Political Podiums: The 2024 Olympics
Virtual Briefing Series
Thursday, August 8th, 2024 | 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM ET
The International Olympics Committee (IOC) has consistently positioned itself as against the politicization of sport. In The Olympic Charter, the IOC declares that it has a mission “to oppose any political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes.” However, this has consistently not been the case. Countries like China have used hosting the games to showcase state power. Winning in the Olympics is a way to increase international prestige. Individual athletes have used the games as a platform for protests. There have been diplomatic boycotts of adversarial countries. So, how do international politics play into sporting events like the Olympics? How can sports be a tool for cultural relations? How do the 2024 Olympic games reflect current geopolitical trends? Join us on Thursday, August 8 from 12 to 1 PM ET for a conversation where Dr. Sarah Hillyer, Founder & Director of the Center for Sport, Peace & Society at the University of Tennessee, and Dr. Susan Brownell, Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, will discuss these questions and more.
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SPEAKERS:
Dr. Sarah Hillyer
Dr. Sarah Hillyer is the Founder & Director of the Center for Sport, Peace & Society at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Sarah Hillyer wants to live in a world filled with freedom of movement, innovative ideas, thoughtful people, and inspiring books, films, and creative media projects that tell the real-life the stories of everyday sporty heroes creating a more inclusive, equitable, and peaceful world.
In 2012, she launched the University of Tennessee Center for Sport, Peace & Society housed in the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences. The Center was recognized by then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as the implementing partner of the State Department to create a global initiative designed to empower women, girls, persons with disabilities, and refugees through sport. Since 2012, Dr. Sarah and her team have worked alongside more than 5,000 women, men, and youth from 100+ countries, impacting more than 500,000 people. In 2018, ESPN named the Center’s partnership initiative with the U.S. Department of State and espnW as the winner of the Stuart Scott Humanitarian Award for the most courageous use of sport to advance women’s rights and promote peace throughout the world.
Dr. Susan Brownell
Susan Brownell is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She had competed in the 1980 and 1984 U.S. track and field Olympic trials before she went to China in 1985 to study Chinese, and ended up as a national collegiate champion of China. Her first book, Training the Body for China: Sports in the Moral Order of the People’s Republic (1995) drew on her experience. From 2000 to 2008 she was a member of the Postgraduate Grant Selection Committee, an advisory council for the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Studies Centre. Surrounding both the 2008 summer Olympics and 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, she gave interviews to nearly 100 journalists from over 20 countries. She is the author of Beijing’s Games: What the Olympics Mean to China (2008), co-author of The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics (2018), and has published multiple works and commentaries about China and the Olympic Games. In addition, she translated into English the biography of the first member in the International Olympic Committee from the People’s Republic of China, He Zhenliang and China’s Olympic Dream (2007).
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