Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz

Samantha Goldstein

Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan

Sarah Khan
Elias Khoury
Lucas Maiman

Magdalena Mihaylova

Ellery Rosenzweig

Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola
Ali Safawi

 Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

FINNTAN STORER

Managing Editor

Stanford Lipsey Student Publications Building

420 Maynard St. 

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

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Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan since 1890.

MAYA GOLDMAN

Editor in Chief
MAGDALENA MIHAYLOVA 

AND JOEL DANILEWITZ

Editorial Page Editors

Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of The Daily’s Editorial Board. 

All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their authors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

M

y sophomore year of 
college, I decided 
to major in history 

instead of political science. To 
me, the switch from political 
science to history was a minor 
one, because I had always 
thought they were similar.

But 
that 
was 
not 
the 

perception a lot of people I 
knew had. Some of my friends 
and family seemed concerned 
that I was majoring in history. 
The impression I got from 
people 
was 
that 
political 

science 
was 
better 
than 

history because it was more 
employable, 
more 
relevant 

and more interesting. The 
concerns I encountered reflect 
broader trends in American 
higher education. These trends 
highlight two commonly held 
attacks on the humanities. 
One 
is 
that 
declaring 
a 

humanities major is asking for 
unemployment. And two, that 
the humanities are inferior and 
antiquated when compared to 
the social sciences.

Since 2007, the number of 

history majors in the U.S. has 
fallen more than 40 percent. 
There are even colleges that 
are getting rid of certain 
humanities 
subjects. 
Many 

look to the recession in 2008 to 
explain the dwindling interest 
in the humanities. Memory 
of the recession has made 
college students today deeply 
concerned about finding a 
stable job. So once in college, 
it makes sense that many 
millennials and Gen Z college 
students have opted out of 
the humanities, because in an 
economy often characterized 
as being in the midst of an 
information age, quantitative, 
data-based and technological 
skills seem more practical. 
What use is reading hundreds 
of pages about the French 
Revolution, philosophy or the 
modern canon when all the best 
jobs require quantitative skills?

This 
trend 
of 
favoring 

quantitative 
methods 
and 

skills is also evident within 
the liberal arts curriculum 
itself. Having spent almost 
four years on campus, as I 
alluded to earlier, it’s clear 
the social sciences are widely 
held in higher esteem than 
the humanities. Again, my 
experience 
seems 
to 
align 

with the overall trend on 
college campuses, as the social 
sciences have not experienced 
anywhere near the drop in 
enrollment 
the 
humanities 

have. In the information age, 
those who have chosen to major 
in a liberal arts subject are also 
swayed by an academic and 
cultural ethos that emphasizes 
data and quantitation.

First, 
the 
idea 
that 

humanities 
majors 
are 

unemployable 
relative 
to 

STEM or business majors is 
not true. In 2015, 4.3 percent 
of terminal bachelor’s degree 
holders in the humanities — 

meaning their highest level 
of education was undergrad 
— 
were 
unemployed, 

compared 
to 
3.6 
percent 

of 
all 
terminal 
bachelor’s 

degree holders, which is a 
minuscule 
difference. 
And 

while humanities majors do 
make less than business or 
engineering 
majors, 
many 

humanities majors report a 
high level of satisfaction with 
their salary and with their 
job. So the widely held claim 
that a humanities major is 
asking to spend years after 
college in a Starbucks or 
their parents’ basement is 
inaccurate and hyperbolic.

Second, the humanities can 

offer immense value to your 
college education and they are 
not an inferior version of the 
social sciences. I chose to study 
history because I’ve found that 
doing so has allowed me to 
think in a critical and informed 
way about the institutions, 
politics, debates and social 
realities that I interact with on 
a regular basis. Taking classes 
on the origins of Nazism and 
the 
Nazi’s 
racial 
ideology 

changed the way I thought 
about race and forced me to 
reconsider 
my 
previously 

colorblind mindset. It also 
showed me how ideologies in 
general work in conscious and 
unconscious ways.

A 
bevy 
of 
European 

history 
classes 
gave 
me 

the tools to understand the 
pillars of political liberalism, 
communism 
and 
fascism. 

They also taught me how 
liberal democracies can justify 
inequalities in the provision 
of rights that are ostensibly 
universal. A class on the history 
of media representation of 
Asian Americans allowed me 
to contextualize my mom’s 
family experience in America 
as 
immigrants 
from 
the 

Philippines. And a class on 
intellectual history exposed 
me to the influential ideas of 
19th century Europe’s most 
important thinkers, which I 
found relevant to political and 
moral questions today. These 
are just a few examples of the 
history classes I have taken 
that have enriched the way 
I think. Overall, the lens of 
historical analysis has forced 
me to reconsider a lot of the 

assumptions 
I 
had 
before 

starting college, leaving me 
happier, more open-minded 
and more informed. And while 
learning 
invaluable 
lessons 

and information, I’ve honed 
my ability to write, make an 
argument, analyze sources and 
do qualitative research.

The 
ability 
to 
think 

critically 
and 
historically 

about the pressing issues of 
our day is no less important 
today than it was a before the 
advent of the information age. 
STEM 
is 
obviously 
highly 

valuable 
and 
beneficial 
to 

society. We have STEM majors 
to thank for the fact that 
our 
scientific 
capabilities, 

from 
life-saving 
medicine 

to the latest technology, are 
greater than they have ever 
been. But the moral progress 
of the humanities does not 
match our scientific progress. 
The nature of the social and 
political problems we face are 
not fundamentally different 
from those of the past, despite 
the vastly improved scientific 
landscape we have today. It 
is this discrepancy, between 
moral 
and 
technological 

progress, that the humanities 
can offer unique succor and 
in which the social sciences 
fall short.

The social science classes 

I have taken have not only 
been interesting, but have 
also 
offered 
great 
insight 

into contemporary problems. 
However, in my experience, 
they tend to rely heavily on 
quantitation and ahistorical 
theories. While you can make 
observations about the natural 
world through randomized, 
controlled 
scientific 

experiments, making similar 
scientific 
observations 
and 

conclusions 
about 
humans 

is much harder. Modeling 
human behavior in political, 
social or economic contexts 
is hard because of human 
complexity. Research tells us 
that humans are not as rational 
as we once thought and that 
emotions and reason often 
converge to make decisions 
in our brains, challenging 
the validity of rational choice 
theory prevalent in social 
science theories. While the 
social sciences can provide 
insight 
based 
on 
studies, 

quantitative 
analysis 
and 

models, they should not be 
seen 
as 
conclusive 
given 

the 
complexity 
of 
human 

behavior. This is where history 
and the greater humanities 
come in, to use critical and 
analytical qualitative skills 
to understand human society 
and the moral and political 
choices we have, in ways that 
a 
quantitative 
analysis 
or 

predictive model cannot fully 
explicate.

Aaron Baker can be reached 

aaronbak@umich.edu.

ELLERY ROSENZWEIG | COLUMN

Exercise competition is toxic

L

aying my mat on the 
ground, I look left and 
right 
observing 
those 

around me. I take a seat as I try 
to adjust to the hot temperature 
of the room. The instructor walks 
in and motions for us to begin in 
child’s pose. As I slide in, I can’t 
help but look at the woman in 
front of me. Is my butt supposed 
to be as low to the ground as hers? 
We begin to hold long balancing 
poses, and I shake trying to hold 
mine longer than those behind 
me so they can see how talented 
I am. We reach the end of class in 
corpse pose, where you literally 
do nothing but lie on your mat, 
and my instructor reminds us that 
“you are exactly where you are 
supposed to be.” I repeat this in 
my head as I struggle to stay still 
for the next 5 minutes.

In yoga classes, on my own 

at the gym or walking in heavy 
foot traffic to my 10 a.m. class, I 
struggle to fight the competition 
and comparison I create between 
myself, friends and complete 
strangers. 
Recently, 
after 

overcoming my fear of the gym, 
I realized these settings have a 
competitive atmosphere due to 
the way your workout is measured 
on the machines and the way 
people present themselves in the 
weight room. And overall, I have 
found this competitive energy and 
this mindset makes these physical 
activities extremely unenjoyable.

Now, I wouldn’t say I am the 

competitive type. My parents 
always tell stories of me playing 
middle school basketball where 
instead of focusing on the ball 
going down the court, I was 
preoccupied with playing with 
my hair. Looking back, all I 
remember was the joy of playing 
with my friends and physically 
feeling good after a practice. So, 
how come I really enjoyed myself 
in a competitive setting then, but 
when exercising today, I find this 
competition so unbearable?

In the past, when I used to 

go to work out, there was always 
an underlying goal to get as fit as 
possible or to lose weight. There 
were periods of time when I took 

my exercise very seriously, and 
looking back, I would say it was 
particularly harmful. I hated the 
entire process of working out 
and how I felt before going to do 
these activities. During and even 
after, I never felt the endorphins 
rush the way others around me 
experienced it. Usually, I would 
do a particular physical activity 
every day for a few months 
and then fall out of it from 
injury, lack of interest or lack of 
results I wanted. There was no 
sustainability in the expectations 
I had for myself because they were 
so unattainable with this mindset.

I think I developed this way 

of thinking from how our society 
glorifies fitness, health and being 
athletic. We are socialized from 
a young age in physical activities 
and in school gym classes that 
to be healthy and fit, we should 
be active. But when particular 
children 
feel 
discouraged, 

targeted 
and 
uncomfortable 

in these programs, it should 
be a clear public concern. Last 
semester, when researching for a 
project on fatphobia, I found out 
when physical education teachers 
have a bias toward against fat 
students, these individuals begin 
avoiding physical activities, and 
this can impact their relationship 
with their bodies and ultimately 
their mental and physical health.

So, we receive messages from 

a young age that the only way to 
be fit and healthy is to work out, 
be active and do this as much as 
possible until we get the expected 
results of what healthy looks like. 
But what if we never get the results 
we dream of because healthy looks 
different for each body? I think 
the influence of this education 
is where the comparison game 
begins and where we develop 
this 
competition 
between 

ourselves and those around us. 
And this happens especially in 
environments like the gym or 
workout classes, where some 
become super fit and get the 
results they expect while others 
struggle to fit this norm because 
their bodies may not be able to get 
to the same point.

This competitive, comparison 

mindset in physical exercise is 
toxic and leads to people pushing 
themselves too far, thus hurting 
themselves physically, or avoiding 
these activities in general, which 
hinders them from gaining the 
actual benefits from physical 
activity. Last semester, with my 
busy schedule, I rarely found time 
to be physically active and did not 
think much about it until I found 
myself extremely stressed out. 
Close to finals, one of my friends 
encouraged me to go to the gym 
with her to just sweat out all of 
our stress. I recognized, probably 
for the first time, how good it 
felt to sweat and feel the rush of 
endorphins.

From that point on, I decided 

I will not allow this competitive, 
comparison mindset to influence 
the way I engage in physical 
activity. It does not benefit 
my lifestyle because it turns 
out I actually like moving my 
body and the way it makes me 
feel. This means I am actively 
deciding to not care about what 
others are doing or think of me 
in an exercise setting. It has 
already been a challenge, but 
I have noticed that everyone 
is truly focused on themselves 
and do not care about what I am 
doing at all.

The people around me are 

not my competition. I try to find 
joy in physical activity because, 
ultimately, isn’t its purpose to 
make me feel better? Whether 
moving my body will make 
me fit or healthy, it makes me 
feel happy and gives me space 
to relieve myself from stress 
and clear my mind. I think we 
should all challenge ourselves 
to be kind, goofy and silly with 
one another and ourselves at 
the gym, in workout classes or 
on a quick walk running late to 
class. Because most of us are 
not training to become serious 
athletes and would benefit from 
the fun and joy of just moving our 
bodies as we please.

Ellery Rosenzweig can be reached at 

erosenz@umich.edu.

JOIN OUR EDITORIAL BOARD

Our open Editorial Board meets Wednesdays 7:00-
8:30 PM at our newsroom at 420 Maynard St. All 
are welcome to come discuss national, state and 

campus affairs.

P

eople don’t care about 
data privacy. This is 
the explanation of some 

analysts for why there hasn’t 
been a boycott against the big 
internet companies. If people 
cared, surely scandals like 
when Facebook leaked the 
personal data of 50 million 
Americans 
to 
Cambridge 

Analytica, 
or 
reports 
that 

Google 
secretly 
purchased 

financial data to track users’ 
purchases would’ve led to 
some sort of departure from 
these platforms by now.

The 
problem: 
It 
seems 

people do care. The Pew 
Research Center found that 
80 percent of users were 
concerned about businesses 
and advertisers accessing the 
data they share on social media 
platforms. 
Furthermore, 
61 

percent of users said they 
would like to do more to 
protect their privacy.

So 
why 
haven’t 
people 

stopped 
using 
Google 
or 

Facebook?

Because there aren’t viable 

alternatives. Sure, there are a 
number of companies that aim 
to provide privacy as part of 
their product — Duck Duck Go 
for your search engine, Signal 
for messaging, FastMail for 
email. However, the costs of 
switching make it unrealistic 
for most people.

For example, if you want 

to use Signal for messaging, 
you would have to convince 
each 
person 
you 
message 

with on Facebook Messenger, 
WhatsApp, etc., to switch over 
to Signal in order to message 
them. To use FastMail for 
email, it costs $30 per year 
minimum. Additionally, there 
is the hassle of transferring 
contacts, photos and prior data 

to these new services.

Why 
aren’t 
there 
real 

alternatives? The nature of 
many tech companies means 
the value of their products 
increase as more people use 
them. This makes challenging 
the big tech firms a herculean 
task, as not only do you 
need a competitive product, 

you also need to be able to 
overcome a massive user base 
disadvantage (almost a third 
of 
the 
world’s 
population 

uses 
Facebook). 
Further 

exacerbating this situation is 
one from the the wide array of 
anti-competitive actions that 
tech companies employ.

For 
instance, 
tech 

companies 
often 
use 

acquisitions 
to 
snuff 
out 

potential 
competition 
and 

expand into new industries. 
Many 
of 
Google’s 
central 

products such as YouTube, 
Android 
and 
DoubleClick 

(Google’s ad service) were 
acquired as start-ups. Forays 
into new technologies such 
as the internet of things and 
artificial 
intelligence 
were 

jump-started by purchases as 
well — Nest and DeepMind 
respectively. 
Furthermore, 

companies 
that 
compete 

with Google’s products face 
challenges including Google 
wielding its product arsenal to 
place them at a disadvantage, 
like when Google manipulated 
search results to promote its own 
services and demote competitors 
offering similar services.

This 
pattern 
of 
anti-

competitive 
actions 
can 

be found across the tech 
giants. Whether it’s Amazon 
purposefully 
hemorrhaging 

hundreds 
of 
millions 
of 

dollars to force an acquisition, 
or 
Facebook 
purchasing 

potential 
competitors 
like 

WhatsApp 
and 
Instagram, 

anti-competitiveness is a core 
feature of the big internet 
companies’ business models. 
These practices make it difficult 
for consumers to influence 
the 
marketplace, 
reducing 

their ability to hold companies 
accountable by taking their 
business elsewhere.

There 
are 
signs 
that 

tech companies’ bigness is 
starting to be noticed. In the 
European Union, Google faces 
two fines due to anti-trust 
violations — each with a price 
tag over $2 billion. U.S. Sen. 
Amy 
Klobuchar, 
D-Minn., 

a presidential candidate for 

2020, has introduced antitrust 
legislation that includes a ban 
on acquisitions for companies 
with a market capitalization 
above $100 billion (Facebook, 
Google and Amazon all have 
market 
capitalizations 
well 

above 
$100 
billion). 
Lina 

Khan, an academic fellow 
at Columbia University and 
a former legal fellow at the 
Federal Trade Commission, 
has proposed a new legal 
theory, which contends that 
even when monopolies appear 
to 
benefit 
consumers 
by 

offering free services or low 
prices, they can still be deeply 
harmful. She argues that these 
monopolies can distort not just 
markets, but American life, 
through things like enormous 
tax cuts, commissioned studies 
and 
aggressive 
lobbying 

(Amazon’s 
HQ2 
debacle 

illustrates this perfectly).

To put power back in 

consumers’ hands, the tech 
giants should be treated as 
the behemoths that they are. 
Unrestrained expansion has 
made consumers powerless 
to 
influence 
the 
market 

with their choices, and now 
government must step in on 
their behalf with oversight 
and regulations that hold 
companies 
accountable. 

The scale of the largest tech 
companies has given us free 
services 
and 
revolutionary 

products, but that scale has 
externalities that must be 
dealt with.

It’s a mistake to interpret 

consumers’ inaction in the 
tech 
industry 
as 
apathy. 

People truly care about their 
privacy 
on 
the 
internet, 

but 
the 
current 
situation 

makes 
action 
unrealistic 

for many. Until the tech 
industry becomes a properly 
functioning market — or is 
regulated like a public utility 
— consumers will be stuck 
between a rock and a hard 
place.

Why no one quits Google or Facebook

CHAND RAJENDRA-NICOLUCCI | COLUMN

Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci can be 

reached at chandrn@umich.edu.

AARON BAKER | COLUMN

Don’t let the humanities die

I’ve honed 
my ability to 
write, make 
an argument, 
analyze sources 
and so qualitative 

research

