Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Petty moves from a petty man.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Second rate reporter says what?

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Women's Rights / Women's Rights Are Human Rights / Listen To The Women – Anita Hill Edition

Listen To The Women – Anita Hill Edition

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Jill Abramson goes back to reporting and gives us a long-form look at Clarence Thomas’s other accusers. She refers to Moira Smith’s story, very similar to Anita Hill’s, which was published in Fall 2016, just before James Comey made his news.

Abramson wrote a book in the mid-nineties about “ three other women who had experiences with Thomas at the EEOC that were similar to Hill’s, and four people who knew about his keen interest in porn but were never heard from publicly.”

A good case can be made that Thomas lied to the Senate during his confirmation hearing. Some Democrats, during the 2016 campaign, wanted to bring up the issue of his possible impeachment.

Before we consider impeachment, though, we have to consider how Thomas might be replaced. So it’s not for now.

 

Buzzfeed outed another abuser today. Lawrence Krauss is a professor of physics at Arizona State University and a well-known (among those folks, anyway) proponent of scientific atheism. He’s also been whispered about by women for a long time. Melody Hensley’s story is featured in the article, but others are mentioned.

Krauss is a cosmologist, and he is heading up a multidisciplinary effort on “the origins of the universe, life, and social systems.” I am a chemist who has had to deal with far too many know-it-all physicists, but my observation of physicists in positions like this is that they try to devolve everything to physics, while claiming a broad view. It’s tiresome.

He has denied any wrong-doing with women, but there are quite a few incidents listed in this article. I find them persuasive, along with the whispers.

 

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  1. 1.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Glad you front-paged this, Cheryl. I linked the Abramson article in a comment the other day, but it is well-deserving of more prominence. (She was interviewed about the piece on some NPR program, although I cannot now remember which one.)

  2. 2.

    hitchhiker

    I still have the hard cover copy of the book she wrote with Jane Mayer. It’s one of the reasons I’ll never be able to support Joe Biden, no matter how much charm and sweetness he has.

    He was the one who decided that the Thomas hearings had to be concluded quickly. He was the one who refused to call witnesses who would have changed the way Anita Hill was seen. He was the one who knew that she was likely telling the truth and DID NOT CARE that a lying, unqualified ass like Clarence Thomas was going to be given a lifetime appointment.

    Nope, not a Joe fan. Sorry.

  3. 3.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @hitchhiker: There’s a fair bit about Biden in the article I linked, including this:

    Late last year, in an interview with Teen Vogue, Biden finally apologized to Hill after all these years, admitting that he had not done enough to protect her interests during the hearings. He said he believed Hill at the time: “And my one regret is that I wasn’t able to tone down the attacks on her by some of my Republican friends. ”

  5. 5.

    Mike J

    Spencer Hsu @hsu_spencer
    An federal a grand jury in Virginia has filed a 32-count indictment charging ex-Trump campaign chiefs Paul J. Manafort, Jr., and Richard W. Gates III with federal tax and bank fraud allegations.

    An federal?

  8. 8.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I don’t want this thread to turn into a “Hate Biden” diatribe. The way I read the article, Biden was pretty constrained. I don’t recall my reaction to it at the time.

    @schrodingers_cat: I think you’re referring to this?

    And my one regret is that I wasn’t able to tone down the attacks on her by some of my Republican friends.

    Looks to me like there are at least two interpretations beyond the strictly literal. 1) It could have been ironic. 2) Back in the dark days before Newt Gingrich, there was a convention of (sometimes over-) courteousness among congresscritters. It could be that.

    Let’s not freak out over a single word with multiple possible interpretations.

  9. 9.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Mike J: Good thing you’ve never made a typo. Otherwise that might seem churlish.

    I’m more concerned with the content – nay, delighted by it. I hope Manafort ends up broken, impoverished and alone in prison.

  10. 10.

    Don

    Cheryl,
    “All science is either Physics, or stamp collecting”: Lord Rutherford.
    Sorta makes your point, eh?
    We’ll played.
    ?

  12. 12.

    Jerzy Russian

    Lawrence Krauss? I have met him a few times in the 1990s. He gives really good public lectures, and seemed to be good with students. I haven’t heard any rumors of bad behavior, but I have not really paid attention to him for 10 or 15 years.

  13. 13.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Cheryl Rofer: USCIS just purged from its website, that we are a national of immigrants. I am not feeling friendly towards the party that made this possible. If they have their own way, it won’t be just words that are purged. Thanks to Biden and his R friends we have Thomas on the Supreme court. His R friends didn’t show Gorsuch that courtesy, did they. They are not our friends, the sooner we recognize that the better.
    The old days are over. Bipartisanship is dead. Rs killed it. Its time to wake up and smell the coffee.

  15. 15.

    No Drought No More

    I’m proud to say I believed Anita at the time. I even got off on the wrong foot with new neighbors because of it. The conversation took place at poolside, with a small group of the condo building’s owners. Those people weren’t mere renters like me, you see, and made a point to let me know it (which I understood without acknowledging). Insulted as they were by what I had to say regarding Hill vs. Thomas, believe me, I went far, far easy on them than I would today. About half of them were women, too, if memory serves. We got along fine afterwards, but we also never discussed politics again.

  16. 16.

    Roger Moore

    I am a chemist who has had to deal with far too many know-it-all physicists, but my observation of physicists in positions like this is that they try to devolve everything to physics, while claiming a broad view. It’s tiresome.

    I would guess he’s the kind of guy who declares that everything in science is either physics or stamp collecting. Whenever I hear something like that from a physicist, I want to give them the complete genome to some organism and ask them to use nothing but physics to explain that organism’s behavior.

  17. 17.

    Mike J

    they try to devolve everything to physics, while claiming a broad view.

    And then have to reinvent all of chemistry to make it work.

  21. 21.

    Origuy

    PZ Myers knows Krauss; he believes the allegations

    I knew this was coming; in fact, I was interviewed several times for this article about misconduct by Lawrence Krauss. I had to tell the journalist that at most I’d gotten some second-hand echoes from the whisper network, but that I knew nothing directly about any accusations against him. But then, I’m a guy — I wasn’t at risk for being groped, so no one was going to pull me aside and warn me. Also, as a guy who was hanging out with Krauss now and then, there was no way to trust me not to spread the word to the accused…and whoa, but a lot of women were terrified of being alone with him, and of the effect he could have on their career.

  22. 22.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Roger Moore: Yes, that’s the problem.

    Even if you allow as to how the basic explanations of physics underlie the rest of the sciences, there are gigantic gaps between what physics can explain in detail and how that relates to what the other sciences study. That’s what too many physicists leave out. If we’re to progress on things like drug discovery or removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we need to use what physicists consider the approximations of the other sciences.

    So you can do quantum mechanics, but it’s much harder to explain what happens when natural gas combusts in air. Or derive an organism’s behavior from its genome. And we’re learning that behavior comes from much more than its genome.

  23. 23.

    Origuy

    I don’t want to derail this thread, so can we have one about the new charges against Manafort and Gates?

  25. 25.

    Jack the Second

    @Origuy: PZ is one of the people who reassures me that not all prominent men in the science/skepticism/atheism movement are asshole predators.

  26. 26.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    [Biden] said he believed Hill at the time: “And my one regret is that I wasn’t able to tone down the attacks on her by some of my Republican friends.”

    That’s his one regret?! What about keeping a lying creep off the Supreme Court?

    I suppose that Biden did good work during the Obama administration, but sometimes I worry how much the “Diamond Joe” Biden image satirized by The Onion has overtaken the reality of his past. He was one of the principal authors of the horrible personal-bankruptcy bill that prevents people from discharging credit-card debt and in general was one of the “corporate shills” that progressives like to rail about.

    Why worry? I have a couple of politically active and astute friends who think that the Democrats need to retrench in ’20 with Biden as the feel-good candidate everybody could agree on. They are 60-ish and were ardent Hillary supporters. I don’t think they see any viable candidates among the younger Democrats and they think Biden would be a bulwark while we further regroup.

    I don’t know if I buy that. On the other hand, I’m not very enthused about any of the younger Democrats whose names are being thrown around, and I worry that we are going to need more than just “not Trump” in 2020.

  27. 27.

    randy khan

    On the physics stuff, I recall my freshman Chemistry professor discussing the Schrodinger Wave Equation and saying (a) physicists argued that all of chemistry was contained within the equation; and (b) so far, it only had been solved for the hydrogen ion (that is, a single proton). That was decades ago, but I remember thinking that, as digs at other sciences went, it was pretty clever.

  29. 29.

    cmorenc

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Looks to me like there are at least two interpretations beyond the strictly literal. 1) It could have been ironic. 2) Back in the dark days before Newt Gingrich, there was a convention of (sometimes over-) courteousness among congresscritters.

    Prior to the start of the Gingrich era in 1994, there was a strongly prevailing ethos of obsequious civility in the Senate, where even a quite liberal Democratic senator would refer to a quite conservative GOP senator who was a mortal ideological enemy as e.g. “my great friend and distinguished colleague Senator Troglodyte” and while criticizing Senator Troglodyte’s positions on a matter, would carefully avoid being abrasive or personally attacking Troglodyte in the process. And vice-versa. This ethos didn’t necessarily apply to outsiders (anyone not in the Senate) – hence permitting Senators to be far more abrasively toward witnesses in committee hearings, etc., handicapping any Senator who might otherwise want to intervene against a colleague attacking a witness.

  31. 31.

    Emma

    @Steeplejack (phone): IT’s not necessary to misinterpret his words. He is talking about the situation at the time of the hearings, not anything else. And by the way, there was damn little we could do to keep Justice Asterisk off the Supreme Court. The Republicans control the legislature and the executive, remember?

  32. 32.

    cokane

    @Jerzy Russian: Agreed, but man Krauss has got to be the most disappointing one yet. Never knew the dude of course, but his public persona seemed fine. The evidence in the Buzzfeed article seems rather incontrovertible. I highly recommend folks read it all the way through.

  34. 34.

    Kay

    @Mike J:

    More on the nothingburger Mueller investigation, I see.

    Thank God for Mueller is all I can say. Somebody does their godammned job. I wouldn’t have thought it would come down to ONE person but I suppose we should be grateful it’s one and not none.

  35. 35.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    Why worry? I have a couple of politically active and astute friends who think that the Democrats need to retrench in ’20 with Biden as the feel-good candidate everybody could agree on. They are 60-ish and were ardent Hillary supporters. I don’t think they see any viable candidates among the younger Democrats and they think Biden would be a bulwark while we further regroup.

    Why not regroup now, by having the gray heads mentor up the younger folks so that some of them start looking good by next year?

    I’m an old, and I’m tired of all the olds. Especially old white men. After four years of Trump and his pale-faced and -haired crew, America will be happy for some color.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:

    To be fair, in Rutherford’s day that was true.

    That hadn’t been true of Chemistry at least since Mendeleev. When you can successfully predict the chemical properties of undiscovered elements, you’ve moved well beyond stamp collecting.

  38. 38.

    Humdog

    I seem to recall Biden agreed to not bring witnesses who would speak to Thomas’ porn fixation, because that was private behavior. But if he was bringing it up with women who worked for and with him, it was highly relevant to the Anita Hill hearings. Like judges who wouldn’t sentence drunk drivers because they themselves would sometimes drive while tipsy. Everyone watches porn and talks about it at the odffice, right? No problem giving a lifetime appointment to someone who does what we all do, talk about porn sex at work.
    No Biden, no Bernie, thank you very much.

  39. 39.

    Roger Moore

    @randy khan:

    On the physics stuff, I recall my freshman Chemistry professor discussing the Schrodinger Wave Equation and saying (a) physicists argued that all of chemistry was contained within the equation; and (b) so far, it only had been solved for the hydrogen ion (that is, a single proton). That was decades ago, but I remember thinking that, as digs at other sciences went, it was pretty clever.

    The Schrodinger equation can only be solved exactly for single electron systems (hydrogen atom, not hydrogen ion), but it has been possible to get good numerical approximations for more complicated systems for decades. I did some stuff on systems with a dozen heavy atoms as an undergraduate back in the early 90s, and that was clearly less sophisticated than what the big name groups were doing for publication. These days, it’s possible to do successive approximations based on physical first principles (i.e. use quantum mechanics to generate molecular dynamics rules) that let you get to the point of working on dynamics of whole proteins. Of course that doesn’t get you anywhere close to modeling a whole cell, much less a large multi-cellular organism, and there’s a whole lot of “stamp collecting” required to get you to the point where you can think about doing that kind of thing.

  40. 40.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Humdog: Agreed. When I was TA, in our weekly meeting the professor and his male TAs would discuss the physical attributes of their students in our weekly meeting. Oh so and so is smoking hot because she is on the swim team. I used to be the only female in that group. Creepy..
    ETA: I did muster up the courage to tell them that this talk made me uncomfortable and thankfully they stopped doing that at least within my earshot.

  42. 42.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    He still calls R senators, friends? In what world is he living?

    If, by some chance he became president or continues in public office in some capacity, Biden would have to work with the Republicans.

  45. 45.

    Roger Moore

    @schrodingers_cat:
    It turns out there’s no context for the Rutherford quote. There’s no contemporaneous record of him saying it, much less a broader context in which it was said. It was apparently attributed to him without context after his death. The bigger question is how people repeating the quote mean it. Most of the ones I’ve heard are clearly using it to dismiss the rest of science as inferior. In their mind, everything else is either just applied versions of physics or (even worse) just collecting and arranging observations without any attempt at making predictions or seeing a bigger picture.

  47. 47.

    eemom

    Listen to the women.

    Thank you for saying that, and not the deeply fucked “believe the women” heard from so many ersatz “feminists” and Hollywood twats.

  50. 50.

    EthylEster

    Most of the ones I’ve heard are clearly using it to dismiss the rest of science as inferior.

    Speaking as an analytical chemist (the most applied area of chemistry), I would like to point out that chemists get jobs and applied chemists have multiple offers typically. Those with degrees in physics? Not so much or not in their area.

    Hard to get by on just purity….

  51. 51.

    Roger Moore

    @EthylEster:

    Speaking as an analytical chemist (the most applied area of chemistry)

    I would argue that the most applied area of chemistry is chemical engineering. Something similar is true of most areas of science. When you get into truly applied physics, you turn into a mechanical/electrical/whatever engineer. If you’re doing really applied chemistry, you turn into a chemical engineer or a food chemist. Really applied biologists are called farmers or animal breeders. Applied geologists are called miners. Etc.

  52. 52.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    I am a chemist who has had to deal with far too many know-it-all physicists,

    I was still an undergrad in physics school when I remember making the observation to myself that we were actually being trained in that kind of arrogance. It’s just an ongoing editorial commentary that’s everywhere. One manifestation is the dozens of jokes that begin “a physicist, a mathematician, and an engineer…” Guess who always comes out on top in those jokes.

    I see the famous “stamp collecting” quote is mentioned at #10.

    @EthylEster: Most of my jobs have been in engineering teams, often with “engineer” in my job title. Don’t have an engineering degree. Never took an engineering course. My role has typically been to be the math guy on the team. Engineers with a BS get jobs, even if their academic record isn’t stellar. Physics majors with a BS go to grad school.

  53. 53.

    efgoldman

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I hope Manafort ends up broken, impoverished and alone in prison.

    Somebody, somewhere has to have something on Roger Stone, Ratfucker di tutti Ratfuckers

  54. 54.

    J R in WV

    @Emma:

    The Republicans control the legislature and the executive, remember?

    Not when the despicable and felonious Clarence was nominated and approved! The bastard!!! He has heard cases on the Supreme Court when there were clear and obvious conflicts of interest between his pocketbook and one side in the case being heard.

    The side he favored!!!

    The side his wife Ginny worked for!!!!! Vile low crawling worm…

  55. 55.

    JGabriel

    Cheryl Rofer @ Top:

    A good case can be made that Thomas lied to the Senate during his confirmation hearing. Some Democrats, during the 2016 campaign, wanted to bring up the issue of his possible impeachment.

    Before we consider impeachment, though, we have to consider how Thomas might be replaced. So it’s not for now.

    Not for now maybe, but it could be for as soon as next year if the Democrats get control of the House and Senate. There would be some karmic rough justice in impeaching Thomas, then refusing to seat any new Justice until we have a Democratic president.

  56. 56.

    sukabi

    @Origuy:

    at most I’d gotten some second-hand echoes from the whisper network, but that I knew nothing directly about any accusations against him. …..

    ….but a lot of women were terrified of being alone with him, and of the effect he could have on their career.

    Not sure how you’d square those two thoughts into “I wasn’t aware”….

  57. 57.

    sukabi

    @efgoldman: it’s my guess that since he ALWAYS comes out of the scandals and slinks away unscathed that he may be one of the snitches feeding inside info to Mueller… But yes, hoping he ends up rotting in club fed with the lot of them.

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