Recently, I was invited by Dr. Boštjan Udovič to have a guest lecture for students of international relations at the University of Ljubljana. The title of the lecture was Sport as a Tool of International Relations. Planning the lecture was not an easy task: I wanted to offer the students a talk that would be both educational and challenging (from my experience, sports topics in social sciences courses tend to be met with great expectations) while making sure that those who are not sport savvy would not be bored or feel left out. In the end, I decided to deliver an overview of what I see as some of the most significant topics in the sport and diplomacy nexus in the 20th and 21st century and to emphasize the most important lessons that they teach us.
More than half of the lecture was dedicated to the International Olympic Committee. Considerations on its membership, modus operandi and role in modern sports allowed me to question the renowned notion that politics has no place in sport. I supported this viewpoint by presenting the key diplomatic and political aspects of the Olympics in Berlin in 1936 and Munich in 1972, only to conclude with the “boycott series” of 1976 through 1984. As most people do not know, the first boycott that gained wider adherence did not occur in Moscow in 1980, but four years earlier in Montréal, when approximately 30 mostly African countries boycotted the Olympics due to the refusal of the IOC to ban New Zealand. Namely, earlier that year, the rugby All Blacks team had toured South Africa despite this country had been banned from the Olympic movement due to its apartheid policies. However, as the boycott did not originate from the then all-important Cold War, it was criticized by the media of the period as “sports should rise above politics” and remains largely unknown today. I myself owe it to Michael Real’s 1989 book, Super Media, for some initial knowledge on the issue.
After that, I continued by speaking about ping pong diplomacy and about the sports isolation of South Africa in the apartheid era. Ping pong diplomacy has allowed me to focus on the facts that sports can help people understand that even nations that are presented as “enemies” by the establishment are persons like them. Further, the exchange of table tennis players paved the way for the much more important visit to China by then-U.S. president Richard Nixon in 1972. In turn, the sporting boycott of South Africa during the Apartheid era proved very important in raising awareness about the inadmissibility of racial segregation both among South African and international publics.
The final part of the lecture was dedicated to some Slovenian-specific facts, including the heroic media representations of successful Olympians and the shifting notions of soccer after Slovenia qualified to the Euro for the first time as an independent country in 2000. From that point onwards, soccer in Slovenia started to elevate its status from being mostly considered as a Balkan and thus primitive sport to becoming a mainstream and even fashionable sport as successful national team performances allowed fans, celebrities, and politicians to bask in the reflected glory of soccer successes.
Judging by the reactions from the audience and by the discussion in the final part of the gathering I would say that the students were satisfied with what they had heard and learned. I certainly had a lot of fun lecturing on this topic and speaking to this audience. Boštjan, a great professional and friend whom I’ve known since high school, also said he was pleased with the lecture.
I would be pleased to hear from any of the students that attended the lecture, especially if they are considering exploring the topic into further depth, either as part of their undergraduate thesis, or out of personal or professional curiosity. I would also love to hear comments from experts in the field. Both are invited to comment on this entry below or by sending me an email to info[at]simonlicen.com.
Congratulations Simon! I am sure your lecture was very interesting and probably open minded to these students.
Definitely, megaevents are a fruitful subject to be considered by the international relations. But also, in the case of Brazil we can see the use of soccer in this matter, when some friendly games are played in order to improve the political image of Brazil in other countries. The past president created a secretary inside the international relations to work with sport and seek for ways to use it as a tool of relationship with other countries.
That is an interesting area of investigation and I am glad that in Slovenia students are aware of it! 🙂