Legal Studies 397JF - ST-Justice On & Off The Field

Legal Studies Majors only. Pre Req: LEGAL 250 Non-majors can enroll after 4/12.
The fields of sports have been the sites of some of the greatest barrier breaking, both physical as well as societal. Yet they have also caused scores of injustice. Sports can create and affirm nationalistic divisions and gender inequalities. The same society that racially integrated baseball before any other major state institution desegregated arguably exploits college athletes whose labor is unpaid while their universities and athletic conferences make millions of dollars from their performance. Nations who welcome the world to their Olympic Games often do so at the cost of making their cities unaffordable to their residents and spending millions of dollars that could be used to alleviate poverty. For an institution that prides itself on rules and fair play, these outcomes ask us to rethink what sports are all about. This course asks students to look critically at what is usually thought of as a leisure activity or entertainment. Topics in this course may include sports and: exploitation, gender, inequality, nationalism and identity, the courts, corruption, economics and foreign policy.