National Sportswriter Speaking at the Westminster Symposium
National sportswriter Dave Zirin will be one of the headliners at “Global Sport: A Common Language in a Diverse World” September 17-18, a symposium at Westminster College in Fulton, MO where he will speak about the relationship between sports and politics in America.
Sports editor for The Nation, a weekly progressive magazine dedicated to politics and culture, Zirin is the magazine’s first sportswriter in 150 years.
He has debated FOX Sports President Ed Goren on college football’s Bowl Championship Series on NPR, the issue of steroids in sports with Jose Canseco and John Rocker and Bridgestone Firestone President Dan Adomitis in the pages of the Los Angeles Times on whether his company should be the “official tire of the Super Bowl” while in court for using child labor in Liberia.
He will open the second day of the Symposium, Wednesday, September 19, from 9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. in Champ Auditorium with the topic “Sport and Politics in the United States.”
Symposium attendees will then have the opportunity to interact in a “One on One with Dave Zirin” from 10:15 a.m. to 11:15 a.m. in Room 139 of the Coulter Science Center on campus
Both of Zirin’s sessions are free and open to the public and the media.
Called the “Best Sportswriter in the United States” by New York Times and ESPN colleague Robert Lipsyte, Zirin writes a column, “Edge of Sport,” for the Sports Illustrated website and hosts the popular weekly show “Edge of Sport Radio” on Sirius XM Radio.
He also writes for SLAM Magazine and the Progressive.
Zirin has brought his combination of sports and politics to television programs such as CNN, Morning Joe, The Rachel Maddow Show, Last Call with Carson Daly, Sports Talk Live, ESPN Classic and Outside the Lines.
His most recent book is the acclaimed Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down, which Sports Illustrated called “provocative” and said “It will make you think about what we’re really seeing when we watch the games we love.”
Other books have included Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love; Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports; What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States (now in its third printing); The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World; and A People’s History of Sports in the United States.
In addition he has been broadcast on numerous national radio programs from sports radio to NPR’s Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered.
Zirin has been named one of the “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World” by alternative culture magazine UTNE Reader.
Every year Westminster College cancels classes for two days so the entire Westminster community can attend lectures, panel discussions and presentations by noted experts on one particular subject of global interest. The public and media are also invited to attend.
This year’s topic, “Global Sport: A Common Language in a Diverse World?” seeks to understand why global sport can be both a force for greatness and a cause for concern and how it impacts entire societies the world over.
“Sport mirrors the human condition,” says Dr. Kurt Jefferson, Director of the Westminster Symposium and the Center for Engaging the World. “How a culture views sport says a great deal about its values. That is why we are exploring the social, physiological, cultural, economic, political and historical aspects of global sport in this Symposium.”
