The Sheen Center
18 Bleecker St., New York, NY 10012

Doors Open: 5:45 PM
Program Begins: 6:00 PM
Reception to Follow

Tickets must be reserved in advance

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein

For the affirmative:

Eliza Sweren-Becker serves as counsel in the Voting Rights & Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. She litigates voting rights cases, counsels lawmakers and election administrators on voting legislation and policy, researches voting law trends, and comments on voting issues in a variety of media outlets. Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Eliza was a litigation associate in private practice. Eliza previously served as a Ford Foundation Fellow in the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, and as a law clerk in federal district court in California.

For the negative:

Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law, and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
As manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative, von Spakovsky also studies and writes about campaign finance restrictions, voter fraud and voter ID, enforcement of federal voting rights laws, administration of elections and voting equipment standards. President Donald Trump appointed von Spakovsky to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in 2017.

Peter Jay Sharp Theatre at Symphony Space
2537 Broadway, New York, NY 10025

Event starts at 5:00 PM
Doors open at 5:30 PM
Meeting convenes: 6:30 PM

Tickets must be reserved in advance.

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

*PLEASE NOTE: a negative covid test OR proof of vaccination are required to attend*

• If you are fully vaccinated, you will need to bring a valid photo ID (Driver’s License, State ID, Passport, Student ID, or NYCID) and proof of full vaccination with the Excelsior Pass, your vaccination card, or a digital photo of your vaccination card.

• Masks are optional for fully vaccinated individuals.

• If you are not vaccinated, you will need to bring a valid photo ID (Driver’s License, State ID, Passport, Student ID, or NYCID) and proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test result (PCR/NAAT within 72 hours or antigen within 6 hour prior to admission.)

• Masks are required for all unvaccinated individuals.

For the affirmative:

William (“Bill”) Kristol was the founder and editor-at-large of the political magazine The Weekly Standard, published from 1995 through 2018. He’s known for advocating for the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has since become a prominent critic of President Trump. Bill was chairman of the New Citizenship Project from 1997 to 2005. In 1997, he co-founded the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) with Robert Kagan. He's a member of the board of trustees for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a member of the Policy Advisory Board for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and a director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.

For the negative:

Scott Horton is the author of the book Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan, managing director of the Libertarian Institute, host of Antiwar Radio for Pacifica Radio's KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and KUCR in Riverside, California, and the foreign policy interview podcast, The Scott Horton Show. Horton conducts interviews with journalists, politicians, pundits, lawyers and experts on foreign policy and war-time law. Horton has recorded more than 5,000 interviews since 2003. Scott is also the editorial director of the libertarian, non-interventionist website Antiwar.com. He’s made numerous appearances on other podcasts, including “The Tom Woods Show.”

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein

For the affirmative:

Jeffrey A. Singer is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He is principal and founder of Valley Surgical Clinics, Ltd., Arizona’s largest and oldest group private surgical practice. He was a regular contributor to Arizona Medicine, the journal of the Arizona Medical Association from 1994-2016. He served on the Advisory Board Council of the Center for Political Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University (2014-2018) and is an adjunct instructor in the Program on Political History and Leadership at ASU. He writes and speaks extensively on regional and national public policy, with a focus on health care policy and the harmful effects of drug prohibition. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed scientific medical journals as well as major national and regional journals and periodicals. He received a B.A. from Brooklyn College, an M.D. from New York Medical College, and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

For the negative:

Sam Quinones is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist and author of three books of narrative nonfiction. His latest book is Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Bloomsbury, 2015), for which he traveled across the United States. Dreamland won a National Book Critics Circle award for the Best Nonfiction Book of 2015. It was also selected as one of the Best Books of 2015 by Amazon.com, Slate.com, the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Seattle Times, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Entertainment Weekly, Audible, and in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Business. Quinones is currently working on a follow up to Dreamland. He is formerly a reporter with the L.A. Times, where he worked for 10 years (2004-2014). He is a veteran reporter on immigration, gangs, drug trafficking, and the border.

*This debate is co-sponsored by The Libertarian Christian Institute, a non-profit whose mission is to equip Christians to make the Christian case for a free society and to help libertarians reach more Christians with the message of liberty.

For the affirmative:

Robert P. Murphy is Senior Fellow with the Mises Institute. He has a PhD in economics from NYU. Murphy is also Senior Economist with the Institute for Energy Research (IER), Senior Fellow with the Fraser Institute, and Research Fellow with the Independent Institute. He has authored hundreds of articles and several books explaining economics to the layperson, including Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action. He hosts the podcast "The Bob Murphy Show" and, with Tom Woods, co-hosts the podcast, "Contra Krugman."

For the negative:

Reverend Dr. Anthony Campolo is professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania and previously served for ten years on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. He currently serves as an associate pastor at his home church of over sixty years, Mount Carmel Baptist Church, in West Philadelphia. Dr. Campolo has co-founded and provided leadership to the progressive Christian movement, Red Letter Christians, as well as, the Campolo Center for Ministry, a program that provides financial support, training, and mentoring to those the Church has called to full-time ministry. He has written over thirty-five books, including his most recent release, “Why I Left, Why I Stayed: Conversations on Christianity Between an Evangelical Father and His Humanist Son.”

Cash bar opens at 5:45pm
Event starts at 6:30pm
Subculture Theater
45 Bleecker St,
NY, 10012

Tickets must be reserved in advance.

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

For the affirmative:

Rosario Fortugno is the founder and CEO of InOrbis Intercity, the first all-electric, city-to-city ridesharing service in Canada. InOrbis has a fleet of Teslas operating in multiple areas in Canada and the US in 2020. As a consultant, Rosario has worked with Canada’s largest oil and gas companies to automate the hauling of bitumen in Alberta’s Oilsands. This has meant that nearly 50% of all large-haulage trucks owned by Suncor Energy are now running fully autonomously, moving bitumen (a mixture of crude oil and sand) in the open-pit mines near Ft. McMurray.

For the negative:

Eric Peters is a freelance Anarcho-Libertarian writer, who uses cars and bikes as the vehicle for making the case for freedom and self-ownership. His books include Road Hogs (2011) and Automotive Atrocities (2004). He has written for The Washington Times, Detroit News and Free Press, Investors Business Daily, The American Spectator, National Review, The Chicago Tribune ,and Wall Street Journal. He has also made regular appearances on “The Tom Woods Show” and describes himself as "a refugee from DC."

Cash bar opens at 5:45pm
Event starts at 6:30pm
Subculture Theater
45 Bleecker St,
NY, 10012

Tickets must be reserved in advance.

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

For the affirmative:

Elizabeth Nolan Brown is an associate editor at Reason magazine, where her work has focused mainly on the intersection of sex, tech, civil liberties, and public policy. She is also co-founder of the nonprofit group Feminists for Liberty. Brown has published in outlets that include The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Buzzfeed, The Daily Beast, Playboy, Fox News, Politico, Time, Spectator U.S., The Week, and the Cato Institute's Libertarianism.org. A native of Cincinnati, she lives with her husband in Washington, D.C.

For the negative:

Madeleine Kearns is a William F. Buckley Jr. Fellow in Political Journalism at National Review. A native of Glasgow, Scotland, Kearns was a 2017 summer intern at The Spectator and became the first intern on record to contribute a cover story. In August 2019 she wrote a much-discussed cover story for National Review, entitled "Don't Legalize Prostitution," inspired by her experience talking to street prostitutes in Los Angeles on one of the most notorious prostitution tracks in the United States. She has also written investigative cover stories on gender policies as they relate to children both for The Spectator and National Review. Her work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Catholic Herald, and Heterodox Academy.

Cash bar opens at 5:45pm
Event starts at 6:30pm
Subculture Theater
45 Bleecker St,
NY, 10012

Tickets must be reserved in advance.

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

For the affirmative:

Binyamin Appelbaum is the lead writer on business and economics for the Editorial Board of The New York Times He joined the board in March 2019. He was previously a Washington correspondent for the Times, covering the Federal Reserve and other aspects of economic policy. Appelbaum has previously worked for The Florida Times-Union, The Charlotte Observer, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. His first book, The Economists' Hour, was published in September 2019. He graduated in 2001 from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in history. He was executive editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian.

For the negative:

Russ Roberts is a Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and the host of the weekly podcast, EconTalk. He is the author of several books on economics, both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent book, Gambling with Other People’s Money: How Perverse Incentives Caused the Financial Crisis, explores the role past bailouts played in the risk-taking that led to the 2008 financial crisis. His 2014 book, How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness, explores lessons from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. Roberts earned his PhD from the University of Chicago.