Here’s an example of an offender’s well-meaning apology just making matters worse. Professor Bright Sheng, a long-time professor of music and composition at the University of Michigan, is teaching an undergrad composition seminar on Shakespeare this semester, and on September 10 he showed the 1965 film “Othello,” in which Laurence Olivier appears in blackface. As […]

The former bishop of the Wheeling-Charleston West Virginia Diocese issued an apology last month for misconduct that occurred while he was bishop. After Pope Francis accepted Bishop Michael J. Bransfield’s resignation in 2018, the Vatican investigated allegations that he had spent millions on personal extravagances and gifts to fellow clerics, and that he harassed seminarians […]

The coronavirus pandemic has spawned a new category for apologies: the messages conveyed by face masks. Michigan Senator Dale Zorn has issued an apology for wearing a face mask with a pattern that resembled the Confederate flag during a Senate vote in the state Capitol in Lansing last month. Senator Zorn is a Republican who […]