peyote in its ceremonies, but under petitioner's submission, they could fire any employee who reported that use of peyote to civil authorities, and that employee would have no recourse. we know that under u.s. v. lee, an amish employer has to comply with the social security laws, but under their submission, the employer could fire without recourse any employee who called noncompliance to the attention of the eeoc. we believe that -- that you can trust to congress on these hard areas where there needs to be additional accommodations; congress could make them, just as justice scalia suggested. in almost every circuit, it does not apply to teachers. >> does it not date the enactment of the veterans with disabilities act -- americans with disabilities act?

it would continue to apply to the ada as it does to title 7. >> it did not apply as sweepingly as two teachers. we had this debate with justice breyer over whether you say that congress excluded retaliation cases. but it was at a time when this court had a position that religious organizations could not participate in getting public funding even when they were providing remedial services to low-income students. we repeated that doctrine -- repudiated that doctrine. you should comply in some instances with the same rules. when you leave it to be read into -- >> do catholic schools and parochial schools share

the public funds the same way that they do? >> no, they do not. >> you bet they do not. >> do not tell me that fair is fair and that it is now like everybody else. it is not true. >> it was recognized in your opinion in smith and in justice kennedy's opinion that where you have doctrines -- you do not second-guess religious doctrine. you do a balancing test to make sure of that there is sufficient governmental interest if you will undercut an organization's ability to convey its use -- its usviews. >> the many distinctions and

balancing tests in their argument show if you try to decide these cases. we may have an ongoing problem with the margin. but many cases are easy. the priest, the rabbi, the bishop, the congregation cannot sue. >> i am not sure why the status of the individual matters under your theory. it seems to me what you're saying is that, so long as the religious organization gives a religious reason of any kind, a genuine or not, for firing someone who is associated with this, whether minister or not, that that is both the exception. in my hearing your argument right? >> no. >> why is there a difference? >> the position that the minister categorically special is that it is in the separation of choice and state -- of church and state.

>> you would say that you can get into the pretext question. >> janitor can limit to the pretext question, yes. >> so define minister for me again. >> the minister is a person who holds ecclesiastic office in the church or who exercises important religious functions, most obviously including teaching in the faith. >> mr. diller has some points here about the way in which the ministerial exception relates or does not relate to employment division v. smith. in order to make an argument in the minister of exception, you have to say that institutional autonomy is different from individual conscience. in smith it was said that state can trump individual conscience. you want to trump individual autonomy. why is that? >> it is now that institutions

are different from individuals. it is that the institutional governance of the church is a prior step. it is whether they can act on religious teachings after they are formulated. four ministers, it is the process by which those teachings will be formulated. >> is the establishment have to do something with institutions? >> the exercise clause relates to individuals. >> this course has relied on both exercise and establishment. it is a long line of cases, all the way back to watson, distinguishing this problem from the problem that culminates in smith. >> thank you, counsel. the case is submitted. >> next, professor anita hill talks about her testimony in the senate confirmation hearing for supreme court justice clarence thomas. then a discussion on the impact of that testimony. after that, president obama and california congressman kevin mccarthy with. -- with their weekly addresses.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2011] >> it has been 20 years since anita hill's testimony to congress. she was the keynote speaker at a conference in new york, looking back at the hearing today. she is a law professor at brandeis university and the author of two books. this is one hour. >> thank you. thank you so much. and thank you, pat, for that wonderful introduction. i am really excited to talk with you. >> a wanted to turn to the book and just a moment.

but i also wanted to begin because i know that you had wanted to talk about how your team was put together for that hearing and technology so many of the people who are here today from that -- and acknowledged so many of the people who are here today from that hearing. >> i would like to say thank you. i did testify and many of you have this vision or image of me sitting there by myself in that long table with all of the senators lined up in front of me. but i also want to remind you that i had some wonderful people who, as they say, had my back, who came together really -- because they believed in the process and they believe in the integrity of the court as i did and they wanted to make sure

that, as best, i could be unfairly treated, as best they could help me. and one of those people -- i see one person, judith resnik, who you heard from this morning. prof. judith resnik. [applause] professor charles ogle tree, we also heard from, who you have not heard from today professor emma jordan, who is here from somewhere. she is here in the audience with us. ok, thank you. and there are so many others. susan dollar ross, also from georgetown, as well as -- gosh, i am going to forget -- janet napolitano, john frank, warner i amer, jim crenshaw, who m looking for to hear from. ken thompson who is here in the city teaching at nyu.

maybe some of her students are here today. so many people came together because many of those people were my colleagues in teaching. there were so few of us in law teaching. and these individuawonderful ins knew me as i was a student. they all came together. people talk about our hot shot team. it was a pretty hot shot team, but it was not that high-powered law firm that people like to make it out to be. i just want to say, 20 years later, thank you, thank you, thank you so much to all of them. [applause] >> i know you mentioned the two members of your team who have passed on. warner gardner and john frank. i wonder if you could share the moment in which you realized that this was really something beyond a single moment of

testimony. >> it is an amazing when i look out at today's audience. the media day following the hearing, i had lots of support from women. but john frank was an individual who volunteered. he had been an expert on the supreme court and the confirmation process. he was there. he volunteered. he came from arizona. i didn't even know he was going to come. at the end of my morning testimony, he came to me in tears, literally in tears. and he said, "i know this is very hard for you. i know this is a challenge. but you have no idea of how important this is to our country >" at that point, i was just try to

get to the rest of the day. i do not think i fully even appreciated than exactly what he was saying to me. but here was this man who has been at yale many years ago, had been the practice of law, had studied the supreme court, and he was saying to me that this was an important moment in our country's history. it was as though he had looked into the future and seen you today. so i really do want to remember him especially. it was in a little way may be preparing me for what was to come. but i do not think anything could prepare before when i see here today. it is just wonderful. it is just wonderful. >> i think this moment kugel so allow us to forget what exactly you went through when you say the this was difficult.

this was traumatizing as well. as alan simpson promised when he said that you would really get harassment, there was, in addition to all of the other accusations -- i think it was orrin hatch waving the bible talking about exorcisms -- [laughter] but it did not go with the hearing. it followed you for quite some time. there were security issues. there was practically emotional torture to the extent that even friends of yours, not just you, but friends were forced to move from oklahoma, as i recall. there was a little package of fecal matter that was sent to you. there were security issues constantly for quite a bit of time and to some extent into the present. >> it is a testament to my friends and colleagues that i

was able to continue. there was a pressure at the university of oklahoma for me to be fired. it was coming from officials, legislators, state legislators. when that did not work, there were threats to the existence of the law school and the funding of the law school. of course, that was an effort for my colleagues to turn against me. but one of the women who was on the faculty then, prof. surely we can, and i believe she is here. surely was with me on the team. -- shirley was with me on the team. she'll ultimately did leave oklahoma and went on to have a great career. but again, 20 years is a long time to keep people together. the people who were on that team in the beginning are still with

me. the witnesses, allan wells and john carr, who were friends of mine back in the early 1980's are still my friends today. there are all kinds of pressures put on people and any of you who know who have gone through these kinds of claims and problems and issues in your own workplaces or attempted to really correct problems -- you know that you can lose people along the way. i have been very, very fortunate, not only to keep those people, but also to really engage with a lot of supporters throughout these last 20 years that have made what i do in my survival possible. you talk about the difficulty. it was very difficult.

when you are returned from a testimony that has become this the event that you really had no idea was going to be what it was and then -- i said i would walk down the street and everybody -- they did polling immediately after the hearing. polling showed that 70% of the population thought i had perjured myself. in addition to the pressures i was having on the job, the threats to me personally, bomb threats at the law school, at my home, i had to go to the grocery store and realize, you know, that seven out of the 10 people that i would encounter at the supermarket thought that i had perjured myself in my testimony.

so psychologically, the pressure was difficult. the pressure at work was difficult. and the fact that your family is going through this with you in a very public way was difficult. but i was also quite fortunate. >> i remember you also said at one point that you said you wanted your life back. i remember hearing you describe how to give that up as part of the healing process and moving on. do you mind sharing a little bit about that? >> i think that was very much the toughest part for me initially. ok, i just thought that i had given this testimony a week or so -- in this testimony. a weaker so later the vote was taken. and then it was over.

enough is enough. i want my life back. and i really resented the fact that i could not give back. it was not coming back the way i thought it was. was to let go of that idea and said, you know, it will not happen that way. i have a different life now. the question i had to ask myself is what life was what? -- what led to what want? -- what life do i want? i had to figure out, okay, al of this, what will i have that i can shake -- held of this, what will i have that i can have for myself so that i can continue to do what i do, to be productive, to care about the things that i care about and continue to live?

that happened perhaps maybe six months or so after the hearing. i had to figure out really what my resources were, what my talents were, what could i do and what were really my options and opportunities and what kind of support i would be getting to move forward with this new life that i at least had a chance to shape. those are the things that i really had to sit down and account for. but the other thing that i had to do was say, you know what? this was an important event. it has helped to shape my life. but it is just an event. it is not me. it is not who i am. and so i had to get back and understand who i am and why i was on this earth in order to

move forward. >> i want to turn to your story. it almost feels -- i feel possessive about the term "anita's story." in a way, it almost obliterate to because we all have a moment where we identify with the need as story. she came to mind classroom and told me her story. by any hill conference story is apparently the assigned security guard or security police officer to the men's room to keep us from taking it over. [laughter]

i love this arc, the art of time. -- the arc of time. so the real aeneas' story -- i should not say the real anything. i have the real anita here. [laughter] [applause] your book is a phenomenal look. i cannot say enough what a gorgeous writer -- she writes like a dream. i really urge you to write. but in the title, you use the word "home" and tomorrow will be the anniversary of your late mother. she would have been 100 years old tomorrow. you dedicate this to her and your grandmother and your great- grandmother. i wonder if you could talk a little bit about the framing of the discussion of the housing crisis in terms of the women in

your life. you told me a story about ken burns. i wonder if he could maybe start with that. >> we have all seen the wonderful documentary is that film maker ken burns does on pbs. after the conclusion of the one on jazz, i had a conversation with the filmmaker. it was really moving conversation for may because what he said was that he had grown up -- he and i are roughly the same age -- he had grown up during the civil rights era o. i believe he also lost his mother during that time, when he was about 12 years old. so this was a very emotional time in his life and a time that stuck in his memory. and when he came up with the

stories, the trilogy -- the first was the civil war. the second was baseball. and the third was jazz. for him, each of those were metaphors about race in america. i found that very moving. if you think about it, it makes sense. but then again, it does not. my question to him was -- is there a metaphor for race? is there a way to talk about and think about race that is not so male-dominated? if you think about the civil war, if you think about even jazz music, most of those -- most of the stories were about male artists. baseball, they had one segment about the league that formed after world war ii. had we have a conversation about race that includes women?

and his response was, well, i did the piece on susan b. anthony and elizabeth cady satan to talk about gender. i said, well, that is problematic, too, because, as we know in the southridge movement, there was marginalization of african- american women. other women of color did not even appear. native american women were not included in women's suffrage. so how do we then have a conversation about gender that racialized.onalize so i started to thinking about that. what is our metaphor for

equality that does not rely on the domination or racialization. how do we have a conversation about equality? and there is one element that looms hard in the quality is home. it is the establishing of a place that one calls their own. when we talk about stories like a " a raisin in the sun" and they talk about how important the home is and in african- american equality -- for those of you who do not know the play, there is a much more popular cultural reference which you may know, which is "the jeffersons." if you watched television in the 1970's, and in order to show that the jeffersons had made it, what did they do? they move don up to the upper

east side. -- they moved on up to the upper east side. and it doesn't just there. it was to a de luxe apartment in the sky. they didn't even eat the same kind of food anymore. [laughter] this was a symbol of their having made it. but you also know and maybe have not thought about this, but when louise jefferson had made it, she becomes a stay at home mother of an adult son at that point. and what does she do? she gets the made who is a black maid. so all of these issues of the significance of home and how we define it and how we shape it and how it figures in our thinking about equality were really in my mind.

and then the housing crisis hit and the collapse of the housing market. it really devastated communities and sent so many people really in sort of chaos. i started reading the stories about how it was being read in the press. so few of the stories included the impact that it was having on women. women of color, in particular, women living on their own, trying to buy homes on their own -- when i realized was that the housing crisis is not only a setback economically. it is a setback in our social advances for women. women really were not just out there buying homes on their own for the last 20 years.

remember, this was a social advancement for women because we were finally saying, look, we can do this on our own. we do not have to wait until we have a spouse or partner. we can go out on our own. and that was an important movement that was occurring in the year 2005. so i wanted to tell the story of the significance of home without really having to tell it through the lens of male domination, to really just tell the story through the eyes of the women who i talk about in the book. >> that story has been so understated in the media. at one point, you point up out it is so ignored in the gathering of data. >> it is ignored in some ways

because the presumption is that the home includes to parents and children and that the two parents assumption is that it is a man and woman. that is how we have thought about the home and home policy. that is what the media has followed. they have not really the yen and looked at who the new home buying market was in 2005. a lot of women buying on their own. for me, the significance is not just for women on their own, but also for their children and the next generation. when i look back at my own family story, i realize that, when my grandparents homesteaded 80 acres in arkansas in 1895, it was a significant milestone in our family achievements.

my grandfather had gone from actually being property, having been born a slave, to owning property. that was significant. that was a significant milestone. they lost that farm in circumstances that were not like what is going on today. that credit options, a poor economy -- it was an agricultural economy -- racial unrest and violence. that was significant, too. and it had an impact on my mother as well as our family. for generations to come. i think about young people today and i realize that this whole in security that we are experiencing now will indeed have an impact on their future. it may even be having an impact on their present, whether or not they are able to get student loans through their parents

because of what is going on now. all of these things we need to begin to address and that is what came together. >> one of the things you brought up was how the statistics are lacking because the statisticians do not know whether to count women because they are counted as divorced or widowed -- but the entire frame of reference is still in statistical it is so significant because what we know now is that whole family dynamic is just not representative of a huge part of the population. the real thing i think it out when i write this book is, we know you as your testimony of 20 years ago.

that is very much a part of who i m. i have also been teaching for those 20 years and some years before that. what i really enjoyed about this book is it to brings together so many parts of my life. it brings together my life as a teacher, it brings together my life as the granddaughter of a slave, a great granddaughter of a woman who was a single mother for 10 years when she moved from slavery to being a free person even though she lived in the same cabin for those first 10 years. it brings together my history. it brings together some of the

impacts that my hearings had on me. it really links me to the issue of equality that i carried out. sexual harassment is one of those issues. what i try to do in this book is give a voice to the people who have not been heard from a during this crisis. and that is really what i was trying to do with the issue of sexual harassment for 20 years. to help people find in their voices. to talk about the issues that keep them from living life fully and as equals. >> could i ask you one final question. you tell a lovely story in your book. i was hoping you could read a quick on your definition. >> i call it my 21st century

definition of equality. i thought i had it on that page. one thing that has happened. the final chapter is called "home at last." i define home -- i have three definitions. , is a lens through which one can safely view the world. this is significant because we know for so many were women, space inside the home is not a safe space. it is an important element for us to have that home from which we can view the world safely.

the second part of the definition is, a place where one's ideas, experiences, and work are seen as voluble. that for me is home. it symbolizes so much of what is missing in the lives of women about doing our work what ever it is. not that we are trying to eat anything. we want to be valued for what we are and what we offer. not only our work, but our ideas and experiences as well. when's body are welcome. finally, i say that home is an ideal state of being as much as a place. it is real and imagined for each generation. my great-grandmother had to

imagine what to freedom was like after living her life as a slave. she had to imagine what freedom was like for herself and her son, my grandfather. my mother, when she sent me a way after college -- after high school and then to college into a world that she just had no understanding of, she had to have imagined for me in the 1970's what the quality was going to be like for me. she had it to help me imagine because it was not her experience. she did not know what the world would be like. she sent me out with two sets of luggage. i will tell that story a little bit later. she had to imagine for herself and her children what the quality was going to be like.

i think we are at to the juncture now. we must imagine for a new generation what the quality will be like. we have reached the point now where we say sexual harassment -- we can raise our voices and complain about it. we also should imagine a workplace where it no longer exists. [applause] we are constantly working on the quality. we are putting together all of the pieces. when we talk about the events that are going on in the world. it the occupation of wall street. when we think about all of the issues that we are struggling with today, all of us are urging us to imagine what equality is going to be like in the 21st

century. we have so much energy in this room today. we have so many ideas. we have heard from so many wonderful people. all of us are helping -- all of those are helping us to imagine a better world for the next generation. i could not be more proud than i am today to be a part of that. thank you. [applause] >> we are going to take questions now. while people come forward, if you would like to tell the luggage storage. it is a lovely story. >> when i was 79 years old and graduating from college, my mother told me one day, i want you to come with me. we are were to visit a family friend. the family friend was a teacher.

an african-american woman who had taught some of my siblings english. at the time when i graduated from school, she had gotten older. she had gotten sick. she had travelled fairly widely in her life, but she was no longer able to travel. she said she had something for me she wanted to give me. it was a sense of samson night college kids. you have probably seen it. i guess now it is called the vintage. it had her initials on them. four years later, my mother gave me a gift when i was going off to law school. that gift was my own sets of samson like luggage. it was another generation. it was brand new samsonite

luggage. my mother set me off with two sets of luggage -- the older version and now, my old -- my own set of sam sites. --samsonite. the women were sending me down into a world would be so different from their own. the courage that each of them had to say, ok, i have prepared you. i have given you something. go out and claim your own life. claim your own home. be all you can be. i think about it today. people say, what is the best gift you have ever had? i say it was the two sets of luggage is. what they symbolized for me. that is my luggage a story.

i would say, give your daughters luggage. give them luggage and not a baggage. >> i wondered in the context of your comments about home, was or family impacted by the tulsa race riot massacre of 1921? >> when my family moved from arkansas to oklahoma -- oklahoma moved to rural oklahoma. we remained on the farm. even though they were in oklahoma at the time of the riots, news being what it was, they were not really affected by it directly. the tulsa race riots happened in 1921, i believe, and in an urban

area in tulsa that was primarily black and quite prosperous. it was looted and burned. a number of people do not even know to the day how many people were in fact killed during those race riots which were really mass murders. they had an impact certainly in terms of -- probably an indirect impact in terms of people did not go to the city after that. in immediate impact we did not have. >> what a pleasure to see you. i spent the weekend of my 30th birthday watching your hearings. >> thank you. i am fine.

>> i remember, i spent my time at harvard because they had really good defense. i said, does anybody know if anita hill is ok, and she said, i think there are a lot of people supporting her right now. that was comforting to me. i want to get to a question about home. one in three americans is a paycheck away from losing her home. we also know the economic crisis that is flooding harcourt's with new money related cases for closures, evictions, unemployment, medicare, child support, domestic violence, that money for legal services is being rolled back to 2000 levels.

from what i can tell, this administration is not leading in full flight about increasing it or keeping it at 2000 levels. given this is our situation. i would be interested in hearing your ideas about closing the gap in terms of using all of these unemployed law students that are running around. i would be interested in hearing your thoughts about closing the justice debt. it is great to see you. >> i do propose a number of things. part of it is better enforcement of the programs that are out there that are supposedly helping people stay in their homes. what i see -- the problem i see

about inequality that has been built into the lending system. they have been built into it and some has been institutionalized because of years of discrimination against women, people of color. the way communities have developed over the past few years has been rationalized. there are even bigger in the quality is always start talking about women's income. we know that women trying to buy on their own tended to have less money to access a home. we know that many women will spend about 50% of that lower income on their home. but these are the kinds of things -- these are the things that i think we need it to begin

to address. what i propose is something i am calling a home assignment. i do propose that the administration get involved. i suggested to council on women and girls should be a place where we can get this conversation started. is there anybody out here who has access? i have one here. can you take that message to the council? you know, that is their charge. one agency is charged with improving access to women. there is no more critical of an issue for women and their families than homes and housing. there is a role for the administration to play, but it

has to be very comprehensive. justmply can't be renegotiating mortgages. it has to be really rethinking a lot of the processes about how people find homes. thank you. [applause] >> i am a city council member in the new york city. i was here in 1992. at the end of the conference, i was working for the mayor. he said go find anything hill and invite your back for dinner at the mansion. i wanted to thank you for coming that night. >> thank you for finding me. >> you were terrific and as you are today. my question is, we try to stop

cyber bullying and any kind of bullying in the schools. i know you are now supposed to be an expert on everything. as somebody who has taught for a long time, do you think as a country we are doing enough to stop the bullying? the you have some other suggestions? >> i think we are beginning to understand the issue of bullying. there was a piece in the new york times about why from people's perspective, why we are being bullied. my experience in terms of dealing with people with workplace issues is that in some ways there is really an analogy that what is going on in the workplace is an extension of the kind of bullying that happens to people when they are in school. as charles wrote today, in a lot

of ways it is about identity. it is about purse -- protection of about whether somebody is masculine unknot -- or not. it is about a somebody is gay or straight. all of these ways we have about using our power over people in ways that to really prevent them from doing what they are hired to do in the workplace or going to school and learning. have we done enough? i don't think we have. the problem continues. clearly we have not done enough. i am not an expert on what more we can do, i think we are at least starting to become aware of the problem. that is the beginning. thank you. >> hello. i hope you can bear with me.

i am an utter terror of being up here. i want to ask a very personal question. how do you deal with having to deal with so much, how you deal with fear? not over it, not under it, but through it? >> thank you. [applause] well, thank you for that question. i think you have dealt with fear. you stood up and you ask your question. [applause] i think the audience has demonstrated in many ways how i have dealt with my own fear. that is through the help and support of many others. the first part really is to walk up and confront it.

i know there were times when i was afraid. i know there was times when i stepped out and did not know what would happen to me next. every day, i wake up knowing that the think that caused me to be fearful, that testimony, was the right thing to do. [applause] it was the right thing to do. i would never let anybody tell me any different. if you can wake up in the morning and tell yourself that, if you can go to bed at night and put your head on the palo knowing that you have that truth, that is really the way to deal with it from the inside. surround yourself and what ever way you can with people who will support you. you don't have to be alone. there are many people who will share your story and will share

your fear and be there to help you. i had to learn to reach out. i was always a very private person. the other parts of it is, you are trained not to show that you have some weakness. we are all supposed to be tough and strong. i had it to let go of some of that. i thank you. even though you're talking about fear, it is an act of bravery to stand up and ask a question. not that this is a hostile group, but this is a group of pretty strong faults. thank you so much. -- pretty strong folks.

thank you so much. [applause] >> hello. i am a journalist. your introduction that was given by ms. williams, she made a reference to the idea of what this credibility looked like. in light of your position as a professor dealing with young people, students, young women in particular, i was just wondering how you counsel young women that you encounter on dealing with the idea of being excellent students, many great people in the way they are seen by their peers, but are perhaps a shot down but they have to be put in a position with the spotlight you were put in. >> let me back up. we talked about organizing this conference, one of the things i said i wanted to be sure of was we had young people in this room. not just young people, i wanted

young people of all ages. i think there is a sharing it there. for me, when i talk to young people, i really do have the luxury of talking to many of them one on one. i get to sit down and say, what do you see as your strength? what do you think is your guest? then build on that. if you go out and people said, i think you should work on your deficiencies. well, yes. but that always puts you in a whole. you always feel like you are in a whole. i tell people to go out on their strengths. what do you care about? what do you know that you do well? that way you can build your confidence. even though there are going to

be circumstances where you are not going to be accepted for all that you have to offer, just knowing what your strengths are and understanding what they are will help you to get beyond those situations. realize which of them are important and which are not important for you to continue what you need to do. the other thing that i say, this may sound contradictory, find something that is a challenge to you that you really want to do. something that you -- something that stretches you. even if you get a little bit closer to that goal, you started to grow. there is nothing more rewarding

than facing something that is a challenge to you that you come closer to because you know you have given everything that you have four. even if you don't -- maybe your challenges to win the nobel prize for peace. i would applaud that. you may not win the nobel prize for peace, but if you engage in activities that promote peace, that is a victory in and of itself. find things that you are challenged to do, set some goals, and then go out and try to achieve it in your own life and in your own way. and again, all of this really takes a conversation about who you are and what you care about. i don't give that very often kind of generic advice. i think advice ought to be

individualized and specific. you are a journalist. you want to win a pulitzer prize? how are you going to go about doing it? are you ready now? >> yes. >> since you have already started on the road to your pulitzer prize? >> yes. >> what is your next step? >> just continue to expand and be able to talk to such interesting people such as yourself. >> what kind of things do you want to write? what would make you the happiest? >> i am very interested in issues that affect women. i like to look at all issues from a gender perspective. my master's recently was on human trafficing, looking at how it affects women and girls. >> have you thought about turning that into a book? >> i have, yes. >> that you outlined its? >> yes. >> good.

see there, you are all -- you are already there. those are the kinds of conversations i like to have. he did not know your honor to have a conversation today. >> thank you very much. [applause] >> that is just the beginning of our conversation. >> good afternoon. it is an honor to hear you. i was hoping that you could tell us a little bit about the experience of getting the voice mail message one year ago. for those who don't remember, virginia terra -- virginia thomas -- clarence thomas's wife left the voice mail on your machine asking for an olive branch. what was it like to hear it? how does it sit with you one year later? >> i will just be honest.

i did not know that it was her. i did not know who it was. i thought it was a prank. my first description of it was that it was bizarre. it was bizarre either way whether it was a prank or not. as you know, then it became a new story. honestly, once it became a news story, i remember with and maybe even 48 hours, i got about 500 e-mails about this. how inappropriate it was. --t we're really stuck out what really stuck out was how passionate people were writing about it. honestly, i started talking to people, kathleen was one of them, and much jordan was one, i said this issue still resonates

with people. [applause] in do not let the moment be captured by something like her voice mail. let's take the passion ourselves and shape it. out of this came this conference that happened last week. i will be going to detroit. i am going to visit with an all girls the -- academy in detroit. that is my reaction to the voicemail. [applause] >> i think we are only going to take the speakers that we have in line. were