The Sheen Center

18 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10012

Doors open at 6:00 PM
Meeting Convenes on the Main Stage: 6:30 PM
Reception offsite: 8:00 PM

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

For the affirmative:

Simon Hankinson is a senior research fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation and author of The Ten Woke Commandments—You Must Not Obey. From 1999 to 2022, he was a Foreign Service Officer serving in India, Fiji, Ghana, Slovakia, Togo, Washington, D.C., Marseille, and Nairobi.

For the negative:

Bryan Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, and adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He is the author of several books, including the graphic novel, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, and editor of Bet On It, a project of the Salem Center for Policy at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Sheen Center

18 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10012

Doors open at 6:00 PM
Meeting Convenes on the Main Stage: 6:30 PM
Reception offsite: 8:00 PM

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

For the affirmative:

Michael Tracey is an independent journalist, political commentator, and media critic. He is the cohost, alongside Matt Taibbi, of Today’s News, a podcast by Racket News. His writing can be found on Substack and at Unherd.

For the negative:

Marcella Szablewicz is an associate professor of communication and media studies at the Dyson College of Arts and Sciences at Pace University. Her research focuses on contemporary Chinese media and youth culture, digital leisure culture, digital games, and media moral panics.

The Sheen Center

18 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10012

Doors open at 6:00 PM
Meeting Convenes on the Main Stage: 6:30 PM
Reception offsite: 8:00 PM

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

For the affirmative:

Aaron Brown is a statistician, Bloomberg opinion columnist, and author of Wrong Number: How To Extract Truth From a Blizzard of Quantitative Disinformation. He is the former head of financial market research at AQR Capital Management and has taught statistics at New York University and the University of California, San Diego.

For the negative:

Robert Spitzer is a distinguished service professor emeritus of political science at the State University of New York at Cortland and an adjunct professor at William & Mary Law School. He is the author of 16 books, including 6 on gun policy, most recently The Gun Dilemma and the 10th edition of The Politics of Gun Control.