Ambassador Derek Shearer came to Occidental College’s campus on November 6th, 2025 to present a talk on sports diplomacy drawing on insights from his article “To Play Ball, Not Make War” published in the Harvard International Review in 2014. He is a former practicing sports diplomat, and the Director of the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs at Oxy.
Sports as an avenue for diplomacy has a long international history, with Ambassador Shearer citing the “ping-pong diplomacy between the US and the People’s Republic of China in 1971” as a famous example to begin his talk. He explained how this initiative from the Chinese government was the first time that American diplomats had been invited to mainland China in two decades. The sporting event helped to normalize relations and foster a new era of United States-China communication.
According to Ambassador Shearer, there are several reasons why sports diplomacy is important for countries to pursue: breaking the ice, raising a national profile, and selling a national brand. To address the first point, he cited the success of “ping-pong diplomacy”, while elaborating that other attempts to use sports as a form of breaking tensions have not been as successful. For example, Ambassador Shearer spoke about how Babe Ruth and other American baseball players’ goodwill tour in Japan in 1934 did not prevent war from breaking out between the two nations.
To address the idea of sports raising a national profile, Ambassador Shearer spoke to the actions of countries and the individuals that represent them. When Japan hosted the 1964 Olympics, the nation used it as a chance to display their power after the devastation of World War II; similarly, hosting the Olympics again in 2021 after a recession and tsunami was a way to signal to other nations that Japan was able to rebuild its strength. Japanese baseball players have also been commanding international influence in the American Major League Baseball, most recently with Shohei Ohtani playing for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In terms of how sports can help sell a national brand, Ambassador Shearer pointed to the role of female collegiate athletes in the United States: “what started out as a women’s movement on college campuses for women’s rights grew into the global movement of women in sports”. America has embedded the idea of women’s rights in college sports to the American brand as female athletes from around the world apply to college in the United States because they see their performance as valued.
Ambassador Shearer also spoke to the importance of sports diplomacy moving forward, with milestone events like the World Cup in 2026 and the summer Olympic Games in 2028 both being held in Los Angeles. “The terrain for sport is driven by media and commerce”, and Ambassador Shearer highlighted how these two large sporting events with international participation can offer a great scope for the soft power of future sports diplomacy.