Sports & Society Reading Group: Zoom Discussion with Jules Boykoff

Excerpts from two recent books from Dr. Boykoff, Red Card and Kicking, will be distributed in advance to help guide our discussion. We’ll also look forward to next summer’s women’s World Cup, the LA 2028 Olympics, and assess the state of global mega sporting events in these difficult times.

Jules Boykoff is the author of Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine (OR Books, 2026) and Kicking (Duke University Press, 2026), a memoir about his former life as a professional footballer and his current life as a critical academic of sport. He has also written six books on the politics of the Olympics, most recently, What Are the Olympics For? (Bristol University Press, 2024). His writing has appeared in outlets such as The Nation, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Folha de São Paulo, and Common Dreams. He teaches political science at Pacific University.

Please contact Noah Cohan (ncohan@wustl.edu) for more information and a copy of the excerpted reading materials.