College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

This interactive presentation will look at the racial dynamics of college football in the South in light of recent developments: the transfer portal, NIL, conference realignment, anti-DEI legislation, and the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions. The most dynamic of these developments has been Name, Image, and Likeness. Ironically, just several years ago college football fans said that they would never support a team that pays its players. However, those same fans are now demanding that their favorite school pay whatever salary is necessary to recruit the best players. This lecture will make you look at college football from a totally different perspective.

Leonard N. Moore is the George Littlefield Professor of American History and a former vice president at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Moore has authored four books on black politics, including Carl B. Stokes and the Rise of Black Political Power, Black Rage in New Orleans, The Defeat of Black Power, and Teaching Black History to White People. Dr. Moore teaches more than 1,000 undergraduate students in the fall semester in his two classes: History of The Black Power Movement and Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. Dr. Moore also directs summer programs in Beijing, China, Cape Town, South Africa, and Dubai. In the Austin community, he serves as Board Chair of the Austin Area Urban League.

Scales of Belonging: Speaker Series 2023-24
Recent years have given life an experimental feel. As interlocked and unpredictable sources of upheaval become the norm, we ask: how and where do we belong? Exiles and refugees may never belong where they make homes. Migrants may never feel at home where they belong. While some choices we make, others are made for us. People move—as much as they are moved by nature and politics. In another key, we are moved by things that affect us: literature, sports, the lives of others. If shared worlds make life meaningful, then what forces repair and rupture the possibility of community? From football fields and detention centers to the planet itself, the Center’s 2023-24 Speaker Series investigates our myriad Scales of Belonging.