What is the importance of the University of Michigan as noted in the nonfiction book, Whistling Vivaldi?

Located in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan was where Steele began to develop and test his ideas about identity pressures, and eventually, stereotype threat. He had previous worked and studied at other universities, and focused on other issues. Steele did not take the first job the University of Michigan offered him, which involved mentoring black students in a way in which Steele did not think he would have enough support from other staff to perform adequately or enough time to focus on his work. However, comparing the different ways in which staff talked about the factors that might lead to black students’ underperformance, and the ways in which black students talked about their own struggles and stressors spark Steele’s interest in understanding stereotype pressures, which he began conducting experiments on when he came back to the University of Michigan as a professor overseeing a diverse group of graduate students.