cultural politics

Balancing opportunity and exploitation as the NBA forges new ground in Africa

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Oct 2024 18:19:39 +0000

Balancing opportunity and exploitation as the NBA forges new ground in Africa Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 10/22/2024 - 12:19

Jared Bahir Browsh

The recent death of Dikembe Mutombo and the start of the NBA regular season today highlight the fraught realities of building a talent pipeline between lower-income countries and the NBA

On Sept. 30, Basketball Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo passed away after a two-year battle with brain cancer. As a young NBA fan, I looked at Mutombo as someone both figuratively and literally larger than life.

Even as a fan of the Philadelphia 76ers, one of my favorite basketball memories was when Mutombo helped lead the Denver Nuggets to an upset of the No. 1-seed Seattle Supersonics, which featured an iconic highlight of Mutombo holding the final rebound as he celebrated on the ground. I later had the joy of watching him as a Sixer when the team made a run to the NBA Finals in 2001.

Mutombo’s legend went beyond his size, with an incredible backstory that might seem too unbelievable for a Hollywood script. He enrolled in Georgetown University on a USAID academic scholarship at 21, originally intending to pursue a career in medicine. But after being recruited to play basketball, and knowing very little English, he majored in linguistics and diplomacy, earning internships with U.S. Rep. Robert Matsui and the World Bank.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Department of Ethnic Studies.

My sister attended Georgetown, and Mutombo stories were common—with his intelligence, gregarious nature and success on the court making him a legend at the university. He was drafted by the Nuggets on the day after his 25th birthday and played 18 years with several teams, including the Houston Rockets, where he was a mentor to another international player, Yao Ming.

During his playing career, Mutombo began participating in humanitarian work, started his own foundation to support his native Congo and served as the first youth emissary for the United Nations Development Program. He also began working with Basketball without Borders, a program started by the NBA to encourage friendship and tolerance through basketball camps run globally.

The program was first introduced in 2001 in the Balkan states after the Yugoslav Wars, before entering Africa in 2003. It has become a pipeline for future all-stars like Pascal Siakam and Joel Embiid to earn college scholarships and be drafted into the NBA.

In 2023, the NBA had a record 125 international players on team rosters, with 19 of those players from African nations. The last six MVP awards have been won by three international players, two of whom, Embiid (Cameroon) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (born in Greece to Nigerian parents) have deep ties to Africa. Mutombo followed Hakeem Olajuwon (drafted from Nigeria in 1984) and Manute Bol (drafted from Sudan in 1985) as a part of the first wave of African players to enter the NBA. There was a dramatic increase of international players entering the NBA that began with the fall of the Soviet Union and accelerated after the success of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team.

Still-rare success

The success of players like Olajuwon, Mutombo and Embiid is still fairly rare in spite of the internationalization of basketball. Of the 125 international players on rosters last year, 72% were from Canada or Europe, representative of the strong basketball pipeline within the Global North and evidence of the developmental resources maintained by these Western nations with strong youth programs and professional leagues.

Players who emerge from outside of these pipelines are often exceptional in skills and physical attributes, overcoming a lack of developmental support. Recent evidence of the wide gap in resources was the relative success of the South Sudan men’s national team at the Paris Olympics, which challenged top teams in spite of there being no indoor basketball courts in the nation. South Sudan’s basketball federation president is Luol Deng, whose family escaped the war-torn country and settled in Great Britain before Deng enrolled at Duke for a year, becoming a two-time All-Star during his 15-year NBA career.

For every Deng, Antetokounmpo or Mutombo who make it to the NBA or other professional leagues around the world, like the English Premier League, there are thousands of others who don’t. It is a lottery that creates competition domestically among lower-income groups, including members of the African diaspora in the United States, where social mobility only seems accessible through sports and entertainment.

The now-iconic image of then-Denver Nugget Dikembe Mutombo celebrating an overtime win against the Seattle Supersonics May 7, 1994. (Photo: Bill Chan/Associated Press)

The desire to leverage sports to achieve social mobility is not new, but it has become increasingly international as domestic sports leagues continue to globalize, driven by access through digital media and growing their fan and revenue bases.

Earlier efforts to globalize were focused on wealthier nations in Europe and Asia, with the NBA and NFL holding exhibitions in countries like Germany and Japan and leveraging the rivalry with the USSR. Since the 1970s, the NFL has attempted to expand beyond the United States, eventually creating the World League of American Football that would evolve into NFL Europe, which officially launched in 1991. After NFL Europe folded in 2007, the league looked toward expanding beyond U.S. borders—self-tasked with expanding not only the NFL brand but American football in general.

The NBA, on the other hand, has focused on expanding as the top basketball league in the world, leveraging the international popularity of the sport. This growth was supported by the fall of the Iron Curtain and growth of professional basketball globally, driven both by television and the popularity of players like Michael Jordan. The NBA’s agreement with the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) to allow their professionals into the Olympics led to the 1992 Dream Team, which only accelerated this growth.

Big in China

Understanding of how international players can expand the game, and brand, was further evidenced by the success of Yao Ming in popularizing the NBA in China. Yao’s success also shows the geopolitical complications that can arise, considering the Chinese government’s requirement that Yao hand over half his earnings to the government, and later conflicts ignited when Daryl Morey made comments related to repression in Hong Kong.

The growth of basketball in Europe and wealthier nations like Israel has opened opportunities for American players to continue their professional basketball careers outside the United States and for top European athletes to play in the NBA. The stability of this pipeline, and the success of players like Olajuwon and Mutombo, led to Basketball without Borders. The NFL has run several international development and scouting programs since 2007, leading to the current International Player Pathway Program. Dozens of international NFL players have entered the NFL through this program, creating a strong pipeline in countries like Nigeria, and supported by Osi Umenyiora, a Nigerian-British former NFL All-Pro.

However, the high cost of entry and potential for injury has limited this growth, leading the NFL to strongly support the growth of flag football, which will make its Olympic debut in the Summer 2028 Games in Los Angeles. NFL officials have mentioned hopes that it will have the same impact as the Dream Team had for NBA basketball. In a similar vein, FIBA has also been working to leverage 3x3 basketball to expand participation and success to other nations.

Several NBA players participated in the 2017 NBA Africa Game, including then-Dallas Maverick Dirk Nowitzki, center. (Photo: U.S. Embassy South Africa)

This growth is not without complications. Along with walking a fine line between free speech, politics and growth—as evidenced by the conflict between the NBA and China during the 2019-2020 season over Daryl Morey’s tweet in support of Hong Kong protesters, as well as 2024 exhibition games between the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics in the United Arab Emirates—there are also claims of cultural and economic imperialism as leagues and their sponsorship partners leverage the sport and operate in other nations.

One of the clearest examples of this imperialism and cultural disconnect is represented in the Basketball Africa League (BAL), which is overseen by NBA Africa and FIBA. Early investors included Mutombo, with Barack Obama and Grant Hill, and corporations like Pepsi and Nike, becoming the primary investors. These corporations are looking to leverage the league to expand their brand recognition, which furthers criticism regarding exploitation of labor and resources, including water privatization by beverage companies like Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

There is clearly a disconnect between expectations and realities on the African continent, with fans unable to afford tickets, a lack of facilities and the talent drain to the NBA and European leagues. Unsurprisingly, the BAL and NBA Africa are headquartered in South Africa, in the shadow of apartheid and colonialism.

Ethically fraught global expansion

In spite of these issues, NBA Africa is reportedly valued at over $1 billion, and similar to NBA China, much of the value, and investment, is based on access to potential consumers on the continent, whose population is nearing 1.4 billion. Also, similar to NBA China, there have been issues with the relationships formed to create these subsidiaries. Leaders in nations like Rwanda, Russia and Saudi Arabia have been accused of investing in sport to distract from human rights violations and improve their reputation on the world stage.

The NBA and NFL are far from the only corporations engaging in ethically fraught global expansion; however, the long Western history of exploiting of groups of color, particularly African Americans, only exacerbates concerns regarding globalization of North American sports leagues. Programs like Basketball without Borders present themselves as philanthropic but are actually investments to help expand corporate footprints and open pipelines to talent that removes players from their communities—mirroring similar pipelines between lower-income communities in the United States and major college athletics programs.

Mutombo’s passing reminds us of the positive and negative potential of global sports: the opportunity for social mobility, philanthropy and community, and the risk of widespread exploitation.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Department of Ethnic Studies.

Top image: Men play basketball in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (Photo: Rohan Reddy/Unsplash)

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The recent death of Dikembe Mutombo and the start of the NBA regular season today highlight the fraught realities of building a talent pipeline between lower-income countries and the NBA.

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Talking politics with a side of pizza

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 12:08:46 +0000

Talking politics with a side of pizza Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/10/2024 - 06:08

New Politics & Pizza sessions give students and experts and space for productive and lively discussion of timely political topics

Today’s elections bear little resemblance to elections 50 or even 20 years ago. One key change: Digital and social media have become more central to how voters receive information—or misinformation—about candidates and issues.

For example, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that of those ages 18 to 29 surveyed, 48% use TikTok to keep up with politics or political news and 52% use TikTok to get news. Another recent Pew survey found that 54% of U.S. adults surveyed often or sometimes get local political news from social media.

If you go

What: Politics & Pizza, “The Role of Digital/Social Media in U.S. Elections”

When: 5:30-6:45 p.m., Monday, Oct.14

Where: Bruce Curtis Building (MCOL), W100 – CC

Free Cosmo’s pizza!

Learn more

The role of these new media will be the focus of the inaugural Politics & Pizza session, set for 5:30-6:45 p.m. Oct. 14. The aim of Pizza & Politics—which is being initiated by Glen Krutz, a professor of political science—is to “encourage productive, substantive deliberation of specific topics, rather than rancorous and ideological macro-thoughts.”

“These events are meant to help CU students sink their minds into key, specific political issues while they are sinking their teeth into delicious pizza!” Krutz says. “The other main goal is to have experts get the discussion started, but then to very much have a discussion between the students and one another and the students and the experts. The interaction piece is central, rather than a one-way information flow that sometimes we see at talks on university campuses.”

Politics & Pizza, which includes free Cosmo’s pizza, is modeled on similar sessions offered in Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. Each session will feature expert speakers who give a few introductory thoughts about the session’s topic, and then open the session to a question-and-answer with students.

The theme of the first Pizza & Politics event Oct. 14 is “The Role of Digital/Social Media in U.S. Elections” with speakers Stephen Frost, an assistant professor in the College of Media, Communication and Information Department of Media Studies; Vivek Krishnamurthy, an associate professor in the CU Law School and director of the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law and Policy Clinic; and Alexandra Siegel, an associate professor of political science.

The second Politics & Pizza is scheduled for Oct. 28 and will focus on the Electoral College and institutional reform. A third date is set for Nov. 18 and will offer an analysis of the election outcome and the upcoming transition.

Spring 2025 sessions will focus on the new U.S. Congress, business and politics, and state universities in America.

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New Politics & Pizza sessions give students and experts and space for productive and lively discussion of timely political topics.

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Uncovering the surprising similarities between sports and politics

Anonymous — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 10:31:43 +0000

Uncovering the surprising similarities between sports and politics Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/10/2024 - 04:31

Jared Bahir Browsh

In just a few decades, Fox went from being ‘the fourth network’ airing The Simpsons and baseball to being a leading voice in U.S. politics

Every four years, Americans oscillate between sports and coverage of the presidential election, and outside of trash talk between competitors, many overlook the commonalities between the two.

The media corporations responsible for covering both sports and politics are the same, and as we experience increasing polarization, it’s important to highlight the direct link between the partisan media and sports media rights—which has existed for 30 years, since Fox first aired NFL football after outbidding CBS for the broadcast rights. That winning bid helped legitimize the nascent broadcast network and establish the partisan cable news environment we are familiar with today.

Fox owner Rupert Murdoch is now known for overseeing one of the largest media empires in the world, but through the early 1980s he was known as a publisher of newspapers, specifically tabloids. He inherited a news publication after his father’s death in 1952, The News in Adelaide.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Department of Ethnic Studies.

He expanded his news empire to New Zealand and the United Kingdom through the ‘50s and ‘60s. Although he became known for his ownership of tabloids, his corporation also oversaw more traditional broadsheet newspapers, including Australia’s first national newspaper, The Australian.

By the 1980s, Murdoch had set his eyes on electronic media, particularly television. He struggled to break into the British broadcast market, so he focused his energy on pay TV, buying a controlling stake in Satellite Television Limited, later renamed Sky. After being excluded from the consortium overseeing British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB), he launched his own satellite-based service, circumventing British ownership laws by using the Astra satellite operating in Luxembourg.

Sky launched in 1989, 13 months before BSB’s launch in March 1990. The two competed for the rights to the FA Premier League, with Sky’s bid, nearly double that of any competitor, seen as overpaying. However, Murdoch saw sports as a “battering ram” for pay television, helping to attract viewers who might otherwise balk at spending money for scripted shows and news.

During this time, Murdoch and News Corporation set their sights on the United States, purchasing Marc Rich’s stake in 20th Century Fox after Rich became a fugitive for tax evasion and selling oil to Iran during the hostage crisis. He bought the stake from oil magnate and investor Marvin Davis, and 20th Century Fox was considering buying Metromedia, which owned broadcast stations. Davis opposed the purchase while Murdoch and executive Barry Diller pushed to expand the media reach of the troubled studio. Davis sold his stake in 20th Century Fox in 1985, incorporating Davis Petroleum in Denver the next year. Murdoch gained American citizenship, since legally he could not own a broadcast network as a foreign citizen, and in fall of 1986 the Fox Broadcasting Company launched with Diller as chairman and CEO.

The six original stations purchased from Metromedia were in major markets including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Fox Broadcasting Company, or FBC, was renamed Fox to leverage the media legacy of 20th Century Fox, and it officially launched on April 5, 1987.

The fourth network

Fox was considered the fourth network, if people had access to its programming at all. Network programmers purposely scheduled just below the minimum number of hours required for network status to avoid federal regulatory restrictions, including Financial Interest and Syndication Rules.

As it built its affiliate base, Fox took lessons from ABC to boost its visibility, building a young audience through its Fox Kids programming, prime-time teenage and young adult soaps like Beverly Hills 90210 and MelrosePlace and reality television, most notably COPS. However, following the precedent of BSkyB leveraging sports to accelerate growth, Fox made a bid for Monday Night Football in 1987, after ABC hesitated in renewing its contract with the NFL. Fox met the NFL’s asking price, but ABC came back and matched, due to ABC’s more extensive reach. The NFL renewed with ABC.

In November 1995, Fox obtained a partial contract for Major League Baseball. (Photo: Ryosuke Yagi/Wikimedia Commons)

At the end of the 1993 season, however, both the NFC and AFC contracts were up for renegotiation, and Fox ultimately outbid CBS for the NFC rights. As a result, Fox executives made a major push to gain affiliates with stronger broadcast signals in major markets, since the network was still using lower-quality UHF frequencies in many markets. This led to a major realignment of affiliations, with stations in markets like Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Detroit and Cleveland switching from CBS to Fox.

In November 1995, Fox obtained a partial contract for Major League Baseball, airing 16 Saturday games as well as the 1996 World Series. By the end of the decade, Fox would also agree to air the Cotton Bowl and NASCAR.

Taking risks

Sports and risk-taking in its entertainment programming boosted Fox’s profile, and the network entered the cable market with FX (stylized fX at launch) in 1994 as an interactive network embracing the then-emerging Internet. FX rebranded in 1997 as the network dedicated to Fox’s largest demographic, men 18-49, while also serving as a platform for its expanding sport portfolio and a place to rerun popular Fox series.

Throughout Fox’s early years, several other segments of the media were also quickly expanding. CNN had launched as the first 24-hour news network in 1980, but coverage of the Gulf War in 1990-1991 helped Fox grow into a major news source on par with other national outlets. In 1987, the Fairness Doctrine was officially repealed, leading to an explosion of conservative radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Lastly, the continued deregulation of the media—which was further formalized through the Telecommunications Act of 1996—consolidated the radio market, allowing for more nationally syndicated shows like Limbaugh’s and motivating the major media corporations to further expand, including into cable.

In 1994, NBC spun the news network America’s Talking off from CNBC; it was created by former Republican strategist Roger Ailes, who was president of the financial network at the time. Ailes left America’s Talking under controversy, after allegedly making antisemitic comments to NBC executive David Zaslav, who is now the CEO and president of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Fox News launched Oct. 7, 1996, and has become a significant voice in U.S. politics. (Photo: Steve Bott/Wikimedia Commons)

Ailes was hired by News Corp as founding CEO of Fox News, which launched on Oct. 7, 1996. Three months earlier, NBC had replaced America’s Talking with MSNBC, a collaboration between NBC and technology company Microsoft. MSNBC sought its approach through programming with several conservative commentators, including Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson. MSNBC would not find its identity until after Microsoft divested, becoming the left-leaning alternative to Fox News and abandoning the balance it previously tried to find along the political spectrum.

Unsurprisingly, Murdoch and News Corporation took a more heavy-handed approach, paying cable companies to carry the network. Three days after Fox News launched, Time Warner bought Turner Broadcasting, which owned CNN. Because of an antitrust consent decree (in which the government sues a company and the defendant agrees to stop alleged illegal conduct), Time Warner Cable was forced to carry a second news station and selected MSNBC, with News Corp claiming that this broke an agreement to carry Fox News.

Citing the fact that its U.S. headquarters were in New York, and leveraging connections, News Corp convinced Rudy Giuliani’s mayoral administration to pressure Time Warner to carry Fox News. Although Time Warner ultimately won the initial battle, Fox News won the war when Time Warner began carrying Fox News. The ordeal displayed Murdoch’s willingness to leverage his close relationships with the Republican Party to support his media empire.

This relationship is at the core of the seemingly real-life Succession episode currently playing out in Nevada, as Murdoch attempts to rewrite his trust to ensure his more conservative son Lochlan takes over Fox Corporation upon his death and maintains the network’s current place on the political spectrum. Even as the media giant sold off some of its assets in the sale of 21st Century Fox to Disney in 2019, Murdoch retained Fox’s national sports and news entities—including Fox News, the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, along with its cable and broadcast networks—as he continues to leverage sports as a battering ram to protect his international media empire.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ Department of Ethnic Studies.

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In just a few decades, Fox went from being ‘the fourth network’ airing The Simpsons and baseball to being a leading voice in U.S. politics.

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Emily Yeh named Phi Beta Kappa ��ý�Ļ��Ʒing Scholar

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 23:00:38 +0000

Emily Yeh named Phi Beta Kappa ��ý�Ļ��Ʒing Scholar Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 03/08/2023 - 16:00

��ý�Ļ��Ʒ geography professor to visit other campuses, join classroom lectures and seminars and give major lectures open to the host campus’ community

Emily Yeh, professor of geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been named a Phi Beta Kappa ��ý�Ļ��Ʒing Scholar for 2023-24, the academic honor society has announced.

Yeh is among 14 scholars nationwide to win this recognition. As a visiting scholar, Yeh will visit universities and colleges where Phi Beta Kappa chapters are located. ��ý�Ļ��Ʒing Scholars spend two days on each campus meeting informally with undergraduates, participating in classroom lectures and seminars, and giving one major lecture open to the academic community and public.

Yeh conducts research on nature-society relations and development, mostly in Tibetan parts of the People’s Republic of China. She has written about the political ecology of pastoralism, conflicts over access to natural resources, vulnerability to and knowledge of climate change, the cultural and ontological politics of nature conservation, and the conjunctural production of environmental subjectivities.

Emily Yeh's main research interests are on questions of power, political economy, and cultural politics in the nature-society relationship.

Her book Taming Tibet: Landscape Transformation and the Gift of Chinese Development explored the intersection of political economy and cultural politics of development as a project of state territorialization.

She is also co-editor of Mapping Shangrila: Contested Landscapes in the Sino-Tibetan Borderlands and of Rural Politics in Contemporary China, and author of more than 55 articles and chapters.

She regularly teaches classes on political ecology, development, environment and society geography, contemporary China and research design. She served as president of the American Association of Geographers in 2021-22.

Yeh recently answered five questions about her scholarship and research. The exchange appears below:

Question: You hold degrees in electrical engineering and computer science and in technology and policy from MIT, in addition to your PhD from the UC-Berkeley Energy and Resources Group: How does this academic training affect your research and scholarly work in geography?

Yeh: I was a math and science kid all the way through high school, which led me to study electrical engineering. What I do now is very different, but I think it gives me an appreciation for the interdisciplinarity of geography.

As an undergraduate, I enjoyed my coursework but realized after a summer internship in engineering that I wanted to do something that was more directly engaged with society and my growing interest in the environment. The Technology and Policy program attracted a lot of students like me—people who had studied engineering or physics but wanted to do something more policy and society oriented.

It gave a lot of freedom on coursework, and I took a class on Development and Underdevelopment in the Third World in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning from a geographer (Jesse Ribot) who had done his PhD at the Energy and Resources Group.

I realized immediately that this was the type of work I wanted to pursue, so I applied to ERG as well. That was also an interdisciplinary program that had begun in the 1970s focused on energy but which, at the time I was there, attracted students who wanted to work broadly on a range of human-environment issues.

I took classes in the geography department (as well as a lot of other departments) while there. A number of graduates have gone on to be geography professors—so my training there in political ecology and development geography is very much directly related to my current scholarship.

Q: You are an expert on the Tibetan Plateau, China and the Himalayas, where you conduct ethnographic research. What drew you to this disciplinary focus?

Yeh: My focus on Tibet was quite accidental. After I graduated from college with an engineering degree in 1993, my parents—who were born in China and grew up in Taiwan—sent me to Beijing University to study Chinese for the summer. While there, I met a couple of Japanese tourists over a weekend trip to Inner Mongolia who suggested we go to Xinjiang together.

However, there was flooding at the time, and we couldn’t get tickets. They suggested Tibet instead. That was during a brief window when entry permits weren’t necessary, and we were able to just buy plane tickets easily. I spent a week in Lhasa and Shigatse and was awestruck by the cultural landscape, as well as the majestic physical landscape, both of which were so different from anything I had seen before. That’s what sparked my initial interest in Tibet. Later, after my MS degree, I worked in Beijing for a year on sustainable development and was able to travel to Tibet again. I knew that I wanted to work on environment and development issues and had Chinese language skills, but also didn’t really enjoy living in Beijing.

Emily Yeh visiting Tibet.

When I was at the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley, I was able to secure a FLAS (Foreign Language & Area Studies) fellowship, which I used to study Tibetan in Lhasa for a year, which was an amazing and fascinating experience. I really fell in love with Tibetan culture and still find the Barkhor, a warren of shops and streets around the Jokhang Temple at the center of Lhasa, one of my favorite places in the world.

Q: Last year, you spoke during a Coloradan Conversations event focused on climate change and human rights; there, you made a case that the people most affected by climate change, such as Tibetan pastoralists, have the fewest resources to adapt to it and that, therefore, wealthier nations that are culpable for climate change should pay for this adaptation. Do you see any significant signs that such recompense is likely to occur?

Yeh: Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci famously used the phrase “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will,” which I think is relevant here. The promise of a Loss and Damage Fund at COP27 in Sharm-el Sheikh was a long-sought-after and important step in the right direction at the national scale, but there are still many things that need to happen for the fund to come to fruition.

Many questions remain, too, about whether the scale of eventual funding will come anywhere close to the scale of need. There are also no guarantees that the funds will be directed within countries to the most vulnerable. For example, Tibetan pastoralists live in China, a country that would not be a recipient of any Loss & Damage Funds (indeed some countries would like China to pay into the fund).

Nevertheless, “optimism of the will” means that we need to consistently work toward realizing visions of justice, even if they seem beyond grasp.

Q: If a group of middle-school students were to ask you why they should consider post-secondary studies in geography, how would you respond?

Yeh: I’d tell them: Geography is so much more than what you might think! A lot of the most important issues you hear about in the news—geopolitical conflict (for example, the war in Ukraine), borders and international migration, the effects of increasing wildfire on human health, the effects of climate change on melting ice sheets, on conflict, on disasters, the spatial patterns of the spread of pandemics, the declining snowpack in Colorado and its effects on vegetation, indigenous territory and human rights, the politics of nature conservation—just to name a few, are all things that geographers study.

Geography is so much more than what you might think! A lot of the most important issues you hear about in the news—geopolitical conflict (for example, the war in Ukraine), borders and international migration ... —just to name a few, are all things that geographers study.

We also use geospatial technologies, developed by geographers, every day in our smartphone apps. Many students these days are interested in a lot of different topics and thinking about them in an interdisciplinary way—which is exactly what geography does. It’s holistic and often referred to as the original interdisciplinary discipline. It’s about humans and the environment, and also about how different places got to be the way they are.

To get a sense of all the things geographers do, we can also think about the four geographers who were recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dawn Wright is the chief scientist of the Esri (Environmental Systems Research Institute), which makes popular GIS products. She played a leading role in creating the first GIS data model for the ocean floor.

Marilyn Raphael does research on climate change and variability in the high-latitude southern hemisphere and the interaction between Antarctic sea ice and the atmosphere. Marshall Shepherd works on remote sensing and climate and is the host of the Weather Channel’s Sunday talk show, Weather Geeks. Finally, Ruth Wilson Gilmore is a pioneer in the study of racial capitalism and the mass incarceration in the U.S.

Q: What reaction do you have to being named a Phi Beta Kappa ��ý�Ļ��Ʒing Scholar?

Yeh: It was a complete surprise to be selected! I’m really honored and very much looking forward to all of the campus visits. It’s wonderful to have this opportunity to meet with students at different colleges and universities and share some of my research.

��ý�Ļ��Ʒ geography professor to visit other campuses, join classroom lectures and seminars and give major lectures open to the host campus’ community.

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