Twenty or so years ago, I had the privilege of being part of a two-year post-graduate fellowship in Jewish studies. It was there that I first learned at length about the concept of “sacred space.”
As human beings, we can make very different kinds of places and things “sacred.” A place can be religiously interpreted, such as a mountain or a river. Something can be built, like a temple, a church, a mosque.
In Jewish tradition, a bride and groom meet under what is called a chuppah — a sacred space, a Jewish home, constructed only by four poles and a cloth canopy, often topped with flowers, open on all four sides, replete with symbolism, the structure temporary and yet fit for a lifetime of memories.
There are three key players under the chuppah. It would be unthinkable for the rabbi to drop to one knee and start pontificating about Israel’s land-use policies in the West Bank, wouldn’t it?
I’m no expert about church but I know enough to know that while in many spaces it often can be joyful in others it can be still and solemn. The space is a sanctuary. It’s a place for a certain kind of speech. Not any and all speech.
This, for those who think it through, is the lesson to divine from the International Olympic Committee’s announcements this week about Rule 50 — first from its athletes’ commission and then its policy-making executive board — and the equally predictable responses from certain quarters about various universal “human rights.”
From left, the podium at the Rio 2016 Games men’s under-73 class in judo: Azerbaijan's Rustam Orujov (silver), Japan's Shohei Ono (gold), Georgia's Lasha Shavdatuashvili (bronze) and Belgium's Dirk van Tichelt (bronze) // photo Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
From PyeongChang 2018, the women’s ski jump normal hill podium — left ro right, Germany's silver medallist Katharina Althaus, Norway's gold medallist Maren Lundby and Japan's bronze medallist Sara Takanashi // photo Kirill Kudryatsev/AFP via Getty Images)
First, the IOC is 110 percent correct to declare that all speech is not free.
Get on your high horse all you want and say free speech is a universal human right.
Sure.
As the IOC makes plain — see pages 36 and 37 for those of you who bothered to read the document that attended the Rule 50 report — it is well aware that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says we all, all of us human beings, have the right to freedom of expression.
It can’t be any plainer than that.
For the lawyers among us, that standard is codified in Article 19 of a binding charter called the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. See sections 2 and 3. The United Nations adopted it in 1976. It essentially includes all the nations of the world except for China and Cuba.
But.
There’s always a but.
The classic American way of teaching this is that you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater. That’s unsafe. So we have laws — you can’t do that.
In much the same spirit, the European, American and African Conventions on Human Rights have recognized that freedom of speech can be limited, in one of three contexts — 1/ by law, 2/ where “necessary and proportionate” or 3/ to “achieve a legitimate objective.”
The IOC is not a nation-state. It can’t write a law. But it can write a rule. That is Rule 50.
Over time, cases have established that it’s OK to restrict freedom of expression to protect an institution’s political neutrality. The thrust of Rule 50, as it relates to the podium — which is what anyone cares about, really — is that, as the report says, “the focus of the Games remains on celebrating sport, Olympic values and athletes’ performance.”
Not politics.
Which, in this context, means no one has to choose one cause over another or be put in the delicate position of having to take a public position on a topic on which they may — or may not — wish to publicly express views.
Nobody is saying the IOC isn’t political. Of course, it is. Even IOC president Thomas Bach has said so. He made that perfectly plain in 2014, in a landmark speech in South Korea. This is not — repeat, not — Avery Brundage and the IOC in 1936 or 1952.
No.
This is “political neutrality” defined in a specific context.
Here’s the thing.
Those who have already sought to belittle the IOC report have pointed out that the survey it points to, one the IOC commissioned, shows that athletes from Russia and China, in particular, don’t want changes to the podium rules.
As if that proves that we in the west are somehow superior.
That’s completely and thoroughly obnoxious.
That presumes that athletes from those nations are engaged in groupthink.
If you have evidence that proves that point on this particular matter, bring it.
Otherwise, it’s the worst sort of malicious stereotyping — ascribing traits or behaviors to a person or people simply because of who they are, where they’re from or what they look like.
A far better approach would be to listen to those elsewhere, even — especially — from China, Russia, South Africa, wherever. The whole point of an Olympic Games is to bring athletes from around the world together to break down barriers and realize that we are more alike as human beings than we are different.
Athletes are always asking for input in the Olympic process.
Here they got input — first time ever they were seriously asked for their opinion about whether there should be changes to the no-protests-on-the-podium rules, with 3,547 “Olympians and elite athletes,” representing 185 different national Olympic committees and 41 sports, responding.
Countries with more than 100 respondents included China (14% of the 3,457 total); the United States (7%); Japan (6%); France (5%); Germany, Canada and Britain (4%), and Australia (3%). The sports yielding the most participants: swimming and track and field, both at 12%, followed by ski and snowboard, 8%.
Average of the respondent: 33.
From this worldwide survey, the places least deemed acceptable to express opinion: podium (16%), field of play (14%), opening ceremony (14%).
Then critics don’t like the input.
Can’t win.
How about this instead?
An overwhelming majority of athletes say they recognize the podium is sacred space.
Another fraught problem with podium expressions is that we live in the real world, where reactions are likely to be both predictable and certainly not.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos weren’t just up there by themselves, and this is the enduring personal and institutional tragedy of the iconic photo from 1968.
Almost no one remembers who finished second in that race. Who the Australian guy is on the podium with them. And what, shamefully, happened to him in the years after.
Look up the story of Peter Norman. How he was made into a pariah. How any apologies came too late — after he died.
Peter Norman, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, 1968 Mexico City // Getty Images
More:
Those aiming to undercut the IOC athlete commission report have sought to suggest that any survey it commissioned is per se untrustworthy. OK, by that measure the work the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee’s Council on Racial and Social Justice, which prompted the USOPC in December to announce a no-sanction policy — there’s a good argument that they are the few talking for the many.
Who is on this council? An “athlete-led group” of “over 40 Team USA athletes, alumni, national governing body (NGB) representatives and industry thought leaders.”
A typical U.S. Summer Olympic team is close to 600 athletes.
“Prohibiting athletes to freely express their views in the Games, particularly those from historically underrepresented and minoritized groups, contributes to the dehumanization of athletes that is at odds with key Olympic and Paralympic values,” the council said in its December statement.
That is fake news. That is trying to fashion a narrative out of whole cloth.
No one is being silenced. Not even remotely.
Our world, our nation, is replete with manifest injustice — racial, social and beyond. Speak up. Please. Athletes have at hand any number of ways and means to do so.
In the same spirit as the quote above, meanwhile, the USOPC athletes’ advisory council issued a statement Thursday that said it will “continue to advocate for policies that support athletes’ human rights and the right to freely express their views at the Games.”
They have those rights!
Speak. Express yourself:
On social media … at news conferences … in mixed zones, where athletes mingle with the media.
At team meetings.
In non-Olympic venues at a Games, there are no restrictions — none — except for those that apply under local law.
“Until the IOC changes its approach of feeding the myth of the neutrality of sport or protecting the status quo, the voices of marginalized athletes will continue to be silenced,” the AAC also declared.
Again, fake news. No one is being silenced.
There is ample opportunity to say whatever anyone wants to say.
But, as always, it’s a question of when and where you say it.
This is why — as the USOPC has recognized — the rules are different, very different, inside these United States, at competitions overseen by the USOPC.
If athletes want to protest on the podium at the Trials that are upcoming — have at it.
When it’s your house, you get to make your own rules.
When you are somewhere else — in this case, Tokyo 2020 or Beijing 2022 — you behave differently.
Or, in a different but on-point context:
At a wedding.
In church. (Or temple. Or the mosque.)
On the podium.
Our world has many, many problems. An Olympic Games podium offers us, all of us, a moment in time, to celebrate humanity in all its diversity and richness.
That is a sacred and beautiful thing.
Which is worth keeping.
As it is.