Carlos and Smith were welcomed to the Student Union stage with applause, some audience members standing in appreciation of the pair\u2019s appearance. Carlos was quick to shut that down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like applause,\u201d Carlos said. \u201cI\u2019m not doing a soft-shoe dance. I\u2019m not up here trying to sing. I\u2019m up here trying to make a connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
He sought that connection at UConn from the approximately 400 people in attendance at the summit event, whose welcome of the two Olympians stood in stark contrast to the reception the pair received 57 years before, as young athletes receiving medals on an Olympic podium in Mexico City.<\/p>\n
A video clip from Smith and Carlos\u2019s iconic protest at their medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympic Games projected above them showed them both as young men, each wearing a black glove and no shoes, standing on the podium as the National Anthem played, their hands raised over their heads.<\/p>\n As the medal ceremony ended and Smith and Carlos left the podium, their Olympic audience booed and jeered.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I see that clip, I still get goosebumps,\u201d remarked Rhoden.<\/p>\n The period leading up to the 1968 Olympics was marked by widespread unrest. The Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were ongoing, as was the Civil Rights Movement. That April saw the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., followed by the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy a little more than two months later.<\/p>\n Many Black athletes felt a deep sense of anger and frustration, and many called for a boycott of the Olympics, but the U.S. participated nonetheless. Both standout track athletes at San Jose State University at the time, their decision to protest came before any events were run, but Smith and Carlos each approached their decision from a different standpoint.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t come for the medal,\u201d said Carlos. \u201cI came to make a statement.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI came to win the race,\u201d said Smith, knowing that winning would give him a visible platform for his demonstration. \u201cYou\u2019re looking at two guys who are very different, but socially, we stand for the same thing\u2026We knew we had a responsibility. My responsibility came through speed.\u201d<\/p>\n While their protest was planned, the backlash they\u2019d face over the next decade was beyond what they could have ever predicted. They were expelled from the Olympic Village and denounced by the International Olympic Committee. They and members of their family were targeted and denied employment and schooling, they said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou went out that morning and the sun was shining,\u201d Carlos said, \u201cand then it\u2019s nothing but lightning and thunder.\u201d<\/p>\n But even with hindsight, Smith and Carlos told the UConn audience that they wouldn\u2019t change their decision to protest that day.<\/p>\n And their decision still resonates decades later, in a polarized world where athlete protests still make global headlines, said summit co-organizer James Waller \u2013 the Christopher J. Dodd Chair in Human Rights Practice and director of Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs at UConn.<\/p>\n \u201cThat moment\u2026lasted less than 9 seconds,\u201d said Waller. \u201cAnd even though not a word was uttered, that moment has reverberated for the past 57 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Smith and Carlos urged those in attendance, regardless of race \u2013 and especially the large number of UConn students \u2013 to find connections with those around them and to take whatever action they can, large or small, to work toward greater equity and to fight against ongoing injustices in our society, not just for themselves but also for the generations to come.<\/p>\n \u201cAnything you do right now should be concerned with what kind of world you\u2019re leaving for your kids,\u201d Carlos said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t have to rule the world, or to make big claims, to do something,\u201d Smith said. \u201cJust step up. Whatever you think is right, make strides toward those efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n Race, Gender, and Money<\/strong><\/p>\n The conversation with Smith and Carlos opened a multi-day summit examining issues at the intersection of sports and human rights \u2013 a topic uniquely suited to UConn, according to University President Radenka Maric.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no better place to have this summit than UConn,\u201d said Maric. \u201cThe relationship between sports and human rights is both timely and perfectly suited to UConn because of our proud tradition of athletics and success.\u201d<\/p>\n Home to the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute<\/a>, UConn is also a premiere university working to advance human rights knowledge and practice through research, teaching, and engagement.<\/p>\n On its best days, according to Waller \u2013 a former college athlete, and now an internationally recognized scholar on the Holocaust and genocide studies \u2013 sports are anchored in human rights values.<\/p>\n \u201cSport promotes fairness, nondiscrimination, respect, and equal opportunities for all,\u201d he said. \u201cOn its worst days, however, sport can fail to uphold these standards. Instead of promoting and protecting human rights, sport can reveal serious violations of human rights \u2013 including racial and sexual discrimination, financial exploitation, and neglect and curtailment of participatory rights and freedom of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n And the second day of the summit picked up where Wednesday\u2019s keynote left off, as Waller was joined by the award-winning sports journalist and podcast host Pablo Torre for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on the ways that race, gender, and especially money, all affect human rights in sports.<\/p>\n \u201cThe answer to all of your questions is money,\u201d Torre told the packed early-morning crowd at The Dodd Center\u2019s Konover Auditorium.<\/p>\n From professional football and NBA team ownership to sponsorship patches on sports jerseys, money plays a significant role in visibility and the normalization of companies and personalities \u2013 and even bad actors \u2013 through sports.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody has a number,\u201d Torre said. \u201cIt turns out that the number might not be as high as you might have hoped.\u201d<\/p>\n Torre also discussed how trans athletes in sport have become a touchpoint for right-leaning personalities, a theme continued in the second conversation of the day, which focused on gender.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we think about fairness, that is a very heavy word right now,\u201d said Anna Baeth, a sports sociologist and activist with Athlete Ally, \u201cand that is because it has been co-opted by politicians to talk about trans athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n Oftentimes, explained Amira Rose Davis, an historian and assistant professor at the University of Texas-Austin, concepts we\u2019re grappling with today have their roots in very old foundations.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re asking \u2018how did we get here?\u2019 and \u2018why is it like this?\u2019 Well, because it was set up like that, sixty years ago,\u201d Davis said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re talking about inclusion, when we\u2019re talking about the meaning of sport, a lot of this is asking us to explain what values we attach to sport and why. Inclusion into what?\u201d<\/p>\n Sports, said the best-selling author, trans athlete, speaker, and educator Schuyler Bailar, are reflective of the society we\u2019re in.<\/p>\n \u201cThey always have been, and I think they always will be,\u201d Bailar said. \u201cCan they lead us forward? Sure\u2026they\u2019re an expose, an expression, a performance of society.\u201d<\/p>\n Setting policies around gender and inclusion in sport is important, but how we interact with each other, and how we prioritize someone\u2019s gender over other values in our interactions contributes to society\u2019s values.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we can just set policy in sports and say, \u2018That\u2019s going to fix this problem,\u201d Bailar noted.<\/p>\n Seizing Opportunities<\/strong><\/p>\n The final day of the summit opened with an exercise led by keynote speaker Dannelle Umstead, the Paralympian ski racer and three-time Paralympic bronze medalist.<\/p>\n Audience members closed their eyes, imagining careening down a mountain at 50 miles per hour, with only the voice of a guide to help them navigate their way down.<\/p>\n Umstead began losing her vision as a child. After her mother passed away, her vision worsened, she lost a job that she loved, and saw her independence slipping away from her. One day, her father took her skiing, which changed the trajectory of her life.<\/p>\n \u201cWe skied that entire day,\u201d she recounted. \u201cI realized, for the first time since all my losses, I didn\u2019t think about my mom. I didn\u2019t think about my job that I lost. All I thought about was pure joy.\u201d<\/p>\n Umstead was 29 years old when she and her future husband and ski guide moved to Park City, Utah. She didn\u2019t try to make her first Paralympic games until she was 38 years old.<\/p>\n \u201cMost athletes my age have retired by now,\u201d she said, citing the dual challenges she faced in a world that doubted her abilities as an athlete not just because of her disability but also because of her age.<\/p>\n Umstead medaled in two events at her first Paralympic games in Vancouver 2010, then medaled again in Sochi 2014 following a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis that forced her to relearn how to walk and ski again.<\/p>\n Her keynote was followed by a panel discussion with scholars and entrepreneurs on the complex intersections between sports, corporate power and human rights.<\/p>\n The global sports market is valued at $2.65 trillion, including sports participation, product, and fan engagement, noted Ginous Alford, a social entrepreneur and director of sport and human rights with the World Players Association.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere there\u2019s value creation, you also have to talk about where there will be value extraction,\u201d said Alford. \u201cMany industries, sport included, have externalized those costs, and we\u2019re talking today about how many of those costs are human. We see workers, local residents, journalists, fans, and especially athletes \u2013 the ones who generate the spectacle themselves \u2013 that their risks are risks that they did not choose or design.\u201d<\/p>\n At UConn, students drove the effort to ensure that the University\u2019s commercial partners adhered to wage and labor standards in the production of their products that aligned with the University\u2019s priorities and commitments to human rights, explained UConn\u2019s director of brand partnerships and trademark management Kyle Muncy \u201992 (CLAS) \u201922 MBA.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, UConn is universally regarded as the standard for institutional and industry-wide engagement in the area of licensing merchandise oversight and management,\u201d Muncy said, and the policies that the University has instituted help protect over a million workers at 3,500 factories in 48 countries around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cNot every university is doing that work,\u201d he said, \u201cbut every university is benefitting from that work.\u201d<\/p>\n As are professional sports leagues and other organizations and institutions that have the same licensees and partners and rely on the same global supply chain for their merchandized products.<\/p>\n Sport is often seen as an entity that can regulate itself, explained Daniela Heerdt, a researcher and independent consultant in the field of sport and human rights for the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, but that view raises challenges.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have frameworks and tools and concepts to help sport not put commercial interests and cost above human rights,\u201d Heerdt said, including the U.N. Framework for Business and Human Rights, and though progress has been incremental, some sporting bodies have begun to incorporate human rights principles into their policies.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not about making sport responsible for all the terrible things that are happening in a host city, for example,\u201d she said, \u201cbut it\u2019s really about helping sports understand where we can have positive impact and seizing these opportunities to protect and respect human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n In the Details<\/strong><\/p>\n The summit concluded with a panel featuring UConn alumni and former athletes \u2013 including including former men\u2019s basketball star Doron Sheffer \u201996 (BGS); Bethany Hart Gerry \u201900 (CAHNR), Olympian and UConn All-American; and former UConn football quarterback Bryant Shirreffs \u201917 (BUS) \u201918 MS \u2013 who discussed some of their own personal experiences in college and beyond, and how those experiences shaped their own views of human rights in sports.<\/p>\n Harrison Brooks Fitch, Jr. \u201964 (CLAS) \u2013 son of the late Harrison \u201cHoney\u201d Fitch, UConn\u2019s first Black basketball player \u2013 recounted how his father overcame the racial inequalities of the 1930s<\/a> as a three-sport athlete and received the support of his fellow athletes and students at what was then called Connecticut State College.<\/p>\n![\"Olympians](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/2025-10-22_HumanRightsSummitOpening-2-300x200.jpg\")
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