Crusading in the Media:Reflections on a Medievalist's Role in Public Debate Lindsay Diggelmann (bio) One of the unintended consequences of the Christchurch mosque attacks of 15 March 2019 has been the spotlight shone upon the most prominent local sports franchise, the Canterbury Crusaders Super Rugby team. The organization has been by far the most successful in the history of the competition. In recent years some observers, including myself, have questioned the appropriateness of 'Crusaders' as a name, given the overtones of warfare based on what might be considered religious bigotry aimed mostly at Muslims, and a level of zealotry more frequently associated in popular culture with Islamic extremism. Unease was only exacerbated by the overt shows of militaristic imagery employed at home games, with armoured men on horseback, weapons aloft and crusading crosses prominently displayed, riding along the sidelines to excite the crowd's enthusiasm. Since the attacks, in which an alleged fanatical white supremacist targeted a peaceful Muslim community, the team's name and its associated symbolism have suddenly appeared wholly out of tune with changed circumstances and the prevailing mood and have generated much wider public debate. In this new world brought on by a horrific act of violence, I have found myself as a medievalist with an interest in the Crusades to be in demand as a media commentator. It helps that I am also a sports fan and can speak with knowledge of the Crusaders' achievements and their revered place in the sporting culture of Christchurch and the South Island region they represent. To give the franchise its due, their leadership has mostly struck the right tone with comments on inclusiveness and sensitivity, although their claims that in their definition a crusader is 'somebody who is doing something for good, galvanising the community for good and trying to do good things' sounded less convincing.1 The sideline show was quickly withdrawn and the New Zealand Rugby Union, which drove the original process to select franchise names, has promised to review the use of the 'Crusaders' brand. I was first contacted by sports reporters for comment on the significance of the crusading imagery and terminology. As the debate widened it moved, as did I, from the sports pages to mainstream political sites, including those of Radio New [End Page 183] Zealand and Television New Zealand.2 All of this has prompted me to reflect on the nature of our interaction, as scholars and medievalists, with broader perceptions of the past at those moments when our expertise is called upon. Our contributions to public debate in the age of Twitter and declining attention spans must be adapted to the context in which they appear. This is certainly true of aural or visual media—as I have found, a forty-minute interview can end up as three of four minutes of disconnected sentences after editorial intervention—but applies equally to written work as it is digested and disseminated. We cannot control aspects of the process and therefore we need to be prepared to speak in soundbites when the occasion requires it—intelligent, reasoned soundbites, to be sure, but nonetheless snippets brief enough to have an impact within the medium in which they are delivered, and to be memorable. For example, in discussing why it is important to reconsider the Crusaders' brand, I have tried repeatedly to emphasize the central idea that 'history' can change as our own world changes; in other words that our view of the past is formed in part by our own circumstances and priorities. For those of us who are scholars trained in postmodern thought and discourse analysis this seems self-evident; for the wider public it is not. To draw a parallel to recent events in Christchurch, the influence of changing circumstances and frames of reference has been evident in both popular and academic histories of the Middle Ages since the September 11 attacks. The crusades have been especially amenable to reinterpretation and therefore it is incumbent upon us as commentators to guide and shape the public perception of them to the extent that we can. As Giles Constable has noted, '[m]ore perhaps than any other phenomenon of European history, the...