In the coming weeks, se-
lect students in the College 
of Literature, Science & the 
Arts will receive an email 
congratulating them for be-
ing named James B. An-
gell Scholars. The award, 
named for the University of 
Michigan’s third president, 
celebrates any LSA student 
who receives an “A” record 
for two consecutive terms 
at the University. While we 
wish to offer congratulations 

for these students’ diligent 
dedication to their stud-
ies, it is also critical to learn 
about the award’s namesake. 
While Angell’s legacy is com-
plex — and potentially prob-
lematic — it is unlikely that 
more than a small percent-
age of the students that walk 
through the doors of Angell 
Hall are aware of this legacy. 

Amid a nationwide reckon-
ing with the memorialization 
of controversial historical 
figures, the University must 
also partake in increasing our 

efforts to thoroughly under-
stand the leaders we choose 
to highlight on campus, in-
cluding Angell. Angell served 
as University President from 
1871 to 1909. During his 38 
year tenure as president, 
the University’s enrollment 
more than tripled. He was 
adamant that education be 
accessible to all, not just for 
the elite. To this point, he 
emphasized the admission 
of first-generation college 
students; in 1880, fewer than 
one in four students had par-
ents with a college degree. 

Angell also oversaw the first 
female students to join the 
University at the beginning 
of his term in 1870 and 1871 
and later became a vocal sup-
porter of co-education. 

Angell saw education as a 
public service and greatly ex-
panded resources for faculty 
research to this end. Under 
his leadership, the number 
of departments on campus 
grew from three to seven and 
the number of professors 
went from 35 to 250. Histori-
an James Tobin asserted that 
it was Angell who supported 
the University in becoming 
the leading public university 
in the country.

On the night of April 11, 2019, 
Columbia University student 
Alexander McNabb entered 
a library on Barnard Univer-
sity’s campus. Students at 
Columbia — with which Bar-
nard is affiliated — are per-
mitted to freely access and 
use Barnard’s campus build-
ings and resources. Despite 
having done nothing at all to 
indicate himself as a threat 
of any kind, McNabb was 
stopped by campus police 
and physically restrained. A 
Barnard student captured 
the encounter, which many 
described as an incidence of 
racial profiling because the 
school library’s ID policy 

after 11 p.m. is unevenly en-
forced. McNabb is Black, and 
he wasn’t bothering anyone. 

Toward the end of the vid-
eo, one of the five campus 
security officers that con-
vened around McNabb for 
no apparent reason can be 
seen wandering off with 
McNabb’s 
ID, 
imploring 

McNabb to come outside 
with him. The ID clearly 
identified McNabb as a Co-
lumbia student. Clearly and 
understandably 
distressed, 

he can be heard asking, “You 
saw my ID, what else do you 
need to see?” 

While this might seem like a 
one-off occurrence at anoth-
er institution that can be ex-
plained as an unfortunate in-
cident where mistakes have 
been made, it very clearly 
isn’t. Due to the demands 
of the Graduate Employees’ 
Organization demands — in 
particular its call to cut the 
University 
of 
Michigan’s 

funding to its Department of 
Public Safety and Security in 
half — stories about students 
of color at U-M experienc-
ing horrifying treatment by 
DPSS have been surfacing. 
One in particular, that of Jus-
tin Gordon, is beyond appall-
ing. He was held in limbo, 
in a jail cell, as punishment 
for going to the campus gym 
without his ID. 

His entire life has been 
stained by that injustice. 
For example, Gordon was 

hired by the National Foot-
ball League, only to have his 
job offer rescinded due to 
his criminal record, despite 
his University of Michigan 
degree and letters of recom-
mendation from his profes-
sors. Gordon was stopped 
because he was Black, and 
that a confluence of biases 
which 
permeate 
through 

both policing practices and 
society caused his life to be 
upended. My rage is directed 
at not only the racist systems 
held in place by entities such 
as DPSS that have severely 
impacted his life, but also 
with the administration here 
at the University. 

Although Gordon was pro-
moted to impressive posi-
tions within the University 

and continued to be an honor 
roll student even after his in-
carceration, the school argu-
ably created yet another per-
manent barrier to students 
with a prison record. On Feb. 
1, 2019, the University imple-
mented SPG 601.38, which 
requires faculty, staff, stu-
dent employees, volunteers 
and visiting scholars to re-
port all felony charges, even 
if not convicted, to the Uni-
versity. 

Instead of removing possible 
instruments for discriminat-
ing against individuals such 
as Gordon, based on precon-
ceived notions held about 
criminality that can have an 
indelible, lifelong influence 
on someone’s interactions 
with society, the University 
has created another. Fur-
ther, there is no evidence to 
suggest that criminal history 
information in general ad-
missions decisions improves 
public safety.

Seeing the University step in 
to assist a smart and ambi-
tious alum and enable him 
to thrive in the long-term, 
rather than only promoting 
him to positions of visibility 
in service of Diversity, Equity 
and Inclusion in the short-
term would be the right thing 
to do. The University has not 
done the latter, but they did 
do the former while Gordon 
was still a student, even after 
his incarceration.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Opinion
Thursday, August 5, 2021 — 21

When 
asked 
about 
my 

strengths, my default an-
swers are writing and “peo-
ple skills.” What do I mean by 
“people skills?” While defi-
nitions vary, I would define 
them as the communicative 
tools used to connect with 
another person. I put them 
in quotations because these 
tools carry different mean-
ings for different people. 
Similar to the blurry distinc-
tion between a good writer 
and a great writer, there is not 
a universal metric by which 
someone can be pinpointed 
as “great with people” ver-
sus “good with people.” This 
blurriness continues to cre-
ate doubt in my abilities. It 
is easy for me to say I’m not 
actually a good writer and, 
instead, say my professors 
have just graded my work 
easily. As it is almost impos-
sible to measure human con-
nection, it is also easy for me 
to say that I’m not actually 
good with people. With these 
doubts, which are exacer-
bated by societal pressures 
to validate skills through 
quantifying their value, I of-
ten find myself scrambling 
to explain how these immea-
surable skills are actually my 
strengths.

The idea of constantly doubt-
ing my strongest abilities is 
both contradictory and limit-
ing. However, the two skills 
I am best at both happen to 
be subjective and therefore 
more easily belittled than 
more objective skills. Com-
pared to experience with 
Photoshop, 
Javascript 
or 

statistical modeling, experi-
ence with people or writing 
sounds obvious and self-ag-
grandizing. With skills that 
are less quantifiable, it be-
comes easier to assume that 
the majority of people have 
the same capabilities with 
these skills because distinc-
tions between different pro-
ficiencies in them are less 
absolute.

The last few years have wit-
nessed an increased empha-

sis on science, technology, 
engineering and math educa-
tion and careers, a decline of 
humanities majors that rely 
more on soft skills and the 
resulting employability fears 
associated with this decline. 
Somewhere in the midst 

of this, we have mistakenly 
come to equate measurabil-
ity — more specifically, quan-
tifiability — to value. And 
considering the management 
system of many universities, 
our society’s general margin-
alization of soft skills can be 
traced back to the way our 
education system pits studies 
that rely more on soft skills 
against ones that emphasize 
hard skills. 

Recently, responsibility-cen-
tered management (a univer-
sity budgeting system under 
which each department has 
autonomy over its revenue 
and expenditures) has be-
come the budgeting model 
of choice for many academ-
ic institutions. Under this 
model, large classes — which 
are more profitable — are 
prioritized over smaller, dis-
cussion-based classes, which 
typically happen to be classes 
that are centered around soft 
skills. Operating as busi-
nesses, universities further 
devalue subjective skills and 
the discussion-based class-
es that go along with these 
skills because they are not 
as fiscally advantageous for 

them. However, what is valu-
able to a business and what 
is valuable to society should 
not and cannot be viewed as 
equivalent to each other. The 
mere fact that classes cen-
tered on soft skills are not 
as profitable to universities 
as classes centered on hard 
skills does not mean soft 
skills themselves are not as 
beneficial to society as hard 
skills are.

Despite this prioritization 
of hard skills, these “soft” 

abilities are still valued by 
American companies, with 
61% claiming that skills like 
communication and problem 
solving are the most valued in 
prospective hires. In a study 
conducted by Boston Col-
lege, Harvard University and 
the University of Michigan, 
soft skills training was found 
to increase worker produc-
tivity by 12%. With this addi-
tional productivity and sub-
sequent increase in retention 
rates, the training produced 
a 256% net return on in-
vestment after nine months. 
LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner 
believes the skills gap asso-
ciated with soft skills is the 
widest in the United States. 
It is undeniable: There is 
ample evidence to support 
the argument that soft skills 
are valuable and capitalisti-
cally productive. Even so, 
justifying the importance of 
soft skills using statistics — 
quantifiable numbers — on 
why these skills are valuable 
in the workplace perpetuates 
and perhaps even validates 
our society’s obsession with 
numbers and hard facts.

When researching why soft 
skills are important, the vast 

majority of articles are cen-
tered around soft skills’ im-
portance in the workplace. 
However, the true power of 
soft skills lies in their un-
avoidable and fundamen-
tal presence in our daily 
lives. Self-awareness allows 
you to recognize your own 
strengths, 
fears, 
insecuri-

ties and priorities — and also 
those of the people around 
you. The ability to negotiate 
enables you to effectively and 
respectfully voice your opin-
ions without losing sight of 

your perspective. More gen-
erally, communication allows 
you to both set and maintain 
expectations for yourself and 
others. While proficiencies 
in different soft skills are 
clearly economically profit-
able, more importantly, they 
are personally fulfilling and 
socially valuable. Soft skills 
enable us to be empathetic 
and 
self-aware 
members 

of society without losing 
our analytical side — that is 
priceless.

This is not to say that soft 
skills are more important 
than hard skills. This is sim-
ply to say that they are also 
important — and not at the 
expense of more measurable 
skills. As a society, we seem 
to have manufactured a scar-
city mindset around the skills 
we deem valuable. With all 
of the multifaceted merits 
of both hard and soft skills, 
there is no need to depreciate 
one set of skills for the sake 
of another set of skills with 
completely unrelated assets 
and uses. Instead, we should 
take different kinds of skills 
for what they are: differ-
ent kinds of skills, each with 
their own nuanced worth.

Your skills don’t 

need to be quantifi-
able to be valuable

OLIVIA MOURADIAN

Daily Opinion Writer

Alec Cohen/Daily

Black students 
should feel safe

going to the library

While University leadership would 
likely respond to thse allegations by 
asserting that U-M has a rich history 
of activism and stands with marginal-
ized groups on campus, it has clearly 
shown the multitude of ways it doesn’t 
prioritize the well-being of our com-

munity’s most vulnerable.

Sierra Élise Hansen, Columnist

SIERRA ÉLISE HANSEN

Daily Columnist

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From The Daily: 

Acknowledging Angell — we need a
comprehensive U-M history lesson

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

EDITORIAL BOARD

OPINION