LAGUNA BEACH : Anita Hill Moves to Cottage Here

Anita Hill, the law professor whose charges of sexual harassment against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas sparked a national debate, has moved to a remodeled cottage here.

Hill, who is on leave from the University of Oklahoma, has a contract with Doubleday to write two books--her autobiography and a study of historical and contemporary sexual harassment.

A University of Oklahoma spokeswoman, Jerri Culpepper, said Friday that Hill has been on leave without pay since Aug. 16, and is expected back May 16, 1995.

Hill has been teaching at the university’s Norman campus since 1986, Culpepper said.

Since moving in this week, Hill has declined requests for interviews by news organizations.

“I don’t have anything to talk about,” she said Thursday. “It’s my policy not to grant interviews to newspapers.”

Hill did not say why she moved to this community, but she joins a long list of writers and artists who have called this seaside village home.

In 1991, during televised testimony that riveted the nation, Hill charged that Thomas sexually harassed her while she worked for him at the U.S. Department of Education and later at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the early 1980s.

The U.S. Senate subsequently confirmed Thomas, but Hill became a heroine to women’s groups that have complained that women are not treated fairly in the workplace.