Daniel Hoffman. Photo by Dennis Wise
Somewhere in the 117-year archive of messages from the Director of the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies there must be a few that reference sports. After all, Seattle has a long and proud history of excellent local teams – with a few notable heartbreaks along the way. And Seattle is known for its sport culture, talked about as a place of passionate and knowledgeable fans and a sport infrastructure that is woven into the fabric of the city. But no director before me could have opened their autumn welcome with this: a salute to the city’s successful run as a host to the FIFA Men’s World Cup.
Many of you will know that in the lead up to the tournament, of which Seattle was one of 11 host cities in the U.S. and 16 in North America, the Jackson School was front and center in programming, teaching, and research on the economics, politics, history and social dimensions of sport. Global football (soccer) took center stage, but our faculty, staff and students dove into everything from Samoan communities’ relationship to American football to the cultural importance of zoorkhaneh in Iran. Sport, as the anthropologist Claude Lévi Strauss once said of food, is good to think with. Many of those activities were captured in our spring newsletter and they remain accessible through the Global Sport Lab and its podcast series. But I lead with the tournament and with sport here because as we get the fall quarter underway here on campus, this is a moment to reflect on a larger lesson learned.
When I talk to alumni and supporters of the Jackson School, I frequently encounter a misconception about students today. Many of us fear that a barrage of crises – economic, political and social – has left a generation disengaged and disinterested. Many of us worry that entertainment, not education, is the coin of the realm. But this summer our students didn’t engage the World Cup as a diversion from politics. We saw our students embrace the opportunity to “think with,” for example, the Iran vs. Egypt match, a game that was coincidentally designated by the city of Seattle as the Pride Match to coincide with Pride Weekend. It took little to convince our students, and indeed our larger community, that a dramatic game on the pitch and a charged atmosphere leading up to it had far more than excitement value. It was an opportunity to research international law and diplomacy; human rights; the politics of diasporic communities and the freighted symbolism of flags and slogans.
That was an important lesson for all of us at a time when the value of international studies as it has long been configured in American higher education is under threat – and at risk of being replaced by spectacle and entertainment. Last year in my Autumn welcome message I referenced the cancellation of our long-standing federal Title VI funds, the end of a 66-year tradition of support for students and faculty focused on learning the world’s languages and cultures. This summer the Trump administration briefly created an alternative program meant to achieve similar goals of developing global knowledge in the national interest, then abruptly canceled the program before announcing the grant recipients. This coincided, of course, with wrestling at the White House and Formula 1 races through the streets of D.C.; politicized pageantry around the nation’s 250th anniversary; and a monumental building spree at odds with the aesthetics and spirit of modern democracy.
The rich interest in understanding the world through sport that Seattle’s World Cup inspired was a healthy reminder that innate curiosity about the world persists in our community nonetheless. Our students are less distracted and less discouraged by the noise around them than many of us fear. The challenges that we face in teaching and researching the world at universities today is a problem of infrastructure, not a problem of interest. We are finding new ways to support the work of building knowledge about Southeast Asia and its diasporas, about African politics, the Canadian economy, and the history of Latin America. Whatever leads them there, be it sport or heritage or a call to service, our community still wants that knowledge. And as long as our students, our faculty and our community continue to recognize that sport, as so many other aspects of our lives, is good to think with, we will find ways to continue that work.
In our latest highlights that follow you will see the proof. We’ve launched our new combined East Asia Master’s degree; brought to the Jackson School two new initiatives aimed at giving undergraduates applied experiences in global scholarship; and celebrated new books by our faculty. As it always does, this newsletter provides a snapshot of a School that is still innovating, still finding ways to speak to our community’s desire to know and understand.
I end here with a final acknowledgement. Dr. Reşat Kasaba, who for 10 years served as the Director of the Jackson School, retired this summer along with Dr. Kathie Friedman, also a faculty member in the Jackson School. Reşat was the public face of the School through a truly historic time, stepping into the director role in 2010 and leading the School until 2020. I would encourage you to take a moment and listen to the interview I recently recorded with Reşat. That conversation gave us both the opportunity to reflect on where the School has been, where it is now and where it is going. Reşat deserves tremendous thanks and credit for the fact that while we are in a moment of tremendous uncertainty, our foundation and our vision remain strong.
I hope to see you on campus this year whether in our classes, public events or other outreach activities. Thank you for your interest and continuing support.
Danny Hoffman
Stanley D. Golub Endowed Chair in International Studies
Director, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington
