Coors forum to explore assault, corruption in college athletics

Two nationally known scholars will explore “The Future of Division 1 College Athletics: Sexual Assault and Academic Corruption” as part of the 2021 Peter ’69 and Marilyn ’69 Coors Conversation Series.

The Oct. 28 forum will feature George F. Will, columnist at the Washington Post, and Martha C. Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago. The conversation will be moderated by Michael Huyghue, visiting professor of the practice at Cornell Law School, who specializes in sports law.

George Will

The series, which launched in fall 2019, brings together speakers with diverse political viewpoints and provides the Ithaca campus community with a forum for intellectual discourse on difficult yet timely issues facing the nation.

Martha C. Nussbaum

The hybrid event is free and open to students, faculty and staff. The event is scheduled to take place at Landis Auditorium, 184 Myron Taylor Hall, Cornell Law School, from 5:30 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. The forum will be livestreamed and later posted on CornellCast.

A limited number of in-person seats are available to members of the Cornell community. To reserve a general admission ticket, email law-events@cornell.edu; a valid Cornell ID will be required for entry.

Faculty, students and staff can also attend virtually. Register for the event; Cornell NetID is required.

Will’s widely read newspaper column has been syndicated by the Washington Post since 1974. It appears twice weekly in approximately 500 newspapers in the U.S. and in Europe. He also serves as a contributor for MSNBC and NBC News. In 1977, he won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his newspaper columns.

He has also written extensively on baseball, including “A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred” (2014). Will was educated at Trinity College in Connecticut, Oxford University and Princeton University, where he earned his doctorate.

Nussbaum, a philosopher, has associate appointments at the University of Chicago’s Classics and Political Science departments and Divinity School.

She has served as co-president of the American Philosophical Association and chaired its committees on international cooperation, the status of women and public philosophy.

Among her awards are the Don M. Randel Prize for Achievement in the Humanities from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2018). Her many books include “Citadels of Pride: Sexual Abuse, Accountability, and Reconciliation” (2021). Nussbaum earned a bachelor’s degree from New York University and master’s and doctorate degrees from Harvard University.

The Cornell Political Union will host an open discussion following the event.