What would Anita Hill do?

It's a Monday night, April 13, and Anita Hill enters the stage to a packed Chenery Auditorium. As soon as she appears, before she's even had a chance to open her mouth, the audience erupts in a standing ovation. And it's emotional.

Hill's lecture kicked off the Raise Your Voice series put on by Western Michigan University's Lee Honor's College. The series seeks to introduce "WMU and the Kalamazoo community to nationally known artists, activists, writers and scholars actively working to end hostility and violence against women," according to the series' website.

The documentary film about Hill's experience, Speaking Truth to Power, was screened at Alamo Drafthouse in January to remind people of Hill's experience.  Considering that many students weren't even born in 1991, this ground-laying was important.  For young and old, it was a firm reminder of the ways in which society negatively depicts women. Especially those who dare speak out of turn.

During her 1991 testimony, detailing the sexual harassment she received at the hand of then Supreme Court Nominee, Clarence Thomas, Hill was labeled an "opportunist," and a "scorned woman." She was wrung through the blame-the-woman mill. Twenty four years later, Hill, Professor of Law, Public Policy and Women’s Studies at Brandeis University, is on a circuit, discussing not only her experience and survival, but the broader struggles that her personal story amplifies – namely sexual harassment and women's fight for equality.

Lee Honors College Dean Carla Koretsky, says that the series came about following conversations in the Honors Department about the appalling statistics around violence against women, especially the prevalence of sexual harassment on college campuses. "We felt that this is such an important issue that we needed to find a way to raise awareness across the entire campus community, and indeed, the entire Kalamazoo community."

According to a 2014 White House Task Force Report on sexual assault, one in five women will be sexually assaulted on college campuses. Most of them will not report it. Susan Freeman is the Chair of the Gender and Women's Studies Department at WMU. She says, "We are talking about how our silence about harassment and violence--on campus, in our families, in our communities--guarantees its continuation. There's a national spotlight on campus sexual assault right now, not because this is a new issue, but because it's an intractable problem that we've failed to sufficiently address.....Raise Your Voice reminds us that individually and collectively we need to hold our schools and workplaces accountable."

Accountability and integrity often come with a hefty price, she continues. "I see colleagues being reminded of just how difficult it is to go up against authority figures, but also how important it is for at least some of us to be willing to put ourselves out there," Freeman says. "I see people reevaluating how we permit ourselves to be inhibited by a fear of not being liked or losing the approval of others. Many participants in Raise Your Voice are acquiring new insights about power, about struggle, about intersecting identities, and about backlash. Many of us are holding ourselves increasingly accountable for creating the world we want to live in. I hope that more people, when confronted with a dilemma, will ask themselves 'what would Anita Hill do?' If we all had her courage and integrity, how different would our lives and communities be?"

At the end of Hill's lecture, she took a handful of questions. One was, "If you had the chance to do it all over again, would you?" Hill replied, with nary a pause, "Despite the lies and misrepresentation, I would do it again." While her experience was brutal, it catapulted a necessary conversation about gender and race and workplace sexual harassment into the spotlight.

Hill explained how a "flawed process can subvert the truth." The all-male senate hearing committee relied on a number of myths that Hill believes subverted the truth in the confirmation hearings. Myths that sexual harassment was or is rare, that women who file claims are attention-seekers, that a harasser would have to be a monster, and that virtuous people aren't harassed.

While progress has been made since the 1991 hearings, these misconceptions and woman-centric blame are still prevalent. Women who are still asked questions about their dress, their alcohol consumption, and their whereabouts when they are sexually assaulted. In fact, it is the stigma and accusations associated with being a victim that results in 68 percent of sexual assaults going unreported. And it's not very compelling to endure the scrutiny and being retraumatized when only 2 percent of rapists will serve time for their crime.

Freeman believes this is why there has been such tremendous turnout for these events. She says people are eager for this kind of conversation and inspiration. "Anita Hill was an especially big draw for those of us who recall watching the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings. Yet it was especially gratifying to see groups of family members--mothers, daughters and grandmothers--attending together and comparing notes about what has changed, and what hasn't, over the years."

"Sometimes when you raise your voice you have speak out of turn," Hill said. The student and Kalamazoo community seem eager to for more leaders to turn out and speak up, and, in turn, find themselves motivated to speak out, too.

The series relies on sponsorship to fund the speakers and associated costs. Koretsky said they are still working to secure enough funds before the fall in order to land Gloria Steinem for a tentative September engagement. You can find a full list of upcoming events in the series on the Raise Your Voice website.

Kathi Valeii is a writer, speaker, and activist living in Kalamazoo. She writes about gender-based oppression and full spectrum reproductive rights at her blog, birthanarchy.com.