Robert Cooley Angell
April 29, 1899 — May 12, 1984
Robert C. Angell, sociologist, was born April 29, 1899, in Detroit, Michigan. He was educated at the University of Michigan, receiving his Ph. D. degree in 1924. His thesis on the student mind was later published under the title The Campus. He was appointed instructor in 1922 and assistant professor of sociology in 1924. At the time sociology was still taught within the department of economics and Angell’s teacher and mentor was his uncle Charles Horton Cooley. Sociology gained departmental status in 1930 and Angell became associate professor that same year. In 1935, he became full professor. He served as chairman of the department from 1940 to 1952 and was instrumental in bringing to the department such individuals as Theodore Newcomb and Ronald Freedman, as well as the groups that formed the Survey Research Center and the Research Center for Group Dynamics.
Outside the department, Angell championed the importance of undergraduate instruction and helped to form the honors college, which he chaired from 1957 to 1961. With Kenneth Boulding, he helped to found the Journal for Conflict Resolution in 1954 and the Center for Research on Conflict Resolution in 1959.
Within his profession, Angell edited the American Sociological Review from 1946 to 1948 and was elected president of the American Sociological Association in 1951. Angell’s Presidential Address, entitled “Sociology and the World Crisis”, was published in the December 1951 issue of the American Sociological Review (Volume 16, Number 6, pages 749-757).
Angell served abroad as director of UNESCO’s Social Science Department in Paris from 1949 to 1950 and headed a project on world tensions. Partly as result of this work, Angell was instrumental in founding the International Sociological Association. He also served as this organization’s second president. From 1950 to 1956 Angell was member of the U.S. National Commision for UNESCO.
Angell retired from the university in 1969 but continued to teach for a number of years. He died May 12, 1984. Upon his death in 1984, an obituary was published in the May 1985 issue of Footnotes.
Obituary
Written by Gayle D. Ness, published in Footnotes, May 1985.
Robert Cooley Angell’s life traversed and his career encompassed the emergence and institutionalization of sociology as an academic discipline in the United States. A simple chronology tells part of the story.
Angell received his AB degree in 1921 from the University of Michigan. He did one term of legal studies at Harvard, but found this uncongenial and returned to Michigan to do graduate work under his uncle, Charles Horton Cooley, who had taught sociology under the Department of Economics since 1895. Angell received his MA in 1922 and his doctorate in 1924, with a dissertation on the student mind, which was later published under the title The Campus. In 1922, he was appointed instructor and in 1926 Assistant Professor, still in the Department of Economics.
In 1930, the discipline received its own departmental status. Angell became associate professor in 1930 and full professor in 1935. He was appointed chair in 1940and served until 1952. Angell brought in members of a Washington research group that became the Survey Research Center and an MIT group, that became the Research Center for Group Dynamics, forming the basis for a new interdisciplinary program in social psychology.
Angell worked to create the undergraduate honors program, of which he became the first chair, serving from 1957 to 1961. He directed an ASA project to create sociological resources for secondary schools. With Kenneth Boulding, he created the Journal for Conflict Resolution in 1954 and the Center for Conflict Resolution in 1959. In the professional world outside of the university, he was editor of the American Sociological Review from 1946 to 1948 and President of the ASA in 1951. He directed UNESCO’s Social Science Department in 1949-1950 and headed a project on world tensions. Partly as a result of this work, Angell was instrumental in founding the International Sociological Association, and was its second president.
Angell retired in 1969, but continued to teach for a number of years, even directing the Department’s introductory sociology course in 1971. He continued research and writing until his death, when he was at work with J. David Singer on another book on world conflict and world peace.
The chronology provides the outline of a life and a career in sociology, but it tells only part of the story. Robert Angell’s career displays some of the major themes in American sociology, and more specifically in the course of the discipline at the University of Michigan. Like many American sociologists, he was concerned with moral issues in the present. As Michigan sociology was and remains, he was concerned with solid empirical work, with quantification and with the simultaneous development of theory and method. He was also deeply committed to excellence in undergraduate education, essentially rejecting what is often seen as a contradiction between the demands of teaching and of research and professional advancement.
Angell’s moral concerns grew out of his own family background, and were further informed by the teachings of Charles Horton Cooley, who saw social life as a moral bond constantly in the process of being created and recreated. The moral concerns also grew from Cooley’s empiricism, which led him to direct Angell to a dissertation subject that he could totally encompass himself. Hence his obsrvations of the life of the undergraduate, and subsequent concerns with the problems of integrating the undergraduate into a new community. This research also led Angell to see the potential dangers of using the university setting for the advancement of commercial athletics.
Angell’s empirical research and his 1930s teaching focused on the impact of the depression on families. He worked on the integration of limited case studies and larger statistical surveys, starting with student projects to record histones of families in the depression, using student essays for Ins data. From this, he wrote a candid methodological description that demonstrated the difficulties and frustrations of empirical research.
At the end of the 1930s, Angell was in Heidleberg for a year of study, where he witnessed German professors preaching Aryan racial superiority at the same time that he was reading Max Weber on political and scientific activities and responsibilities. The result was an immediate reinforcement of his commitment to value freedom in social science research. This did not lead to the neglect of the responsibilities Angell telt as a citizen, but it did raise the issue of the boundaries between the two. Social scientists, Angell thought, should be value-free in their analysis, but responsible in the use of their tools for human betterment.
After the war, Angell turned again to issues of integration, this time concerned with the problems of American society and the urban scene. Here again, he developed statistical indicators of the moral integration of cities, tying his empirical orientation to the theoretical issues that Parsons had recently developed in the study of social action. This was also a time of rapid growth in academic sociology, and under Angell’s leadership, Michigan continued to grow with a orientation to empirical and quantitative research. Thus, was born the Detroit Area Study as a combined teaching and research device, supported as well by the rapid growth of the lnstitute for Social Research. For both graduates and undergraduates, Angell had the gift of a great teacher- He was, able to see where students were and then to help them to take the next step. He had what one must call a moral commitment to teaching, which led him not only to take pains himself about teaching, but also to build an institutional structure to promote the values of teaching. Thus came the college honors program to provide more individual instruction to especially promising students, and also his work with ASA in developing sociological materials for secondary schools. Robert Angell called himself an academic handyman, doing much for his department, his university, his discipline, and his world. He found all of this a great deal of fun.
I knew Robert Angell for the past 20 years, and am struck that this period, which encompasses almost all of my professional life, was merely the last third of his. I am impressed with the quality of Angell’s involvement in the development of the discipline, with the enduring impact he has had on our department and on the field. He had a great capacity to see where his students were, and to see where his discipline was. He could help them, and help us all to take the next step. Would that all of us could experience the joys of such modest success.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Robert C. Angell Memorial Fund in care of the University of Michigan Sociology Department, Ann Arbor, MI 48109.
