Richard E. Lapchick
Founder / Director Emeritus
(407) 823-4770

Human rights activist, pioneer for racial equality, internationally recognized expert on sports issues, scholar and author Richard E. Lapchick is often described as "the racial conscience of sport."

Lapchick is the founder and director emeritus of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society.

DeVos Sports Business Managment / Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport

He brought his commitment to equality and his belief that sport can be an effective instrument of positive social change to University of Central Florida where he accepted an endowed chair in August 2001. Lapchick became the only person named as "One of the 100 Most Powerful People in Sport" to head up a sport management program. The DeVos Sport Business Management Program at UCF is a landmark program that focuses on the business skills necessary for graduates to conduct a successful career in the rapidly changing and dynamic sports industry.

In following with Lapchick's tradition of human rights activism, the curriculum includes courses with an emphases on diversity, community service and philanthropy, sport and social issues and ethics in addition to UCF's strong business curriculum. The Program launched the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport in December 2002. The Institute focuses on two broad areas.

Additionally, the Institute will conduct studies on racial attitudes in sport and will hold a biannual National Conference to address diversity issues in sport. In the area of ethics, the Institute will monitor some of the critical ethical issues in college and professional sport, including the potential for the exploitation of student-athletes, gambling, performance-enhancing drugs and violence in sport.

The Institute will publish annual studies on graduation rates for all teams in college football bowl games, comparing graduation rates for football players to rates for over-all student-athletes and including a breakdown by race. The Institute will also publish the graduation rates of the Final 16 womenÕs and menÕs basketball teams as March Madness heats up.

Finally, the Institute will publish a Bottom 50 list of the 50 schools with the worst graduation rates for student-athletes in general and African-American student-athletes in particular, in men's and women's college basketball, men's and women's track and field, and college football.

Racial & Gender Report Card

In the area of Diversity, the Institute will now publish the critically acclaimed Racial and Gender Report Card, long-authored by Lapchick in his former role as director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University. The Report Card, an annual study of the racial and gender hiring practices of major professional sports, Olympic sport and college sport in the United States, shows long-term trends over a decade and highlights organizations that are notable for diversity in coaching and management staffs.

National Consortium for Academics and Sports

In another diversity initiative, the Institute is partnering with the National Consortium for Academics and Sports to provide diversity management training to sports organizations, including athletic departments and professional leagues and teams. The Consortium has already conducted such training for the NBA, Major League Soccer and more than 80 athletic departments.

Center for the Study of Sport in Society
Lapchick helped found the Center for the Study of Sport in Society in 1984 at Northeastern University. He served as Director for 17 years and is now the Director Emeritus. Sport in Society has attracted national attention to its pioneering efforts to ensure the education of athletes from junior high school through the professional ranks. Sport in Society Project TEAMWORK was called "America's most successful violence prevention program" by public opinion analyst Lou Harris. It won the Peter F. Drucker Foundation Award as the nation's most innovative non-profit program and was named by the Clinton Administration as a model for violence prevention.

Sport in Society Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) program, a gender violence prevention program, has been so successful with college and high school athletes that the United States Marine Corps adopted it in 1997.

Athletes in Service to America, funded by AmeriCorps, combines the efforts of Project TEAMWORK and MVP in five cities across the nation.

Sport in Society helped form the National Consortium for Academics and Sports (NCAS), a group of over 215 colleges and universities that have adopted Sport in Society's programs. To date, more than 22,000 athletes have come back to NCAS schools. More than 9,000 have graduated. Nationally, the NCAS athletes have worked with more than 10 million students in the school outreach program, which focuses on teaching youth how to improve race relations, develop conflict resolution skills, prevent gender violence and avoid drug and alcohol abuse. They have collectively donated more than 11 million hours of service. Richard Lapchick serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of NCAS.

Previous Experience

Lapchick was the American leader of the international campaign to boycott South Africa in sport for more than 20 years. In 1993, Sport in Society launched TEAMWORK-South Africa, a program designed to use sports to help improve race relations and help with sports development in post-apartheid South Africa. He was among the 200 guests specially invited by Nelson Mandela to his inauguration.

Author

Lapchick is a prolific writer. His tenth book was published in November 2001 with a foreword by Muhammad Ali. He is now working on three books which are all scheduled for publication in the summer of 2004. Lapchick is a regular columnist for The Sports Business Journal. He has written more than 450 articles and has given more than 2,600 public speeches.

CLICK HERE to go to Richard's Article Index.

Media Appearances

Considered among the nation's experts on sports issues, Lapchick has appeared numerous times on Nightline, Good Morning America, Face The Nation, The Today Show, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, the CBS Evening News, CNN and ESPN.

Consultant

Lapchick also consults with companies as an expert on both managing diversity and building community relations through service programs addressing the social needs of youth. He has a special expertise on Africa and South Africa. He has made 30 trips to Africa and African Studies was at the core of his Ph.D. work.

Before Northeastern, he was an Associate Professor of Political Science at Virginia Wesleyan College from 1970-1978 and a Senior Liaison Officer at the United Nations between 1978-1984.

Awards

• Inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame of the Commonwealth Governments,
  Humanitarian Category, Fellow Inductees: Nelson Mandela and Arthur Ashe.
• 2000 - Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University
• 1999 - Boston Celtics "Hero Among Us Award"
• 1998 - Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez Fellow by the State of Michigan
• 1997 - "Arthur Ashe Voice of Conscience Award" by the Aetna Foundation
• 1997 - Women's Sports Foundation President's Award for work toward the development of women's sports
• 1997 - Boston Celtics "Man of the Year"
• 1995 - National Association of Elementary School Principals "Distinguished American in Service of Our Children"
• 1979 - Ralph Bunche International Peace Award
• He was a guest of President Clinton at the White House for National Student-Athlete Day (NSAD) in 1996, 1997, 1998 and again in 1999.

He is listed in Who's Who in American Education, Who's Who in Finance and Industry, and Who's Who in American Business. He was named for six consecutive years as "one of the 100 most powerful people in sport."

He is widely known for bringing different racial groups together to create positive work force environments. Lapchick has received 7 honorary degrees.

Board Member

• Wings of America
• National Conference for Community and Justice
• SchoolSports
• Team Harmony Foundation
• Eddie Robinson Fondation
• Black Coaches Association
• Advisory Board of the WomenÕs Sports Foundation
  

Eduaction

Lapchick received a B.A. from St. John's University in 1967 and an honorary degree from St. John's in 2001.

In 1993, he was named as the outstanding alumnus at the University of Denver where he got his Ph.D. in international race relations in 1973.

Personal

Richard is the son of Joe Lapchick, the famous Original Celtic center who became a legendary coach for St. John's and the Knicks. He is married to Ann Pasnak and has three children and one grandchild.