Today, the Newseum announced that Cultural Icon, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, retired professional basketball player for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers, will be presenting Dr. John Carlos and Dr. Tommie C. Smith with their 2018 Free Expression Awards on April 17, 2018. When American Olympians Carlos and Smith bowed their heads and raised their fists on the medal stand …
Read MoreKareem Abdul-Jabbar, Derek Hough Come to Cleveland State University for AHA! Festival
The Arts and Humanities Alive Festival is back for the second straight year at Cleveland State University this June. And once again, CSU is partnering with Playhouse Square to celebrate dance, art, music, books and theater. Featured guests for this years AHA! Festival are literally and physically big. The six-time NBA champion and author, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar talks about his book Becoming …
Read MoreKareem Abdul-Jabbar Reviews New Book ‘Bachelor Nation’ (and “Emotional Harassment” on a Hit Show) (BOOK REVIEW)
The NBA Hall of Famer and Hollywood Reporter columnist is a fan of ‘The Bachelor’ franchise, but he laments the recent Arie debacle and responds to a new tell-all expose with a classic Jonathan Swift quote: “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.” The Bachelor shows are basically a sugary-sweet confection of …
Read MoreKareem Abdul-Jabbar: Why Hollywood Activism Failed at the Oscars
1:11 PM PST 3/7/2018 by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar The THR columnist and NBA legend liked Frances McDormand’s “firecracker” speech and the “heartfelt presentation” on Time’s Up, but for the most part, he writes, it was “#OscarsSoLite.” Based on all the outraged rhetoric and impassioned chest-thumping from women and men in the film industry leading up to the Oscars, this year’s Academy Awards broadcast …
Read MoreLife Lessons from NBA Champion Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
By Matt Wilson (Listen to the full interview on the Live Different Podcast.) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shares imporant life lessons including how to find great mentors and coaches. He is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, a six-time NBA champion and the league’s only 6x MVP. Kareem is one of a handful of influential and respected black men in America who has a national …
Read MoreKareem Abdul-Jabbar on Race and Redemption in ‘Three Billboards’
Focusing on how the Oscar-nominated movie trivializes racist police brutality misses its bigger message, writes the NBA legend and THR cultural critic. [This story contains spoilers for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.] Despite four Golden Globe wins and seven Oscar nominations, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri asks a lot of its audience. It wants us to forgive the unforgivable. To feel compassion for …
Read MoreKareem Abdul-Jabbar Travels from Court to Classroom to Highlight History of African-American Inventors
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Travels from Court to Classroom to Highlight History of African-American Inventors The NBA all-star says he hopes young students realize the power and influence they can achieve in STEM-related fields By Sam Spengler SMITHSONIAN.COM FEBRUARY 16, 2018 Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wants kids to stop looking up to basketball legends. The 19-time NBA All-Star believes we should introduce them to lesser …
Read MoreKareem Abdul-Jabbar on ‘Black Panther’: All This Fuss Over a Superhero Movie?
Director Ryan Coogler sits down with the NBA legend and cultural critic to assess the film’s significance: “It’s a little like witnessing the unveiling of an enormous statue on the public square — with the public square being the world — of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Nelson Mandela dressed in bright dashikis,” writes Abdul-Jabbar. At …
Read MoreKareem Abdul-Jabbar: The Olympics Are More Relevant in This Time of Tyrants
The NBA Hall of Famer and THR contributor believes Winter Games athletes should embrace making political statements in the Trump era. As the Winter Olympics in South Korea approach, many have started to ask whether the Olympics are culturally relevant anymore or are just an archaic expression of nationalistic chest-beating. The Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia made $53 million in …
Read MoreKareem Abdul-Jabbar: Why the NFL player protests still matter
Football is the perfect public platform for discussing racial disparity, no matter how convincingly sappy patriotic songs and inaccurate textbooks proclaim equality has been achieved Richard Pryor once joked about the relationship African-Americans have with the American judicial system, “If you go down there looking for justice, that’s what you find: just us.” Not much has changed in 50 years. …
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Abdul-Jabbar, Smiley, Chopra to headline annual writer’s symposium
By John Wilkens Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jane Smiley and basketball legend-turned-author Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will be among the featured guests at the annual Writer’s Symposium by the Sea at Point Loma Nazarene University in February. The lineup also includes Krista Tippett, author of the best seller “Becoming Wise” and Peabody Award-winning host of the public radio show/podcast “On Being,” and Deepak …
Read MoreKareem Abdul-Jabbar: This Season’s Bachelor Is Out of Step in the #MeToo Era
by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar The THR columnist and NBA Hall of Famer says season 22’s return to a vapid, out-of-date masculinity is a disappointment after the show moved forward last year with the first African-American Bachelorette. In pop culture, everything is about timing. It’s about riding the treacherous current of the zeitgeist without wiping out on the rocks of outdated irrelevance, strewn …
Read MoreKareem on Hollywood & Politics: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: ‘The Big Sick’ and Hollywood’s Muslim-American Renaissance
The NBA Hall of Famer and THR columnist, a practitioner of Islam since college, is hopeful that the Kumail Nanjiani starrer and Aziz Ansari’s ‘Master of None’ are bringing an end to portrayals of the devoted as “rabid, merciless terrorists” onscreen. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” an apple farmer observes in the opening to Robert Frost’s Mending …
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