World Cup / World Politics

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This event will be held in English.

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This summer, much of the world will observe the quadrennial ritual of the FIFA Men’s World Cup. While fans debate the likely winner, many will also consider the political ramifications of the world’s most popular sporting event. Like all mega-spectacles, World Cup ‘26 offers a lens into the politics of the moment.

Panelists Laurent Dubois, Maboula Soumahoro, and Frank Guridy will lend their expertise in history, politics, and global sporting cultures to address the social and racial questions surrounding the tournament. How will the French national team prompt debates about the state of the country months after the recent municipal elections? How will the World Cup magnify the ongoing political crisis in the United States? And how will tournament organizers seek to keep the injustices of the wars and genocides in the Middle East out of the picture? These are just a few of the questions that might linger in and around the tournament as 48 teams from around the world suit up to play in North America this summer.

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Speakers

Frank Andre Guridy is the Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies and History at Columbia University, where he also directs the Eric H. Holder Initiative for Civil and Political Rights. An award-winning historian, his research explores the intersection of sport, urban history, and social movements. His most recent book, The Stadium: An American History of Politics, Protest, and Play was published by Basic Books in 2024. It examines the stadium as a vital site for civic life and social justice. His previous works include The Sports Revolution (2021), which details how marginalized athletes transformed American athletics, and Forging Diaspora (2010), which won several prestigious prizes for its study of Afro-Cuban and African American relations.

His writing and commentary on sport, society, and politics have been published in Public Books, Columbia News, NBC News.com and the Washington Post. He has also appeared on a wide variety of podcasts, radio, and TV programs, including, NPR’s Fresh Air, MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the Edge of Sports podcast by The Nation, Burn it All Down, End of Sport, Texas Public Radio, the Houston Chronicle’s Sports Nation, Al Jazeera’s “The Listening Post,” WNYC Public Radio, among others. His excellence in the classroom has been recognized with multiple honors, including Columbia’s Mark Van Doren Award for Teaching.

Laurent Dubois is the John L. Nau III Bicentennial Professor and co-director of the Democracy Initiative at the University of Virginia. A specialist in Atlantic history and culture—specifically Haiti, France, and North America—he leads the Nau History and Principles of Democracy Lab. He previously spent a decade at Duke University, where he founded the Forum for Scholars & Publics and co-directed the Haiti Laboratory. An acclaimed author of seven books, Dubois won the Frederick Douglass Prize for A Colony of Citizens and received New York Times Notable Book honors for Haiti: The Aftershocks of History. His work on the politics of soccer includes Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France (University of California Press, 2010) and The Language of the Game: How to Understand Soccer (2018). His writing frequently appears in outlets like The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and a B.A. from Princeton University.

Maboula Soumahoro is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Tours. A 2023–2024 Fellow at the Institute for Ideas and Imagination, she also served as the Mellon Arts Project International Visiting Professor in African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University in 2022–2023, as well as a visiting lecturer at Bennington College. A recognized specialist in Africana Studies, she has conducted research and taught at several universities and correctional facilities in both the United States and France. She is the author of Le Triangle et l’Hexagone, réflexions sur une identité noire (La Découverte, 2020), which received a special mention from the FetKann! Maryse Condé literary prize in 2020. She is the translator of Saidiya Hartman’s seminal work, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), published in French under the title À perte de mère. Sur les routes atlantiques de l’esclavage (Brook, 2023). Her academic and literary contributions offer a unique and enriching perspective on Black identities.

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This event will take place in Reid Hall’s Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.

Reid Hall, the Columbia Global Paris Center, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination are not responsible for the views and opinions expressed by their speakers and guests.

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