Athletes and Human Rights: Charity, Engagement and Activism
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Athletes and Human Rights: Charity, Engagement and Activism
- 1. Athletes and Human Rights: Charity, Engagement and Activism Eli Wolff Kerri Heffernan Brown University & Athletes for Human Rights
- 2. Predicators of Future Civic Engagement Require athletes to assume leadership Activities that allow athletes to work collectively toward a common goal Offer opportunities to listen to different perspectives
- 3. Engagement Ways athletes engage…. Activism Charity
- 4. Charity Members of the FSU men’s basketball team stopped by Golden Book Preschool and taught preschool students basketball skills and discussed the importance of teamwork. The Penn State spring sports teams combined to help raise money and awareness by hosting Pink Game fundraisers to benefit the Breast Cancer Support Services of Berks County.
- 5. Engaged Sport The purposeful integration of sport into teaching, research and practice with the goal of advancing scholarship and producing a public benefit.
- 6. Engaged Scholarship-Sport Emily examined the connection between nerve regeneration research in the laboratory and current bio- engineered medical applications for treating neurologically disabled athletes and wounded soldiers.
- 7. Baseball and Local Community Development Scott investigated the economic impact of Major League Baseball academies on rural communities in the Dominican Republic.
- 8. Javier created a business plan to develop, implement, and finance a ‘no-pay’ children’s flag football program. Guaranteeing Children the Right to Play
- 9. Girls Athletic Leadership School Nina created the charter for a middle school that utilizes a movement-based approach to education. The School is the first all-girls charter school in Colorado.
- 11. Athlete Activism
- 12. “athletes have the power to influence the silent majority of the public and reach people who are completed alienated from politics. (Zirin)
- 16. Who owns sport? Does society own sport? Practically how could you leverage sport to meet a ‘larger public purpose?’ What are challenges and opportunities you face engaging athletes, coaches?
Editor's Notes
- I’m currently the director of the Royce Fellowship at Brown Univ. I’m also a rugby coach –coaching D1 level for 14 years - my teams have won 8 Ivy championships and taken 5 trips to final 4. The program has produced 19 AA, 8 national team, 2 WC players. Like other colleagues who stand in both the academic and athletic houses I don’t tend to discuss one with the other. But I’ve realized these past few years how inextricably connected my coaching practice is to the work I do in community engagement. Just when we write our AD’s off as benign centers of entertainment we are reminded of the tremendous platform sport offers for social justice. This past year events at Northwestern, Georgetown, Oklahoma, and Missouri have reminded us of the significant power athletes have to influence and alter their institutions. In the case of of UO and Missouri, the decision of the football team to join their fellow students in protest, led to sweeping changes at both campuses – and in the case of Missouri, embarrassing attempts by legislatures to strip athletes of their rights as citizens. In both cases, the moral authority of the football team -marching arm in arm across campus – changed the course of the conversation, increased the numbers of folks in the conversation and significantly raised the stakes for administrators. Like their academic counterparts athletics was founded to ‘serve the nation’. Sport was a vehicle to build character and ‘democratize young people - instilling in upper middle class young men a measure of themselves in relation to others. And ‘socializing and Americanizing’ immigrant and working class youth - instilling in them the values of duty, patriotism, honor, and obedience. The ‘industry of sport’ began to take hold shortly after the civil war with proliferation of intercollegiate competition in baseball, track, and what was to become modern football. Given the tremendous loss and trauma the nation had endured during the civil war one could argue that sport was a natural response - the opportunity to demonstrate a strong, national identity and to celebrate life, youth and vigor. But collegiate sport was as contentious in 1886 as it is in 2016 – raising the ire of faculty, administrators and communities for distracting students from the business of academics and for its penchant for tarnishing the university’s reputation.
- Americans still see college sport as the face of a ‘robust democracy’. And there is some merit to this perception Research from CIRCLE suggests that one of the best predictors of future civic engagement is the extent to which students participate in activities that: expose them to working collectively toward a common goal, offer opportunities to listen to different perspectives and ways of thinking require students to assume leadership. (although what we mean by leadership is vague – assumption that athletes exhibit character traits that are compatible with leadership) Research also supports that participation in athletics instills civic dispositions and skills – young people involved in sport are more likely than non-athletes to vote, volunteer and follow the news (Lopez, Moore, 2006). But sport and the experience of being a student athlete is complex. sport is one of the few areas where we can discuss virtue – and the virtues we identify with sports - courage, decisiveness, socialability, integrity, trustworthiness – matter in every students life. But sport allows, indeed expects conversations about virtue – Learning to be virtuous - to temper and control impulsive behaviors and self-centered appetites in service to a larger goal/in service to others is so aligned with sport that when athletes transgress we are particularly upset.
- Given the practical and conceptual challenges its impressive that athletes engage as much as they do – and like non- athlete peers they tend to engage with the community in 3 ways: Activism: Athletes have a history of advocating for social justice – what’s remarkable about athlete activism is the tremendous influence athletes can have on an issue. Curricular or co-curricular engagement. Some athletes find ways to connect their academic and athletic paths and produce scholarship that has a public benefit. Charity: Given the conceptual and practical challenges it’s no surprise that AD’s rely heavily on charitable, ‘hit and run’ models of engagement. Athletes and athletic depts are not synonmous – athletes often operate with the blessing of the dept (engaging in charitable work that’s splashed all over the news ) and other times at odds with the dept (engaging in activism that challenges the AD and in the case of revenue sports, challenges the university). In the remainder of this presentation we’d like to focus on these 3 areas and ways they can be restructured to support student athletes and build institutional capacity.
- A review of 50 athletic dept websites reveals that vast majority of AD community engagement is focused on charitable work - primarily fundraising and childcare . ADept and teams are in constant fundraising mode. Most every AD has its own development office and many programs require individual teams to raise large endowments and annual funds. Fundraising is presented to athletes as fun, the fuzzy mascot is there, happy children and attractive teammates. No need to attend trainings or process the experience through reflective exercises –just show up and wear the ribbon. Ironically this model has been shown to ‘distance’ participants from the ‘cause’ or population – as it fosters, ’I did my time’ mentality’ The challenge with ‘raising funds and raising awareness’ is that these are brief interactions. Students identify or are handed a ‘cause’ - breast cancer, autism, alzheimers - and ‘compete’ to contribute to the cause. Their ability to meet that financial goal becomes a measure of one’s capacity for commitment and caring. “I care because I wear a pink t-shirt”. We all care in our pink uniforms.” When thinking about who in the community to serve AD’s overwhelmingly focus on children. The mindset of most AD’s seems to be that ALL student athletes are 'good with kids'. After all (I say with sarcasm) working with children requires a minimum of preparation or training, children won’t challenge you if you are chronically absent or late, poorly dressed, ill prepared or ineffective. More complex examples of service do exist – most notably, teams adopting children with chronic diseases or disabilities as ‘mascots’: These are powerful, moving stories that often result in relationships with families or non-profits. And student, athletes and coaches are often transformed by the experience. Everyone feels good – and ‘feeling good’ can be a great place to start – but educators/coaches cannot park in ‘feel good’ The question we should be asking when teams use these models is: “are members of the team committed to exploring ways to improve the social conditions for the child? Creating adaptive sport opportunities? Exploring improved technologies, a greater commitment of community resources? Are they willing to host a wheelchair basketball team if it means taking resources from programs that serve able bodied kids? We are not advocating that AD stop fundraising and outreach to children but we are suggesting that universities explore more complex ways to engage student- athletes. These conversations should be in partnership with campus service centers, academic depts and community partners.
- If we are to address the conceptual challenge – to have the athletic department see itself as part of the teaching and learning agenda – which we see as critical to capacity building - we need to believe that sport is capable of rigor, and contributing to the creation of knowledge. Sport and play are vehicles for research, narratives that can operate in any number of academic houses – and exciting to athletes and non-athletes. For the past 7 years Eli and I have worked closely with athletes engaged in independent research using sport as a lens –simultaneously I work with a program that serves mostly non-athletes engaged in independent research ( a program Eli was in as a Brown undergrad). So, we have learned a great deal about the benefits and challenges of sport specific programs – and of working with SA.
- So under the umbrella of curricular engagement - lets look at some examples of faculty, coaches and student-athletes working together. Often the depts most open to sport are applied depts – those departments where sport could facilitate a research agenda and where athletes can leverage their knowledge, access, and passion in service to a research question. We find these are often depts with a concentration of faculty who are or were athletes themselves (Public Health, Environmental Science, Engineering, bio-med) In this example a neuroscience student worked with athletes who use adaptive technologies. Allowing her to investigate the application of her academic interests in the lab and through the experiences of disabled athletes – a community she saw as fellow 'athletes’.
- Other good hits are Departments that consider sport as ‘access’ - IR, Development Studies, Public Policy, Education, and Economics We’ve found that athletes can have tremendous access to communities via the common language of sport – athletes join teams of informal games and are quickly integrated into the community – ‘new teammates’ confide in athletes and look to them as allies. In this example Scott was interested in the large scale investment Major League Baseball makes in the Dominican Republic. He explored the relationship of specific communities in the DR to professional baseball teams and the number of baseball academies that the MLB set up to identify talent. As theses MLB baseball academies enroll a number of poor, young men Scott was particularly interested in documenting the experiences of young players who don’t make it beyond local academies –what happens when their education is absent or interrupted. Over the summer Scott was able to identify and document good or promising practices between the MLB and communities – those practices that offered some level of reciprocity to communities - and those practices that fell short, most often the baseball academies. His research resulted in a white paper delivered to the MLB and to management of individual teams.
- Business, entrepreneurship, urban studies – where sport can serve a need or serve as access. In this example Javier, a business student, who grew up in a low resourced community in Miami - created a business plan to address the problem of low income kids being ‘cost-ed out’ of sport by high fees – the pay to play issue. This is a significant problem in many communities - sports are becoming increasingly about financial resources and parent time commitment. Even sports we view as low cost (soccer) are becoming increasingly segregated into those who can pay (travel teams) and those who cannot. Javier worked with community leaders to develop a no-pay league for kids, employing teenagers as referees and league administrators. Javier is currently an assistant states attorney in Miami and commissioner of the league he built as an undergraduate.
- Another approach is to examine how sport can support thesis and capstone experiences – experiences that suppose ‘significant products’ This example was notable in the scale. Nina set out to explore the relationship between movement and success in schooling. She spent a year researching movement based curriculums and turned that into the charter for a successful school. The Girls Athletic Leadership School is one of the top charter schools in Colorado, and recently broke ground for a new school in LA. Nina like many athletes with whom we work was persistent under withering criticism; she revised that charter over and over – this combined with other qualities made her well suited to see this project through to fruition.
- Demonstrating the value of sport to engage departments in relevant public issues This slide is of an event that drew together unlikely partners – the men’s lacrosse team and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown. The event was 2 part: 1) a Friday campus lecture by Oren Lyons, the spiritual leader of the Onondaga Tribe. Mr. Lyons discussed the sovereign status of native nations, specifically the Onondaga and Mohawk, in an age of homeland security. Lax was relevant as Mr Lyons is an avid fan and former WC player. He supports and advocates for the native nations lax team – a team consistently ranked in the top 3 in the world. In 2012 the US govt denied native players the right to travel to England to play in the WC unless they used US or Canadian passports, an offer the team rejected – the lecture and subsequent conversation was about borders and treaties - but also about lax as a metaphor for how natives see US/Canadian boundaries. Not surprisingly the lecture was packed, with a really diverse cross section of campus folks. Saturday the native nations U20 team played the Brown men’s team in an exhibition match. The match was well attended by a strange and wonderful mix of faculty, students, and community most cheering for the native nations team. This was all possible because of the mens lax coach – he used his connections in the lax community to bring the event together – and he bent his schedule to make the Sat match happen on relatively short notice.
- It’s fine for athletes to engage in apolitical acts of ‘kindness’ and charity but when athletes engage in activism they are often met with strong disapproval. Sport is an ‘escape from the political’ and athletes who attempt to use sport as a platform risk a great deal of pushback. At universities, even liberal arts giants - the powerful message to athletes is to keep their social and political views separate from their athletic lives. Most mainstream activists are connected to communities, they have social relationships that cultivate and support their actions. But history shows that athletes must be prepared to stand alone and endure the criticism and censorship of their teams and athletic communities. The rejection not of the issue they promote but a rejection of the athlete. This rejection can come at a tremendous cost for athletes – losing opportunities to compete and financial support.
- It’s a difficult problem–athletes are high profile, many are walking billboards for the university. Athlete can routinely play to audiences of 60,000 people – they are asked to participate in press conferences and photo shoots – their potential influence cannot be under estimated. So many believe that when an athlete puts on the uniform of their school they cede individual perogatives. Out of uniform they may go wild but when in uniform they do not have the liberty to protest. There are valuable, powerful stakes here: Sport is a platform: As David Zirin noted, athletes have the power to influence the silent majority of American public and reach people who are completely alienated from politics. And few cultural or social institution can match sport in its ability to foster a national identity and an overwhelming sense of patriotism. You will cry at least once during the Olympics… Athlete activists risk a great deal, they’ve been stripped of gold medals, thrown off teams, lost income and lost community. But they also changed institutions and built movements – using the language of sport they’ve inspired others to follow them and have had an international impact – Johann Koss the founder of Right to Play,
- These athlete activists have redefined the way we think about sport – not as mere entertainment but the transformational power of global sport. Sport has the unique ability to impact global concerns – sport has brokered peace, stopped wars, and led to safe passage. It is multi-stakeholder - not just NGO’s but corporations, the media, govts. addressing issues like employment, health access, social inclusion, and human rights. There are currently over 5000 organizations across the world committed to sport for social change and development. But we have such a long way to go: The UN is only modestly engaged - the UN office for sport for development and peace is symbolic; rather insignificant in the big picture of the UN - but the message of the power of sport is growing and alot of that is thanks to community organizations like: Grassroots Soccer: Organization founded by professional soccer players as a means to address HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa Peace Players: Former professional basketball players who focus on using sport in conflict areas - a form of resolution Right to Play – Founded by former Olympians who believe PLAY is a fundamental human right. The largest sport And events like the annual International Day of Sport We’ve come to identify sport with nations and nation building (SA and rugby, Brazil and soccer, Pakistan and cricket, Kenyans and distance running) – sport connects the nation to the world.
- The field of Sport and development is not as much about sport as it is about human rights –sport as a vehicle to promote social inclusion, human rights and economic development. Sport is being recognized by the UN, World Bank, World Health – and is included in their goals for sustainable development. So there are big stakes here…. We believe this is about Intentionality –sport is an important area of study, it’s a powerful vehicle for human rights, knowledge creation and communities want sport
- \ So what are best practices for universities who want to partner with sport NGO’s?? From the community partners perspective this is the advice I would give universities: There must be a point person – NGO’s want collaborations but there doesn’t seem to be a natural ‘ally’ or entry point. Can service center/AD websites help? NGO’s are looking for greater depth – for the research potential. Educate community partners as to what is sustainable? (athletes often cannot commit in ways NGO’s need them to commit) Accept that this cannot be apolitical – that its Important for students to have a historical understanding of the problem and engage where needed
- AD are richly resourced, high profile and for the most part, disconnected from the universities greater community efforts. In order to build capacity –you'll need to leverage the assets you have including student athletes, faculty, administrators, funders – folks who may not often finds themselves in the same room. The AD may not lead and maybe should NOT lead. But if you give permission to this conversation you’ll be amazed at who comes to the table. Sport as a landscape for engagement – why is the bar lower for athletes? As universities move to this campus-wide engagement sport needs to be a part of that (not an after thought) Presidents need to speak up What's the climate for sport on your campus? What are challenges and opportunities you face engaging athletes and the AD’s at your universities? We won't deny the power differential in some D1 universities – it's unlikely the AD cares what the Director of the Service Center thinks. Are you truly colleagues? How do you know? Who is responsible for sport? How can the CB community take ownership of sport Engaged sport an ideal – practically how could you leverage sport on your campus to meet this larger public purpose? What might that look like? How do you bring this to your campus? What kinds of questions should you be asking? (Local – national – global?) Who to connect with on campus? in community?