what it was like to come forward 30 years ago with the allegations against Clarence Thomas and testify at his hearing. During the Kavanaugh hearings, a lot of people kept discussing your own testimony. And I remember thinking it must have been even harder to have done it that long ago, when there was no template, when some of these concepts such as sexual harassment were still being defined.

Hill: Well, there was no template, there really was not any. … I had legal counsel that had limited experience with sexual harassment claims. They had some experience, but the setting was different. This wasn’t a civil-rights case being brought in federal court; it was entirely different. None of those rules apply. And the Senate Judiciary Committee … there were no civil rules of procedure that were being complied with. So, I approached it through talking to people, mostly my family and my lawyer. I approached it by just trying to be as clear as I could possibly be about what happened to me. I didn’t approach it trying to prove that I was sexually harassed. My goal was to prove that Thomas could behave to me in a way that put into question his ability or his authority to be on the Supreme Court. That he behaved in a way that could easily have been interpreted as a violation of the law that he was sworn to protect.

And if I could just clearly say what it was that happened, I assumed that would be enough. I knew that there would be doubters. But for me, I knew that all I could do was to say and make very clear what my experience had been. I knew it was important to the question of capability as a Supreme Court justice. But I wanted them to see it, and that was something that they had to come to a conclusion about. I mean, they had to interpret it. That was their job. My job was to tell it. And I did my job. I don’t think they did theirs.

And let me say this, though: I want people to understand we have changed. The Senate Judiciary Committee and Chuck Grassley? I don’t think he’s changed much. I don’t think his understanding of the problem has changed at all. But I think as a country, we have changed. And I think we’re in a position right now where the public is ready for it. The public is ready for an investment in alleviating this toxic problem that runs through all of our institutions, public and private. And I think they will get behind leadership that will do it, and I think many people hopefully will become leaders themselves that will take on this problem.