Nineteen years after accusing Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Prof. Anita Hill (Heller) received a voice mail from Thomas' wife Oct. 9 in which the woman asked Hill for an apology."Good morning, Anita Hill, it's Ginni Thomas," she said on the voice mail, which was left on Hill's Brandeis office phone at 7:31 that Saturday morning, Senior Vice President for Communications Andrew Gully confirmed. Thomas went on to say, "I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day."

Hill wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that she is not participating in interviews at this point. However, she forwarded her official statement to the Justice: "I thought the call was inappropriate. I don't owe her an apology because I did nothing to apologize for. As I have said for 19 years, I testified truthfully and I stand by that testimony."

Keith Appell, the senior vice president for CRC Public Relations, which represents Liberty Central, the nonprofit conservative activist group founded in 2009 by Mrs. Thomas, shared Thomas' official statement with the Justice. Appell emphasized that CRC represents not Mrs. Thomas but Liberty Central.

"I did place a call to Ms. Hill at her office extending an olive branch to her after all these years, in hopes that we could ultimately get passed [sic] what happened so long ago," Thomas wrote in her statement. "That offer still stands, I would be very happy to meet and talk with her if she would be willing to do the same. Certaianly [sic] no offense was ever intended."

Justice Thomas declined to comment on the matter, according to Supreme Court spokesperson Kathy Arberg.

After receiving the voice mail, Hill discussed it with some of her colleagues and made the decision to inform Brandeis Public Safety, according to Gully.

Gully explained that Hill "thought it was appropriate that she should inform [Public Safety] about the call" because "she wasn't sure if it was a prank."

Hill notified Public Safety about the message Oct. 18, according to Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan. Callahan said he then informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the situation.

FBI agent Greg Comcowich, a spokesperson for the FBI's Boston office, said, "We are not commenting on that matter at all."

In 1991, Hill accused Justice Thomas of sexual harassment and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings. She testified that during her time as Thomas' aide at the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, he "spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals, and films showing group sex or rape scenes." She said the "conversations were very vivid."

In the hearings, Justice Thomas denied the accusations and referred to them as a "high-tech lynching."

The nationally televised hearings became a matter of widespread controversy, leaving the country divided in a discussion about sexual harassment in the workplace. The Senate eventually confirmed Justice Thomas by a vote of 52-48.

The issue had remained relatively dormant until Mrs. Thomas' Oct. 9 voice mail.

Hill has been teaching at Brandeis since 1998. She is a professor of Social Policy, Law and Women's Studies at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

After hearing about the voice mail, Prof. Mary Baine Campbell (ENG) forwarded a petition to a faculty listserv called Concerned. In response to questions about Thomas' voice mail and about the petition, Campbell wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that she "forwarded this particular petition ... from the progressive organization Credo Action, because it asks Justice Thomas to apologize for his harassment of Prof. Hill: a fitting response to the weird sexism of Mrs. Thomas's demand." Campbell wrote that "the message to Professor Hill was bizarre, and I can't guess its motivation. I don't know what political benefit it might have had."

Campbell wrote in the e-mail that Hill's decision not to apologize "was no surprise: she was put under enormous pressure to backtrack or desist during the hearings, and lost her job because of her integrity in sticking to her testimony. ... Why would she compromise it now, on the basis of a voice mail message?"

"The Brandeis community supports Professor Hill as we would any member of the faculty, student [body] or staff that was involved in something like this," Gully said. "She's a very distinguished member of the faculty, and as an institution, we certainly support her.