Episode 158: On Sport and Genocide

In one of our most important episodes to date, we present a keynote panel called "Can there be sport at a time of Genocide? Solidarity, Community, and Palestinian liberation" held at the annual meeting of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) on November 1st, 2024. The panel was organized by Chen Chen and co-moderated by Derek and Nathan. 

Panelists included Dr. Sophia Azeb (UC Santa Cruz), Charlotte Phillips (Palestinian National Women's Football Team), Omar Dreidi (NBA Agent and Athletes for Ceasefire), Dr. Kat Pijetlovic (Catholics School of Law and Palestinian Football Association), Rebecca O'Keeffe (Irish Sport for Palestine) and Dave Zirin (The Nation and Edge of Sports). 

Illuminating the role that athletics can and do play in times of what many observers have characterized as genocide, it is important for those interested in sport to reflect on the ways in which sport and sporting cultures work to legitimize, normalize, and in some ways operate in complicity with the ongoing systematic destruction of an entire people, social infrastructure, and cultural apparatus. What is the role of academic communities in building international and intersectional solidarities as a pathway to dismantling Empire? Where do scholars of sport, sport studies and athletes fit in the critique and challenge to settler colonialism from Turtle Island to Palestine? How and to what end can solidarities be built amongst scholars and athletes? In this panel, we address these important questions and attempt to answer perhaps the most pressing of them all for our organization: what does sport (and the study of sport) mean during genocide?

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