TONIGHT'S PRESIDENT'S LECTURE SERIES TO EXPLORE RACIAL ISSUES IN SPORTS
"Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It" will be the topic of discussion by two sports book authors at Old Dominion University's President's Lecture Series Thursday, Feb. 15.
Jon Entine, a television producer and reporter, will join Kenneth L. Shropshire, an expert on legal, business and social issues in the sports and entertainment industries, for the free lecture on racial stereotyping and the effects of genetics in sports at 8 p.m. in the Mills Godwin Jr. Life Sciences Building auditorium.
Entine first stepped into the national spotlight with his 1989 documentary "Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction." Today, using clips from his documentary and drawing on genetic and sociological research, Entine argues that biology and ancestry are significant components of the disproportional emergence of world-class black athletes.
The author of a book also titled "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It," Entine has written for several publications, including The Sunday Times of London, Chicago Tribune, GQ and the Utne Reader. A seasoned network television producer, he has worked with Sam Donaldson, Diane Sawyer and Chris Wallace on ABC's "PrimeTime Live" and "20/20" and served for many years as Tom Brokaw's producer at NBC News.
Entine, a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Journalists, earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Trinity College and has taught as an adjunct professor at New York and Columbia universities.
An author and scholar, Shropshire has provided legal consultation for the National Football League, the U.S. Amateur Boxing Federation and the World Wrestling Federation. From 1982-1985, he served as assistant vice president/sports manager for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee.
A frequent contributor to various national publications, Shropshire has written for the New York Daily News, USA Today and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the author of five books, including "Agents of Opportunity: Sports Agents and Corruption in Collegiate Sports" and "In Black and White: Race and Sports in America," for which he received the 1997 Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America Outstanding Book Award.
Shropshire, who currently serves as a professor of legal studies and real estate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, earned a law degree from the Columbia University School of Law and a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University.
The spring 2001 President's Lecture Series will also feature Mark Mazower, nationally known author, scholar and lecturer on the Holocaust, the Balkans and Modern Greece, with "City of Ghosts: Salonica Before and After the Holocaust," Feb. 22; Sarah Weddington, who won the 1973 landmark lawsuit Roe vs. Wade and became the youngest woman ever to win a case in the Supreme Court, with "Some Leaders Are Born Women," March 15; and The Capitol Steps, a musical group composed of current and former congressional staffers, with "The Lighter Side of Politics," April 5.
For more information call 683-3114.