PHILADELPHIA (Feb. 11, 2016) – This past fall, a strike by 30 black football players at the University of Missouri shined a national spotlight on racial tensions on that campus, illustrating the challenges that college athletes face – and the power they have to enact change – in the lucrative college sport entertainment industry.
In an effort to examine more closely the rights of college athletes and whether those rights are protected, Drexel University’s Center for Hospitality and Sport Management will host “College Athletes’ Rights & Empowerment (CARE): Visioning A New Paradigm of College Sport.”
Held at Drexel University and the National Constitution Center from March 24 – 26, during NCAA March Madness, the conference brings together some of the biggest names and leading thinkers on this topic to encourage dialogue that places the rights of college athletes at the center of policy and decision-making, develops frameworks to ensure that those rights are protected and explores ways to empower college athletes to assert their rights.
The conference is designed to bring scholars, journalists, practitioners and athletes together for the purpose of envisioning a new model of college sport for the 21st century that centers on the health, well-being and welfare of college athletes and provides a democratic avenue for athletes to share in the decision making that shapes the rules governing their lives.
Speakers will include Taylor Branch, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author best known for his landmark narrative history of the civil rights era;Los Angeles Rams player and College Athletes Players Association (CAPA) co-founder Kain Colter; sociologist Harry Edwards, PhD, an architect of the revolt of the black athlete in the 1960s; founder and president of the National College Players Association (NCPA) Ramogi Huma; Ed O’Bannon, retired pro basketball player and lead plaintiff in the antitrust class action lawsuit O’Bannon v. NCAA; legendary sports marketing executive Sonny Vacarro; The New York Times’ Ben Strauss and Joe Nocera; and Washington Post columnist and panelist on ESPN’s Around the Horn Kevin Blackistone.
For the full press release, visit: http://www.drexel.edu/now/archive/2016/February/CARE-Conference.
