Jules Boykoff (born September 11, 1970) is an American academic, author, and former professional soccer player. His research focuses on the politics of the Olympic Games, social movements, the suppression of dissent, and the role of the mass media in US politics, especially regarding coverage of climate change issues. Boykoff has written six books on the Olympic Games. His work has been featured in Al Jazeera, Jacobin and The Guardian among other publications. He has written the book, NOlympians: Inside the Fight Against Capitalist Mega-Sports in Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beyond.

Life and work

Soccer career

At the age of 19, he played for the United States men's national under-23 soccer team in the 1990 Toulon Tournament. Boykoff played two years for the University of Wisconsin before crossing to the University of Portland. After graduating he was drafted in 1993 by indoor soccer team Portland Pride of the now folded Continental Indoor Soccer League. He also played in the now defunct National Professional Soccer League with team Milwaukee Wave. In all he played four seasons of indoor professional soccer.

Academic career

Boykoff is a professor of Politics and Government at Pacific University, Oregon. He was also a visiting professor at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington during the 2004–05 school year. Topics taught by Boykoff include US politics, the politics of surveillance, mass-media and politics, and the politics of literature and poetry. In November 2006, he spoke at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Kenya, "COP 12". In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore mentioned work Boykoff co-authored with his brother Maxwell Boykoff (Oxford University, Environmental Change Institute) on US media coverage of global warming. Boykoff is also co-editor of The Tangent, a politics and art zine, and runs The Tangent Reading Series in Portland, Oregon. Al Jazeera, New Left Review, the Jacobin and the Guardian have featured his articles. In a shared article with Dave Zirin, Boykoff has defended anti zionist left wing protests against Israel during the Israel-Hamas war as well as the use of the phrase "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free". In the article they wrote that liberal media was promoting Israel's "Big lie" on the war. The two also accused Israel of having weaponized the holocaust for decades. They contended the left wing protests were not antisemitic.

Critique of the Olympic Games

Boykoff lived in London in the lead-up to and during the 2012 Summer Olympics and in Rio de Janeiro as a Fulbright scholar during preparations for the 2016 Summer Olympics. In July 2019 he interviewed two women in Tokyo who were displaced by the 1964 Summer Olympics and the 2020 Summer Olympics.

Books

Nonfiction

Poetry