{"id":750,"date":"2020-03-07T16:38:32","date_gmt":"2020-03-07T21:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/?p=750"},"modified":"2021-04-19T16:01:04","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T20:01:04","slug":"apology-is-better-without-any","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/2020\/03\/apology-is-better-without-any\/","title":{"rendered":"Apology is Better Without &#8220;Any&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Public apologies are hard to do well. Just ask the leaders of the University of Michigan. With reports about sexual misconduct from a former sports doctor going public last week, U of M President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.detroitnews.com\/story\/news\/local\/michigan\/2020\/02\/20\/university-michigan-mark-schlissel-apologizes-sexually-abused-doctor\/4823693002\/\">Mark Schlissel issued an apology<\/a> to &#8220;anyone&#8221; who was harmed by Dr. Anderson, according to a Detroit News report. What if he had apologized to &#8220;everyone&#8221; harmed, instead of &#8220;anyone&#8221; harmed? Use of the word &#8220;any&#8221; in an apology is risky; it may protect against admission of responsibility, but it also undermines sincerity.<\/p>\n<p>So this week, President <a href=\"https:\/\/president.umich.edu\/news-communications\/statements\/statement-from-the-university-of-michigan-board-of-regents-and-president-mark-schlissel-re-reports-of-misconduct-by-dr-anderson\/\">Schlissel and the Board of Regents issued another statement<\/a>. It begins, &#8220;We are sorry for the pain caused by the failures of our beloved University.&#8221; No equivocating here; the University acknowledges that it failed, and pain resulted. Imagine how much weaker this statement would sound if it had said, &#8220;We are sorry for <em>any<\/em> pain&#8230;&#8221; or, &#8220;&#8230;caused by <em>any<\/em> failures&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>U of M still has a big mess on its hands, but at least it&#8217;s improving its apologies. (Full disclosure: I am an alumna.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Public apologies are hard to do well. Just ask the leaders of the University of Michigan. With reports about sexual misconduct from a former sports doctor going public last week, U of M President Mark Schlissel issued an apology to &#8220;anyone&#8221; who was harmed by Dr. Anderson, according to a Detroit News report. What if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":752,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750\/revisions\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}