Anita Hill Isn't Sure There Would Have Even Been a Nomination Today

Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Bloomberg dot com. Well, we are broadcasting live from the Bloomberg look Ahead Conference You're Ahead, which we are having a hosting here in our Bloomberg headquarters in New York and pim you know, one conversation that is paramount this year is UH corporate governance and the the amount that secial harassment and other

types of activities are kind of hindering corporate growth. And this is something that obviously has been brought to the foreg part by Harvey Weinstein and the increasing allegations for a number of different actresses about his unwanted approaches of them, and UH and other other people as well have been accused of similar attributes, and so this is something that is actually coming to the four as a corporate issue and one that is important more than it has in

a long time. Well, corporate issue, yes, and the financial issue for those corporations. And you know, just to make clear that there are a variety of different, uh sort of remedies that exist. And in the federal in the government sphere, you think that there would be a process that would allow that kind of uh what my restitution or payment for this, but it's not. So. Federal workers have a cap on the amount. And let's say you're able to prove sexual harassment, there is a cap on

the punitive and compensatory damages. They're based on the size of the company. And so if you are doing business with the government, you are let's say, only have between fifteen and a hundred employees. You only the campus fifty. So the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has a very different

set of rules for almost every different business. You know, I have to say, uh, Sam our producer, and I were talking about this and one thing that really struck us is, you know, in a society where there's so much money and time spent putting in creating a sense of beauty for women that's sort of flaunce their their

sort of sexual attributes. How that sort of plays into this whole debate, and there has been no one who has been more at the forefront of this entire debate than Anita Hill, who is currently a professor of Law, public policy, and Women's Studies at the hell Are Graduate School of Policy and Management at Brandise University in Washington, d C. Of course, she is known and became a national figure in one when she accused US Supreme Court

nominee Clarence Thomas for boss at the United States Department of Education UH and Equal Opportunity Employment Opportunity Commission of sexual harassment. And she joins US here today. UM. Professor Hill, thank you so much for joining us. UM. Do you think that things have gotten better since as far as people being receptive to accusations of sexual harassment and discussing them in an open way? I do think things have gotten better. I think that the latest media attention UH

is much better now. I think people are really pondering women's experiences differently now. UH. They've stopped asking a question, why didn't you come forward? And they're starting to really examine the behavior and the structures that in people who keep the behavior in place. So I think this is an improved conversation, UM, and we just need to take those next steps there in the problem. What are some

of those next steps? Is it uh, recognizing the potential finance liability, let's say, in the corporate setting, a reputational liability, and obviously all those things play into it, But what would you see as some of the next steps. Well, one of the things that I think companies ought to do is to really assess their workplaces. There are a combination of things that need to be done in order to make change, and we know that from just history

and and the whole history of social change in this country. UM. Some of the things that are structural, uh in terms of policies and procedures within the company, and some have to do with changing the culture of certain companies, cultures that actually in fact encourage the behavior, and then other cultural aspects that sort of minimize the behavior and say, well, it's not really that bad or anything that we need

to be concerned about. And of course there's always the economic interests that a business has, and I know that that's what drives businesses. But the that harassment does cost. It costs business in terms of payments or people who are asked, but it also costs in terms of the human resources. UM. And that's something that companies need to take into account. But I also like to flip the questions sometimes, and I said and say, you know what,

how are you profiting from harassment? How what good? There's what benefit do you get as a company from having a culture that is harassing when instead what you should be looking for is making sure that people are judged on their merit and that they can perform to their fullest.

You know, sometimes when sexual harassment is in the news, you start getting a lot of backlash where uh, you know, men in particular will say, well, does that mean that no man can never hit on a woman, or that you know, if a woman is wearing uh, you know, if she's putting herself together in a certain way and

you can't comment on it, what's her response to that? Well, I think one of the things that I have her very often is, you know, even in ninety one, when people said, well, now we have to think about what we say, well, there's no danger in thinking about what

you say. Oh, in fact, we should all be quite thoughtful, especially now that we know, um what the problem is that these are situations that women are finding themselves in, and some of them are called workers who are men find themselves and then make them uncomfortable that really have no place in the workplace. It's time out for people saying, oh, well, you know we used to be able to do this. Well, it's a new day. And women have spoken that they

find it offensive. You know, if women don't find it offensive, then you know, that's fine, But that doesn't mean that you should continue and keep pushing the issue when we have been put on you've been putting people on notice that this is a problem in the workplace and it's

it's hindering our abilities to do our job. Does it also speak to the sort of lack of just good manners and and you know, the way you treat other people, because this seems to be an shoot not just about whether someone wants to have a sexual relationship or not. It's about power, and it's about the power that one person has over another person, and it just manifests itself

in this way. But harassment doesn't necessarily mean sexual harassment. Well, there's sex based harassment that can happen on any you know, to any number of people. It's a sexual harassment that we're talking about. It's been in the news lately. But you're absolutely right um. This typically can manifest itself UM in different forms depending on the person who is exhibiting it and the person who they talked to. So it can harassment can come in the form of racist harassment,

It can come in form a homophobic harassment. It can come in the form of all kinds of of of language that is inappropriate and that is offensive and that really has no benefit, gives no benefit to the work. But I you know, it is at some point a level on the level of civility. How much civility are

we going to try to promote in a workplace? But there is something that is very special and peculiar about sexual harassment when you look at the numbers, and they range, but some of the numbers suggested as many as forty two fifty percent of the limit in a workforce of being harassed sexually harassed. So we know that this is a peculiar problem, but there are variations on the thing. Well, and we talk about big corporations, and we talk about Hollywood. Uh,

what about government? Right? I mean, we're hearing an increasing amount about allegations with the government. President Trump was caught on tape talking about doing whatever he wanted, Uh, with people. I mean, do you get the sense that, first of all, Clarence Thomas would be on Supreme Court today had he faced the same kind of UH challenges as he did back in I'm not sure that there would have been a nomination that I would have could have gone forward

had there been allegations of harassment. I'm not sure we would have even had the hearing, That's what I'm saying. So you can't go back and say in time and say, wouldn't it have happened if X, Because I mean, we wouldn't be talking about it if that hearing hadn't occurred. But do you think that there are procedures that are appropriate and adequate in Congress right now and just in

general and throughout Washington to prevent this? Well, I think that if if there was a nominee, uh, my complaint or my statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee came before the vote and before the hearing and which I testified, I think that the procedure would be to take that kind of complaint very seriously before pushed a nomination through.

So I think we're in a different place now. Uh. The presumption at that point was always either that it didn't happen or that it didn't matter and the harassment. And I don't think that we're willing to make that bold a statement right now about what's going on in the workplace that we all live in. A lot of times the conversation becomes broad and it goes under the heading of corporate governance. Do you think it'd be valuable to put an actual grade or rape me? Companies that pollute,

they might get a grade. Companies that don't enforce a sexual harassment free environment for people, they would get a grade. Do you think that would get any traction in terms of investors, Because as you said, you have a workforce that feels harassed in any way, you're not gonna be doing their best work. They're not going to be doing their best work. And we know now that are not about just personal decisions. These are these examining It is

about a business decision too. And um, with all the kind of media platforms that we have now, reputations can be out there on the record. And I think that that is perhaps a coming wave of things that people are going to be putting things on social media. You know that that's what happened at Ober. You know, one bog put that on the record and other people stepped up. So no, we are not and they will be grading

whether or not there is an official grade. Reputation is at stake, and um, I know that there's new studies and says that say that the reputation really is what UH really is motivating companies to behave differently or to put into place different different policies and processes, to end a problem, or to react to a problem, maybe fire someone, to to change the culture. So I you're absolutely right in the social media is the conduit. Thank you very

much for spending time with us. Anita Hill is a professor of Law, of Public Policy and Women's Studies at the Heller the Graduate School of Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Thank you. We are broadcasting alive from the Bloomberg Year Ahead conference in our world headquarters here in New York. And one of the big questions for the Year of head is in the age of Netflix and

Amazon Prime, how does a company like IMAX compete? And here to address that is Richard Gelfond, a chief executive officer of Imax, which is based in Stony Brook, New York, but he joins us here in our seven thirty one Lexington headquarters. So, uh can you address that? How do you how do you compete? I think in certain respects the modern streaming trends help a company like i'm X because streaming, definitionally is on a small device. Usually it's in your home or in your office. And I think

people want a fuller life than that. I used to say. You know, if you want to be changed to your cow, sure that's a that's one way to live your life. But if you want to get out of your home, you want something really special to do it. So if you go to a regular multiplex theater, let's say, and it smells a popcorn and the uh um, you know, it's noisy and people are yelling, that might not be enough of a difference to stop you from streaming and do something social. But in the case of IMAX, it's

a fabulous experience. It can't be replicated in the home unless you want to spend millions of dollars. And if you know, it really provides you with a reason. Um, last night I was at a Springsteen to play here in New York on Broadway. I mean I could buy the I could stream it, I could listen to the music in lots of ways, but this amazing experience, immersive experience is why you go. And I think IMAX is

part of that trend. All right, So we got the immerg of experience and obviously the it's great if the movie, so the experience is a hit, right, I mean, if people really want to want to do that. Can you speak to the challenge that you have with the actual content providers, because we've been following, for example, the report that Disney at one point was holding negotiations to purchase Century Fox. Now you are as much a technology company as you are a sort of holding to the theater world.

Does having smaller numbers of of of content providers make it more challenging for you? You know? I think maybe the opposite. And the reason I would say that is because we do blockbuster films. We do you know, larger than life kind of movies. We did thor this weekend and we did million dollars worldwide and thor and so we're not really interested in the mid level and the

small movies. And I think to the extent big content providers come together, they could afford more budgets and more blockbuster films higher production value, the kinds of things that really work in Imax. We've also experimented with alternative content, so we did episodes of the Game of Thrones in Imax. This year we did a Marvel TV series, the pilots for in Humans in Imax. So how did they do? Uh?

The they did? Okay? I mean the one on Game of Thrones was kind of amazing because it was last year's episodes that you could kind of reruns, you could get on TV and people paid fifteen dollars for them. In Humans was was the beginning of a TV series, which people didn't know, and I think one of the problems we had. We were really excited about doing Marvel, but I think people expected production values commensurate with a Marvel film, and when it was a TV pilot not

a Marvel film. You know, we did three million dollars, so it wasn't terrible, but people didn't distinguish that. In five years from now, do you think that Imax will be thought of as much as a virtual reality company as it is? Uh, the massive screen and very big production kinds of films. I wish that was the case, but I don't think so. Um, we are playing around with virtual reality, as you know, and we have a number of VR test pilots, but um, that's gonna it's

gonna take a while. I think the VR experience is amazing. Um we we and IMAX have a CEO conference. We invite speakers in and I invited one person who has helped invent the technology and another who makes films. I don't know one to tend scale. I asked them to rate VR technology today and the films today, and they both independently said one. So, I think we're trying to do the best VR there is in the world today, but I think it's a long way until it gets

where it's going to go. One tension here is the amount of money that's required to invest in virtual reality or bigger and better experiences, paired with the fact that yes, people want experiences, but there's a limit to how much they're willing to pay for them. How are you addressing that tension and how is that sort of challenging your balance sheet? Well, it's it's not because we're it's not

challenging our balance shee. Because we're doing it as a pilot and we're eliminating the tension by doing it slowly and not spending a lot of money. So we're opening ten pilots around the world. We now have four open New York, l a UM, Toronto, and in Shanghai, and we're monitoring them in in a cost efficient way. So if it starts slowly, we're not going to spend a lot of money, and I'm not gonna push it. But if it takes off and it really works, we're gonna

put a lot more money in. And that's kind of what I was addressing. I don't think it's right for prime time now. I think it's gonna take a number of years until it gets to the point back to your question, where it exceeds the image of our company's big screens. I think it works very well. It's complimentary, but it's gonna take a while. You mentioned big screens.

I want to talk about a big market China. Tell us people what you're doing there, because that's a different You can't just, you know, import what goes on in one place into another and expected to do well. Well. That was exactly the model we tried what you're alluded to in your question, which as I started going to China almost twenty years ago, and I met with the government, and I met with studios, and we really tried to build something that was much more organically Chinese than a

lot of US companies do. So now we have a hundred and fifty employees in China. We're a public company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. We have a Chinese CEO. We we have Chinese content in China. So we have about five hundred theaters now open. We do about ten percent of the Chinese box office when we're involved with the movie, either Chinese movie or a US movie. And we're as comfortable in Chinese Hollywood as we are in this Hollywood. Thank you very much for being with us

in our world headquarters. Much appreciated. Richard Gelfont is the chief executive of Imax Corps. He's all about the experience. You're listening to Bloomberg n B I A making a move today, UM, I want to talk now about well, I want to bring in Will Marshall. He is the co founder and the chief executive of Planet based in

San Francisco. And just to kind of set the context, Lisa, you know, one of the things I like to do is look about space programs and NASA and In two thousand and ten, there was a solar satellite, a a dynamics observatory that was launched by NASA. It weighed sixty eight hundred pounds and it costs eight hundred and fifty million dollars to build. That's expensive. Our next guest, Will Marshall, has a way to maybe bring down the cost of something like that. Well, thanks for being with us here.

So is that kind of an accurate way to kind of look at the chronology of what we'd like to see happen. Absolutely and what we have done at planet as miniaturi as satellites. We've taken satellites the size of a BOS and bring them brought them down. Most of the cost of involved with satellites is the launched cost, and so s d O that you just mentioned, you know, would have taken up a single whole rocket, and rockets

are expensive. By miniaturizing the satellites, we can launch many many satellites in one rocket um thus bring the cost down and therefore the data the cost per unit data down by many orders of magnitude. And this is possible because of the leveraging of consumer electronics, which have miniaturized sensors and processes and hard drives for things like smartphones. So we leverage that to miniaturize satellites. So how cheap

is a cheap satellite? Um orders a magnitude less than the one that your colleague just referred to, like a thousand dollars. Yeah, exactly. We have to sell data, and we don't like to talk about this cost of the satellites themselves, but we brought down the cost of the imagery by many orders of magnitude. All right, so let's talk about the practical application of this imagery. First of all, have you already started to sell that data to a number of different industries. Can you give us a sense

of what they are, how it's being used. Absolutely? Firstly, Yeah, we've launched more than two hundred satellites, is the largest fleet of satellites in history, and we're getting about three under forwarding million square kilometers of imagery down every day. We image the entire Earth every single day. What that enables us to do is rapid change. See rapid changes over the planet. Um. The industries that are interested in

that include agriculture, consumer mapping, governments. So in agriculture, what we've what we see is that this the people. We can help improve crop yields by bearing in season diagnostics, so we sell it to big AD companies. We can tell crop yield on a pixel by pixel basis and then they can inform the farmer when to add water, so when to add firdliers during the growing season to

help improve the crop yield. UM in consumer mapping, that's companies like Google that buy our data to have up to date sabaite imagery layers on their on their satellite imagery layer maps UM and then UM governments use it from a range of things from security to things like response to the hurricanes that have been happening here recently, or the earthquake in Mexico, so disaster response. Can I

ask you a question. Whenever I think about people shooting things up into the atmosphere and it's sort of satellite revolving the earth, I think about all the trash or sort of all the refuse. Is that a problem for you? Not for us? But it is a problem satellite debris. Space debris is a big problem. There's there's about thirty million pieces of man maybe debris orbiting the Earth. I worked on this for many years when as a NASA. It's mainly up at higher orbits where the Russians and

the Americans put a lot of their satellites. Back in the early part of the space agent didn't realize that this could have this effect of of of where debris hits debris and then causes more debris that then causes increases the collision. So we actually have a runaway situation um in certain altitudes. It's very slow, but just like climate change, the sooner you nip it in the budda burdder.

Now we stay out of that problem by keeping us are like way lower in orbits, like more like four hundred five hundred kilometers, where that stuff is eight hundred and twelve hundred kilometers four or five kilometers. There's very little stuff, and it re enters because of the atmospheric decay after a couple of years, so it gets quickly out of the way. But it is a problem we have to address. What about the problem of raising money.

It doesn't seem like it's a problem because you're smiling. Sure, we've raised a bunch of capital from venture capitalists in the Bay Area who are interested both in the commercial applications of this data and also the fact that it can do a lot of good. Um. So there's a huge amount of good that can come from this data set. To do you ever have to refuse to sell your data to certain governments that you have to vet. We

do have to vet um. I mean it is important to to be stewards of this data to try and have the most positive impact, and of course economic impact for us, we care about revenue. But the point is that that that yes, sir, and and and there are certain regulations. Of course we can't sell the datas in a well iran and think things like that. Thank you so much for joining us. It's really fascinating. Well well Marshall co founder and chief executive officer of Planet, which

is based in San Francisco. Also uh, formerly of NASA, and uh, fascinating stories. I have to I have to just plug a story. The Ashley Vans of Bloomberg business Week wrote that include a lot of really colorful details about your past. I highly recommended that The title of the article is the tiny satellites ushering in the New Space Revolution. He is one of the world's most successful

and wealthiest individuals. The er Yes, there you go, Well done, all right then, let's just bring him in Eric Shatzker as our editor at large for Bloomberg News, and Eric, let's clear up him when we're really talking. I'm just saying, I'm hoping a little maybe just it rubs off a little bit, but seriously, the gentleman I'm really speaking about is Al Walid bin Talal al Salt, which is his

full name of Saudi prince. Yes, indeed, and you know him perhaps better than most of us, because you have spent quite a bit of time with him over a period of years, and you most recently had a late night dinner with him, and that really doesn't go anywhere near describing the experience, and wondering if you could tell us who he is to you and your experience with him, and then maybe give us your perspective on his most recent arrest by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia of

course happy to. Of course, the reason we are talking about Al Walid bin Talala's that he was swept up in his anti corruption probe along with ten other princes, a bunch of former ministers, some Saudi businessmen, and his whereabouts today and the whereabouts of all those other people are unknown. I saw him less than two weeks ago in Saudi Arabia. I was there for the Future Investment Initiative.

This was a financial and economic conference put on by Mohammed Been Salmon and the Public Investment Fund, which is Saudi Arabia's sovereign well fund. Mohammed Been Salmon of course, being the Crown Prince, the son of the current king, King Salmon. And after that conference was over on Thursday, I went out to al Wilds desert camp as part of a small caravan. We got there, we spent the evening in the desert. It involved, as you said, a

dinner which was quite lavish. It involved watching a soccer match in the open air on some large screen TVs that he had set up. We sat on these elaborate gigantic rugs against cushions. Um. We talked about politics, which is one of his favorite subjects us politics. In fact, we talked about We talked excuse me about Breggsit, which he described to me as stupid. We talked about stocks, because as you may recall, that was sort of super Thursday.

Google was reporting, or Alphabet if you prefer, Amazon was reporting, and Alva Lead is an investor in tech stocks has been for a long time as a current investor in Twitter, as a current investor in Lift and we uh, we spent a very pleasant evening together, and over the course of those several hours, I developed no inkling whatsoever that all of this was going to transpire only ten days later. And this is what I wanted to get out with you.

I mean, you said in your article that you wrote on the Bloomberg you did not get any sense, uh, there was anything imminent through earth that he had any sense of that. But just reading through the tea leaves what could potentially have put him in the crosshairs of the current air apparent and frankly, the the factor ruler

right now of Saudi Arabia. There's probably two things. One is the I e And this is really a theory because we haven't heard from him on the subject himself, that Mohammed bin Salman, acting with the full support of his father, King Salmon, is determined to eliminate, if you will, uh, and I don't mean that any euphemistic way, eliminate descent or freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia while he is

trying to consolidate power. And the second is that possibly Prince Al Walid in some way, shape or form, represented a different kind of a threat. Now what kind of a threat could it be? Under the old king, King Abdullah, there were, if you will, worrying factions in the royal family, and the fact that they were all pitted against one another in a strange way, maintained a sense of stability.

This king and his son of approaching uh Saudi politics, if you will, Saudi rule in a totally different way. It is much more autocratic and the power is centralized under Mohammed bin Salman, and so if al will lead were part and I don't have any facts to corroborate this. If he were part of one of those other factions, perhaps the crown prince perceived him as some kind of a threat. Let's also add to the fact, add to

that that he is wealthy, independently wealthy. Doesn't get his money from a Ramco if you will, like almost all the other Saudi royals do. He's made it as an investor. He's really well connected. He's personal friends with Bill Gates and Rupert Murdoch, for example, and as a result, he wields influence, and perhaps that influence presents a threat to

the crown. But again these are all theories. Now let's talk about the other one, which is the descent freedom of expression part and further for that, we actually do have a piece of evidence. Back in February of two thousand fifteen, Al Wilead had started an Arabic language news channel based in Bahrain and that news news channel, i should add, actually had a partnership agreement with Bloomberg. We were going to provide them with information and with data.

And that channel was shut down by the Bahraini government

on day one. It never reopened. Now it appears that the cardinal mistake that Al Arab that was the name of the news channel made was interviewing a Bahraini opposition politician, because the Bahraini government subsequently issued a statement saying that the channel had failed to respect the need to fight terrorism and extremism, and it was a signal that Al will lead in the channel itself had misread, if you will, the degree to which bahrain and more importantly, Saudi Arabia's

economic sponsor and neighbor, were willing to tolerate dissent and freedom of expression. And while on the surface, it appears that Mohammad bin Selman is modernizing the Saudi economy and liberalizing social values, and he wants to return to a pre Wahabi form of Islamism. Uh. He does not appear to tolerate dissent well. So if under the surface there was a lot more of that going on, he perceived al will lead as a voice of free expression, as a voice of descent, that too, may have been one

of the reasons to take him into custody. Officially, this is according to an official in the Saudi government whom Bloomberg spoke to. The charges against him our money laundering, bribery and extortion. So they have nothing to do with dissent. They have nothing to do ostensibly with royal politics. But we have to at least contemplate the possibility that there are other things involved. Every conspiracy theorist is heading in

that direction. Of course, there is a possibility that some of those charges are based on fact, but the Saudi government has not shared with us any of that evidence and probably won't because it doesn't operate. The criminal justice system doesn't operate there the way that it does here.

We're told that due process will be granted to these people, that they're going to get legal representation that they're going to have a day in court, But who knows whether that procedure bears any resemblance to what we know here or what we know if you will in the Western world. Eric Schatsker, thank you so much for joining us and for writing the story. I highly recommended it. I dined with Olive a lead in the desert days before his arrest.

Eric Schasker is an editor at large for Bloomberg News and New joins us here where we are broadcasting live from Bloomberg's The Year Ahead Summit in our New York headquarters. Fascinating story. Quickly, just how was the food? It's pretty good. When you're done, I have to say. I had some lamb, I had some shrimp, I had some rice salads. It's um. There's a lot on offer, at least two dozen courses. I was kind of picking. I could deal with a

course right now. This is Bloomberg. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg P and L podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at Lisa Abramo. It's one before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide on Bluebirg Radio