Lichtman lecture unpacks politics of World Cup

Prof. Steven Lichtman spoke at UMass Law Thursday on "Soccer and American Exceptionalism: A Political Science Preview of World Cup 2026."

With the FIFA men's World Cup of soccer coming soon to the co-host United States, Prof. Lichtman took a peek behind the curtain at the once embattled yet seemingly unshameable enterprise of the world's biggest sporting event.

The American indictments and dramatic Zurich raid of the 2015 FIFA corruption scandal seem hardly to have slowed soccer's voracious appetite for cash. And sport is inseparable from politics. After all, FIFA President Gianni Infantino recently turned up at the inaugural meeting of U.S. President Donald Trump's Board of Peace. That struck me as an aptly symbolic testament to the corporatocratic nature of the Trumpian new world order. 

Prof. Lichtman spoke to the long history of World Cup politics, for example examining how reaction to the 1986 "Hand of God" goal manifested the angst and identities of both post-colonial Argentina and post-imperial England.

RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

A self-described "recovering lawyer," Prof. Lichtman is co-editor of Judging Free Speech: First Amendment Jurisprudence of U.S. Supreme Court Justices (2015). His other work has appeared in the Maryland Law Review, the Penn State Law Review, Vingtième Siècle Revue d'Histoire, the Pennsylvania Lawyer, and the newsletter of the Law and Courts section of the American Political Science Association. He earned his bachelor's and Ph.D. at Brandeis University, where he was a founder of the Boris' Kitchen Sketch Comedy troupe, and his J.D. from New York University.

Prof. Lichtman is a professor of political science at Shippensburg University. He serves also as executive director of the New England Political Science Association, and he is the incoming president of the Northeast Association of Pre-Law Advisers. His visit to UMass Law was co-sponsored by the International Law Students Association, the Law & Political Economy student organization, and the Office of the Dean.