[ONLINE] - How “Soft” is the Power of Sport?

The year 2022 has been a busy one at the intersection of sport and geopolitics. Qatar is only the latest nation to brand itself and exert its “soft power” by leveraging sport, with the forthcoming FIFA Men’s World Cup. We saw China do it earlier in the year with a Winter Olympics, and Saudi Arabia with a new golf league, while Russia lost its sporting soft power to the sanctions that followed its invasion of Ukraine. But this is not a new phenomenon; global sport has always been enmeshed in political messaging and international power politics. Join New America’s National Fellows Program and the Convergence Lab at Arizona State University to explore how nations leverage sport to advance political agendas, and how we fans, as sport’s “consumers,” should think about these efforts and react to them.

Speakers:

Carlos Bravo-Regidor, @carlosbravoreg
Professor, Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE)

Anne-Marie Slaughter, @SlaughterAM
CEO, New America

Franklin Foer, @FranklinFoer
Staff Writer, The Atlantic
Author, How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization
Former National Fellow, New America

Lise Klaveness, @Lisekla
President, Norwegian Football Association

Michael Page, @MichaelARPage
Deputy Director, Middle East and North Africa Division
Human Rights Watch


Moderator:

Andrés Martinez, @andresDCmtz
Editorial Director, Future Tense
Professor of Practice, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, ASU