Jules Boykoff

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 and two on soccer. His writing has been published in Al Jazeera, Jacobin, The Nation, The New York Times, and The Guardian, among many other venues. He is a frequent commentator and has appeared on CNN, Democracy Now! and The World, among many other outlets.

Life and work

Soccer career

At the age of 19, Boykoff played for the United States men's national under-23 soccer team in the 1990 Toulon Tournament. He 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 2004–2005 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 (University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Environmental Studies) on US media coverage of global warming.

In an article co-authored with Dave Zirin, Boykoff defended anti-zionist left-wing protests against Israel during the Gaza 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.

Critique of the Olympic Games and the World Cup 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.

He released his book Red Card: The 2026 World Cup, Sportswashing, and the FIFA Greed Machine in June 2026, amidst the 2026 FIFA World Cup.