Jules Boykoff | |
|---|---|
 Boykoff in 2012 | |
| Born | September 11, 1970 |
| Occupation | Academic, author |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Ph.D in Political Science |
| Alma mater | University of Portland |
| Notable works | Beyond Bullets: The Suppression of Dissent in the United States; Landscapes of Dissent: Guerrilla Poetry & Public Space; The Suppression of Dissent: How the State and Mass Media Squelch USAmerican Social Movements; Once Upon a Neoliberal Rocket Badge; Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics |
| Notable awards | Trombley Award for teaching excellence |
| Website | |
| julesboykoff | |
Jules Boykoff (born September 11, 1970) is an American academic, author, poet, and former athlete. He is a former professional soccer player. His research focuses on the politics of the Olympic Games, social movements, the suppression of dissent, and the role of the mass media in US politics, especially regarding coverage of climate change issues.
Boykoff has written four books on the Olympic Games, and he has written essays in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, NBC News, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and Jacobin. He has appeared on BBC, CNN, CNBC, NPR, CBC Television, CTV Television Network, Al Jazeera English, Democracy Now!, and The Majority Report with Sam Seder.
| Personal information | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Jason Boykoff | ||
| Date of birth | September 11, 1970 | ||
| Place of birth | Madison, Wisconsin | ||
| Height | 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) | ||
| College career | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| Wisconsin Badgers | |||
| Portland Pilots | |||
| Senior career* | |||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) |
| 1993–1996 | Portland Pride (indoor) | 98 | (26) |
| 1993–1994 | Milwaukee Wave (indoor) | 40 | (3) |
| International career | |||
| 1990 | United States U-23 | ||
| *Club domestic league appearances and goals | |||
At the college level, Boykoff played two years for the University of Wisconsin before crossing to the University of Portland. After graduating he was drafted in 1993 by indoor soccer team Portland Pride of the Continental Indoor Soccer League (CISL). He also played with National Professional Soccer League team Milwaukee Wave. In all he played four seasons of indoor professional soccer.[1][2][3]
At the age of 19, he played for the United States men's national under-23 soccer team in the 1990 Toulon Tournament.[4] The United States Soccer Federation entered the 1990, 1991 and 1992 editions in preparation for the 1992 Summer Olympics football tournament.
Boykoff is currently a professor of Politics and Government at Pacific University, Oregon.[5] In 2007 and 2009, students selected him as recipient of the Trombley Award for teaching excellence.[6] He also held a visiting professor position at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington during the 2004–2005 school year.[7]
Common course topics taught by Boykoff include US politics, the politics of surveillance, mass-media and politics, and the politics of literature and poetry.[8] In November 2006, he spoke at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, "COP 12".[9][10] In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore mentioned work Boykoff co-authored with his brother Maxwell Boykoff (Oxford University, Environmental Change Institute) on US media coverage of global warming.[9]
Boykoff is also co-editor of The Tangent, a politics and art zine, and runs The Tangent Reading Series in Portland, Oregon.[9][11][12]
Boykoff has been called “one of the biggest names in international Olympic Games academia" and is known for his informed criticism of the Olympic Games.[13][14]
Common themes in Boykoff's Olympics work include overspending, corruption, militarization of the public sphere and police, gentrification, and greenwashing.
Boykoff lived in London in the lead up to and during the 2012 Summer Olympics and in Rio de Janeiro as a Fulbright scholar during preparations for the 2016 Summer Olympics.[14]
In July 2019 he interviewed two women in Tokyo who were displaced by the 1964 Summer Olympics and the 2020 Summer Olympics.[15][16][17] His works also inspired anti-Olympics groups in Japan in the lead up to the 2020 Summer Olympics. Scholar and Olympic critic Yoshifusa Ichii further connected Boykoff's concept of the Olympics as "celebration capitalism" with Mark Fisher's notion of "capitalist realism" to argue that "the relationship between new ways of life, celebration capitalism and neoliberalism is a constitutive part of capitalist realism aimed at ensuring the rule of capital at any cost, as demonstrated by the IOC's running of the Olympics despite the COVID-19 epidemic."[18]
In June 2021 Boykoff debated Richard W. Pound of the International Olympic Committee.[19]
