Summary: In this episode, I talk to University of Minnesota Professor and Editor-In-Chief of TheSocietyPages Douglas Hartmann [1] about his book Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy [2]. This conversation focuses on a 1990s crime initiative, known as midnight basketball [3], which aimed to curb crime by setting up late night basketball leagues in inner cities. While initially popular with democrats and republicans , including president George H. W. Bush, the program would eventually fall, being attacked by right-wing politicians and radio hosts alike, but it left behind a complex history with many implications for sports, race, and social policy today. Download Office Hours #126 [4] [1] https://cla.umn.edu/about/directory/profile/hartm021 [2] http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo23670359.html [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_basketball [4] http://files.thesocietypages.org/downloads/OH126_Hartmann.mp3
