[Webinar #EuropeanAffairs] Sports Diplomacy

Join us for a conversation between Sophie Lorant, International Relations Director of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games Organising Committee, and Frank Guridy, Professor of History at Columbia University and author of The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play, as they explore one of the most consequential questions in international affairs right now: can the United States harness its sports diplomacy moment? 

With the FIFA World Cup arriving on American soil this summer, the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, and Salt Lake City in 2034, no country in the world holds more soft power opportunities through sport- and yet the diplomatic context has rarely been more unpredictable. Drawing on France's experience of Paris 2024, the founding vision of Pierre de Coubertin (Sciences Po alumnus and father of the modern Olympic movement)  and the long American history of sport as spectacle, protest, and geopolitical projection, Sophie and Frank will debate what the handover from Paris to Los Angeles really means, whether sport can function as diplomacy when traditional diplomatic norms are being rewritten, and what it would take for this extraordinary American decade to leave the world better connected than it found it.

Monday, May 18 at 11 AM ET / 8 AM PT (17h Paris)

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