‘Blackness’, Professional Sports and the #Occupy the Academy Movement on the January 23^rd ‘Left of Black’

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype© by David J. Leonard and in-studio by Bomani Jones. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University at Pullman and the author of the forthcoming After Artest, Race and the Assault on Blackness (SUNY Press). Jones is a journalist, sports commentator, former host of The Morning Jones and a well-known contributor to ESPN’s Around the Horn and Jim Rome is Burning. The trio discuss responses and effects of the recent 2011 NBA lockout and how it relates to race. Leonard and Jones highlight how branding defines basketball’s popularity and the irreplaceable value of the sport’s greatest athletes. Lastly, the conversation touches on the comparison between how fans value the NFL differently than the NBA.

Later, Neal is joined via Skype© by James Braxton Peterson, director of Africana Studies and associate professor of English at Lehigh University. A frequent contributor to MSNBC, Peterson addresses the impact of scholars who reach well beyond the Academy. Neal and Peterson also discuss the scholarly impact of the #Occupy Movement as expressed in Peterson’s recent HuffPost Black Voices article, “#Occupy the Academy.”

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Left of Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on the Ustream channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/left-of-black. Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal and featured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or #dukelive.

Left of Black is recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.

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