The role of social media in protests, concepts of privilege and protest in sports, and ways protesters can be most effective will be discussed by a trio of experts at the University of Colorado Boulder next month.

The event, titled “Beyond #Protest,” features three experts and is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 1, at noon in Old Main Chapel on the CU Boulder campus. Each faculty member will speak for about 15 minutes and then answer questions. The panelists are:

• Nicholas Villanueva, director of critical sports studies and lecturer in ethnic studies
• Lorecia Kaifa-Aliya Roland, associate professor of anthropology
• Mathieu Desan, assistant professor of sociology

Roland plans to discuss social media's role in facilitating a broad range of protest movements, including the NFL controversy about players “taking a knee” during the national anthem, Charlottesville, and the counter-movements to each. “I will raise these issues to highlight the distinction between ‘protesting against’ and ‘mobilizing for’ in order to enact tangible change.”

Villanueva will discuss privilege and protest in sport, he said, adding: “Sport is a microcosm of U.S. society, where the ideals of sport are conflated with a national identity, and ignores that sport is an arena of white privilege.”

Desan will discuss “how (not) to think about the effectiveness of protests, particularly in the context of the rise of the far right.”

The event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Center to Advance the Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS) and the College of Arts and Sciences. 

The Social Sciences Today Forum, a series during the school year, is designed to help the public gain broader perspectives and deeper understanding of human society and how individuals relate to the community and one another. This forum brings the knowledge and expertise of social-sciences faculty to the greater community and allows the community to ask questions of leading scholars.