LSC Lecture Series | Victoria Harms (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore) The Games that Made a President: The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles & Ronald Reagan’s America

This talk is part of the LSC Lecture Series on Sport, Politics, Conflict, which is organized by the Leibniz ScienceCampus Europe and America in the Modern World. The talks are open to all staff at UR and IOS, as well as the general public. UR students can sign up for the course and receive credits.

Lecture hall H5 is in the lower Central Lecture Theatre Building (Zentrales Hörsaalgebäude - ZH) located near the Audimax. UR Campus-Plan 

Abstract | On August 23, 1984, President Ronald Reagan accepted his party’s renomination for president. Interlaced with “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” chants, the incumbent, who had entered the election year with an approval rating of only 30%, spent one-third of his speech reminiscing about that year’s Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. In his retelling, the Games had showcased America’s exceptionalism, capitalism’s endless opportunities, and the realization of his 1980 campaign promise: to make America great again.

With the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles approaching, this presentation revisits the meaning of LA84 for Ronald Reagan’s presidency. It discusses the ways in which the Games shaped American perceptions of their country and its place in the world. Archival research in the Reagan Presidential Library, the LA84 Foundation, UCLA Special Collection, and in relevant national newspapers illustrates how Reagan used the Olympics to portray himself as a man of world peace, an advocate for women and a champion of diversity. While many West Europeans chafed at Reagan’s Cold War rhetoric and his policies, this presentation discusses how, after a difficult first term, decade-long domestic discord and economic woes, the Games helped propel him by November 1984 to one of the most stunning electoral victories in U.S. history. 

Bio |Victoria Harms is an associate teaching professor in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University, where she offers classes on European and US history since 1945. She is currently working on a monograph about the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. She co-curated the record-breaking exhibition ‘Revolution in Our Lifetime’: The Black Panther Party and Political Organizing in Baltimore, 1968-1974. Her first book, The Making of Dissidents: The Hungarian Democratic Opposition and Its Western Friends, 1973-1998, was published in 2024. Transform Midatlantic, a non-profit association of over 30 institutions of higher education, awarded Dr. Harms the 2024 Alan G. Penczek Community Service-Learning Faculty Award for her work with public schools, local museums, and former civil rights activists. She holds a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, a MA degree from the Central European University, Budapest, and a B.A. from the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).