Olympic medalist, sports advocate to lecture March 3

Olympic gold medalist, scholar, and author Nancy Hogshead-Makar will discuss "Hurricane Warning Flags for Olympic Sports: What Recent Title IX Litigation Signals to Women's and Men's Olympic Sports" when she visits Skidmore Thursday, March 3. 

Free and open to the public, her talk is scheduled at 8 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium of Palamountain Hall.

Hogshead-Makar is one of the foremost exponents of gender equity in education,including sports participation, sexual harassment, employment, pregnancy, and legal enforcement under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Her book, co-written with Andrew Zimbalist, Equal Play, Title IX and Social Change, has received acclaim since its release by Temple University Press. She was the lead author of Pregnant and Parenting Student-Athletes; Resources and Model Policies, published by the NCAA. In 2009 she brought a successful legal challenge against the Florida High School Athletic Association whose cuts to competitive seasons discriminated against female athletes. In the settlement, the competitive seasons were restored for all high school athletes throughout Florida.

She has a 25-year history with the Women's Sports Foundation, starting as a college intern, becoming the third president from 1992-94, legal advisor from 2003-10, and serving currently as senior director of advocacy. Hogshead-Makar is a tenured professor of law at the Florida Coastal School of Law, where she teaches sports law courses. She earned her law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and is an honors graduate of Duke University.

Hogshead-Makar has testified in Congress numerous times on the topic of gender equity in athletics, written numerous articles, and has been a frequent guest on national news programs on the topic, including 60 Minutes, Fox News, CNN, ESPN, NPR and network morning news programming. She serves as an expert witness in Title IX cases and has written amicus briefs representing athletic organizations in precedent-setting litigation. In 2007 Sports Illustrated magazine listed her as one of the most influential people in the 35-year history of Title IX.

She has received significant awards recognizing her commitment to athletics, including induction into the Academic All-America Hall of Fame and the International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame, receipt of an honorary doctorate from Springfield College, membership in the Hall of Fame for the National Association for Sports and Physical Education, and receipt of the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletic Administrators' "Honor Award."

Hogshead-Makar capped eight years as a world-class swimmer at the 1984 Olympics, where she won three gold medals and one silver medal. She has been inducted into 11 halls of fame for her swimming accomplishments, including the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame and the International Swimming Hall of Fame. In 2000 Sports Illustrated ranked her as Florida's 13 ^th greatest athlete overall of the 20 ^th century (third greatest female).  

Her Skidmore visit is sponsored by the departments of American studies, economics, psychology, athletics, health and exercise sciences, and sociology, anthropology, and social work; as well as the First-Year Experience and Faculty Network Fund.