School Is Criticized Over Paid Leave for Anita Hill

A state legislator is upset that the University of Oklahoma is paying law professor Anita Faye Hill half of her annual salary while she takes a nine-month leave.

State Rep. Tim Pope took his complaints to the university’s regents on Wednesday.

The regents last month approved the sabbatical for Hill, effective Aug. 16, so she can conduct research on commercial law and help organize an interdisciplinary conference on race and sex issues. She will be paid $30,000 by the university during her absence.

“If she’s going up to the mountains to be a recluse and write a book, that’s one thing,” Pope said before the regents’ meeting. “It’s just a political agenda she’ll be promoting. She’s been going around making speeches at $10,000 a whack. She’s such a figure of notoriety, I don’t think the University of Oklahoma and taxpayers should foot the bill to make her even more famous.”

The university said Hill was avoiding interviews and wanted to make sure it was understood that the main focus of her sabbatical will be research in commercial law.

Officials said that paid sabbaticals are not uncommon, and that such absences enhance a professor’s effectiveness as a teacher.

Hill nearly derailed Clarence Thomas’ confirmation for the U.S. Supreme Court in October, when she charged him with sexual harassment. She testified at his confirmation hearings that he had made unwanted advances and humiliated her by making lewd remarks while she worked for him at the Education Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Thomas, who was confirmed, denied the allegations.