Stephanie Wildman on Lessons to be Learned from the Kavanaugh and Thomas Confirmation Hearings

Professor Stephanie Wildman has published Hearing Women: From Professor Hill to Dr. Ford, 33 J. C.R. & Econ. Dev. 85 (2019). In Hearing Women, Professor Wildman focuses on Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony in September 2018 during the confirmation hearings for now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh in which Ford alleged that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when both he and she were teenagers. Wildman contrasts the events of the Kavanaugh confirmation with the events of the confirmation hearings for now-Justice Clarence Thomas in which Professor Anita Hill alleged that Thomas sexually harassed her. For example, Wildman argues that while Thomas highlighted his status as a black man, thus, “deracing” Hill, Kavanaugh “exercised white racial privilege by conducting himself in a manner unthinkable for a Black man.” In turn, Wildman considers how reactions to these hearings speak to society’s views on civility, sexual assault, and the criminal justice system and highlight the filtering roles of race and gender. Wildman concludes by explicating three lessons suggested by these hearings and their aftermath: (1) it is useful to “ask the other question” about different identity categories to uncover how multiple forms of oppression interact; (2) “change doesn’t happen without speaking truth to power in some way;” and (3) “ceding power by not voting can have a generational impact on the judicial system.”