The Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education (KPE) recently hosted the inaugural Peter Donnelly Lecture in Sport Policy Studies to acknowledge and celebrate the legacy of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies (CSPS) and its founder, Professor Emeritus Peter Donnelly.
Donnelly established the centre in 1999 to initiate research, publication, colloquia and public interventions on the most pressing issues of Canadian and international sports. At the time, it was only the second centre of its kind in the world, the first being the Institute for the Study of Sport and Society at Northeastern University in Boston.
“The centre quickly became Peter’s own rendition of Marx’ famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach—'Hitherto, philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it’,” said Professor Emeritus Bruce Kidd, who currently serves as the University of Toronto (U of T) ombudsperson and is widely considered to be one of Canada’s premier historians and public intellectuals on the topic of sport and physical activity.
“Peter not only set out to study sport but to change it - through scholarship and policy reform that would help realize accessible and equitable sport for all, humane and healthy high-performance sport, and an educational mandate for sport in educational institutions, especially Canadian universities.”
When Donnelly stepped down from the centre in 2021, he was succeeded by Associate Professor Simon Darnell, a former student and now one of the leading experts in sport for development. It was Darnell’s idea to launch the lecture series with Parissa Safai, a professor of the School of Kinesiology and Health Sciences at York University and fellow KPE alumna, as keynote speaker.
Safai, whose research interests include the culture of risk in sports, the social, political and economic determinants of athletes’ and coaches’ health, and the social organization of sports and exercise medicine, spoke about the importance of removing obstacles to sport and physical activity.
As an example, she offered Donnelly’s argument for sport as part of the “cultural commons”, something that should not be controlled or in the hands of the privileged few.
“Protecting equitable and humane sport and physical activity as a social good and as part of our cultural commons matters,” said Safai. “And these are things that continue to be under threat, increasingly so, by privatization and commercialization.”
Reflecting on Donnelly’s leadership of the centre, Safai shared how the centre’s history of workshops, symposia, colloquia, roundtables and guest speakers were a central part of Donnelly’s commitment to bringing diverse people together to collectively discuss complex problems and possible solutions.
“This kind of bridge building, space opening and people gathering work doesn’t always translate into conventional metrics like publications or grants, but it is exactly the outreach to others and the gathering together of diverse peoples, perspectives, positionalities—especially with those outside of academia like community leaders, journalists, policymakers, practitioners, politicians and government relations experts—that needs intensification and amplification, now more than ever.”
Safai shared her fascination by what sport sociologists describe as the culture of risk - a culture in which tolerating pain and injury is routinely understood as a reflection of good, strong character. However, it’s the vulnerability of our bodies that’s central to our humanness and connection with one another, she said.
That vulnerability took centre stage during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There wasn’t a single neighbourhood in Toronto that avoided suffering altogether during the pandemic,” she said. “But certain individuals and groups—those who are already and often heavily dependent upon public sector supports and services such as publicly accessible community sport and physical activity—suffered more due to systemic and structural discrimination and inequity, and the lack of sensitive and effective public sector planning and programming committed to keeping spaces open for physical activity to the benefit of the largest number of people in the largest possible way.”
According to Safai, in order to keep sport and physical activity as a social good, collective action is needed and that means avoiding operating in silos, but rather being in conversation with others seeking to redress other inequalities, like housing and food insecurity.
“Engaging various publics, to use Peter's expression, means engaging not just those equity-denied individuals and communities who need our platforms and help in getting their voices and perspectives amplified and heard, but engaging the gatekeepers and the existing decision makers who need to hear those voices and perspectives.”
That is exactly the kind of work the centre is committed to doing.
“The longstanding mission of the centre is to conduct critical and empirical research into sports and physical activity and to use this research to make policy recommendations in the service of making sports accessible, equitable and healthy,” said Darnell.
“The centre and Peter’s work have long held a commitment to public sociology, to bringing our work into the community and into public conversations, and this lecture series is part of our ongoing commitment to that mandate.”