Soho Forum Debate Series Package

The Soho Forum is a monthly debate, lecture, and interview series held in Soho/Noho, Manhattan. The series features topics of special interest to libertarians, and aims to enhance social and professional ties within the NYC libertarian community.

Moderated by Gene Epstein, the economics editor of Barron's, The Soho Forum features some of the most highly regarded speakers across varied fields. At each event, the audience is able to actively engage with the speakers, and there is a social reception with wine and cheese that follows.

We are currently offering a VIP package that includes tickets to all debates from January 2017 - July 2017, guarenteed entry to each event, priority admittance, and an invitation to our closed, members-only facebook group, which provides access to transcripts and mp3s of all debates, a closed chat forum for members, speakers, and moderator, and a platform for suggesting future topics and speakers.

Price: $89 (Value: $126, 30% discount)

Schedule:

Tuesday January 17, 2017 -- Jonathan Chait vs. Matt Welch

Resolution:

"Based on his record of accomplishments, Barack Obama has been a great president."

Monday February 13, 2017 -- Benjamin Powell vs. Mark Krikorian.

Resolution:

"U.S. immigration policy should be to issue migration visas, without any numerical limitations, to all applicants who are not on a terrorist watch list, and who do not otherwise have criminal records or contagious diseases."

Monday March 13, 2017 -- Michael Cannon vs. Jonathan Cohn.

Resolution:

"A market system for medical care would save more people from suffering inadequate care than any other system."

Wednesday April 12, 2017 -- George Selgin vs. Josh Barro.

Resolution:

"The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation should be abolished in favor of private sector solutions for protecting the safety of bank deposits."

Tuesday May 16, 2017 -- Lawrence Ross vs. Kmele Foster.

Resolution:

"America's colleges have fostered a racist environment that makes them a hostile space for African American students."

Tuesday June 13, 2017 -- Mark Skousen vs. Gene Epstein.

Resolution:

"Adam Smith should be honored as the founder of modern economics and free-enterprise capitalism."

Tuesday July 11, 2017 -- Bob Bowden vs. Samuel Abrams.

Resolution:

"Parents should have the choice to opt out of public schools and redirect the taxpayer tuition money for their children to other approved schools or educational options."

Event Information:

Cash bar opens: 5:45pm

Meeting convenes: 6:30pm

Wine-and-cheese Reception: 8:15pm

Tickets must be reserved in advance.

To purchase the VIP package, select any date. You will automatically be added to all events in the package.

About the speakers:

Tuesday January 17, 2017, Jonathan Chait vs. Matt Welch

"Based on his record of accomplishments, Barack Obama has been a great president."

For the affirmative:

Jonathan Chait is a political columnist for New York magazine and author of the new book about Barack Obama’s legacy, Audacity. He was previously a senior editor at The New Republic and has also written for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic. He has been featured throughout the media, including appearances on NPR, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, HBO, The Colbert Report, Talk of the Nation, C-Span, Hardball, and on talk radio in every major city in America. He lives in Washington, DC.

For the negative:

Matt Welch is editor at large of Reason, the libertarian magazine of "Free Minds and Free Markets." He served as Reason's editor in chief from 2008-2016. He is co-author, along with Nick Gillespie, of The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America, which Tyler Cowen called "the up-to-date statement of libertarianism." Welch also wrote McCain: The Myth of a Maverick. Welch has won eight first-place L.A. Press Club awards, and he was co-host of the nightly Fox Business Network program The Independents.

Monday February 13, 2017, Benjamin Powell vs. Mark Krikorian.

"U.S. immigration policy should be to issue migration visas, without any numerical limitations, to all applicants who are not on a terrorist watch list, and who do not otherwise have criminal records or contagious diseases."

For the affirmative:

Benjamin Powell is the Director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University and a Professor of Economics in the Rawls College of Business. He is the North American Editor of the Review of Austrian Economics, past President of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, and a senior fellow with the Independent Institute. He earned his B.S. in economics and finance from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. Professor Powell is the author of Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy, and editor of The Economics of Immigration: Market-Based Approaches, Social Science, and Public Policy.

For the negative:

Mark Krikorian, a nationally recognized expert on immigration issues, has served as Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) since 1995. He frequently testifies before Congress and is a contributor at National Review Online.Mr. Krikorian is the author of the books The New Case against Immigration, Both Legal and Illegal and How Obama is Transforming America through Immigration.
His most recent publication is Open Immigration: Yea & Nay, co-authored with Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute. Mr. Krikorian holds a master’s degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a bachelor’s degree from Georgetown University.

Monday March 13, 2017, Michael Cannon vs. Jonathan Cohn.

"A market system for medical care would save more people from suffering inadequate care than any other system."

For the affirmative:

Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies. Cannon has been described as “an influential health-care wonk” (Washington Post), “ObamaCare’s single most relentless antagonist” ( New Republic), “ObamaCare’s fiercest critic” (The Week), and “the intellectual father” of King v. Burwell (Modern Healthcare). Cannon is the coeditor ofReplacing Obamacare: The Cato Institute on Health Care Reformand coauthor of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It. Previously, he served as a domestic policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, where he advised the Senate leadership on health, education, labor, welfare, and the Second Amendment. He holds a BA in American government from the University of Virginia, and an MA in economics and a JM in law and economics from George Mason University. He is a member of the Board of Advisors of Harvard Health Policy Review.

For the negative:

Jonathan Cohn, Senior National Correspondent for The Huffington Post, writes about politics and policy with a focus on social welfare. He is also the author of Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis—and the People Who Pay the Price. Jonathan worked previously at the New Republic and American Prospect, and has written for the Atlantic, New York Times Magazine, and Self. His journalism has won awards from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, the Association of Health Care Journalists, World Hunger Year, and the National Women's Political Caucus.

Wednesday April 12, 2017, George Selgin vs. Josh Barro.

"The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation should be abolished in favor of private sector solutions for protecting the safety of bank deposits."

For the affirmative:

George Selgin is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute and Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Georgia. His research covers a broad range of topics within the field of monetary economics, including monetary history, macroeconomic theory, and the history of monetary thought. He is the author of The Theory of Free Banking (Rowman & Littlefield, 1988); Bank Deregulation and Monetary Order(Routledge, 1996); Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1997); and, most recently, Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage(University of Michigan Press, 2008).

Selgin is one of the founders, along with Kevin Dowd and Lawrence H. White, of the Modern Free Banking School, which draws its inspiration from the writings of F. A. Hayek on denationalization of money and choice in currency.

Selgin has taught at the University of Georgia, George Mason University, the University of Hong Kong, and West Virginia University. He holds a BA in economics and zoology from Drew University, and a PhD in economics from New York University.

For the negative:

Joshua A. Barro is an American journalist who currently contributes to Business Insider as a political commentator.Barro previously worked as a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, as a real estate banker for Wells Fargo, as the lead writer for the Ticker, an economics and politics blog hosted by Bloomberg L.P., and as the politics editor at Business Insider. He appears regularly on Bloomberg Television and MSNBC and has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO and on All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

Time named Barro's Twitter feed one of "The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013," one of ten in the Politics category. In 2012, Forbes selected him as one of the "30 Under 30" media "brightest stars under the age of 30," and David Brooks listed him as part of the "vibrant and increasingly influential center-right conversation." A former aide to Barack Obama included Barro on a short list of Obama's favorite columnists. He is currently the host and moderator of KCRW's Left, Right & Center.

In 2014, Barro left Business Insider to join The New York Times'"The Upshot." In 2016, Barro was again hired by Business Insideras a senior editor.

Tuesday May 16, 2017, Lawrence Ross vs. Kmele Foster.

"America's colleges have fostered a racist environment that makes them a hostile space for African American students."

For the affirmative:

Lawrence C. Ross Jr. is an author of historical texts and fiction.Ross worked as a reporter, for the Los Angeles Independent Newspaper and was appointed managing editor of Rap Sheet magazine, hip hop's first West Coast magazine in 1997. Ross authored The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities; The Ways of Black Folks: A Year in the Life of a People; Friends With Benefits; Skin Game; Money Shot: The Wild Nights and Lonely Days in Black Porn; and Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America's Campuses.Ross has lectured at over 300 colleges and universities.

For the negative:

Kmele Foster is a telecommunications entrepreneur and TV host. He is the co-founder and vice president of TelcoIQ, a telecommunications consultancy. He is also the chairman of America's Future Foundation. He is the former co-host of Fox Business' The Independents, and is currently a co-host of the libertarian podcast The Fifth Column.

Tuesday June 13, 2017, Mark Skousen vs. Gene Epstein.

"Adam Smith should be honored as the father of modern economics and free-enterprise capitalism."

For the affirmative:

Mark Skousen is a nationally known investment expert, economist, university professor and author of more than 25 books. Skousen taught economics and finance at Columbia Business School, Columbia University, Barnard College, Mercy College, Rollins College and Chapman University. He also has been a consultant to IBM, Hutchinson Technology and other Fortune 500 companies. He is the producer of FreedomFest, “the world’s largest gathering of free minds,” which meets every July in Las Vegas. He is currently a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. He earned his Ph. D. in monetary economics at George Washington University.

He recently was named one of the 20 most influential living economists, and in honor of his work in economics, finance and management, Grantham University renamed its business school, “The Mark Skousen School of Business.”

Skousen is the former editor in chief of Forecasts & Strategies,former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, a columnist to Forbes magazine, and past president of the Foundation for Economic Education.

He is the author of 25 books, including The Structure of Production; Economics on Trial; Puzzles and Paradoxes on Economics; The Making of Modern Economics; The Big Three in Economics; EconoPower; Economic Logic; The Complete Guide to Financial Privacy; High Finance on a Low Budget; Scrooge Investing; Investing in One Lesson; A Viennese Waltz Down Wall Street; and The Maxims of Wall Street.

For the negative:

Gene Epstein is a nationally known economist, and the economics editor of Barron's, America's premier financial magazine. He is also the books editor at Barron’s, and writes a weekly column called “Economic Beat.”

Epstein is the author of Econospinning: How to Read between the Lines when the Media Manipulate the Numbers; and Making Money in Commodities. He has taught economics at the City University of New York and St. John’s University, and worked as a senior economist for the New York Stock Exchange.

Gene has appeared on Fox, CNBC, and BBC TV, and on podcasts that include Russ Roberts’ “EconTalk,” Dave Smith’s “Part of the Problem,” and “The Tom Woods Show”.

He has delivered lectures in venues that include ​Columbia University, hosted by Students for Liberty; the International House in Tokyo; Loyola University in Baltimore; Universidad Francisco Marroquin in Guatemala City; the Romanian-American University in Bucharest; the American Center in Moscow; the International Banking Institute in St. Petersburg; and FreedomFest in Las Vegas.​

Gene Epstein created the Soho Forum, Libertarian Debate Series, and currently acts as the moderator of the series.

Tuesday July 11, 2017, Bob Bowden vs. Samuel Abrams.

"Parents should have the choice to opt out of public schools and redirect the taxpayer tuition money for their children to other approved schools or educational options."

For the affirmative:

Bob Bowden is the executive director of ChoiceMedia.TV, an investigative video website devoted to education reform. He is a champion of school choice, charter schools, vouchers, merit pay, and other types of education reform.

Bowdon is a longtime broadcast journalist, television producer, reporter and commentator. His varied career has seen him conducting in-depth on-camera interviews, anchoring newscasts and producing nationally-syndicated TV shows. He’s even appeared in satirical news sketches for the Onion News Network.The Cartel, Bowdon’s award-winning documentary, reveals the nature and extent of corruption in public education. Behind every dropout factory, we discover, lurks a powerful, entrenched and self-serving cartel. And the film puts a human face on those who suffer as a result.

For the negative:

Samuel E. Abrams is Director of the National Center for the Study of Privatization in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is the author of Education and the Commercial Mindset, and a chapter on Nordic education inUtbildningsekonomi: Om lärandets värde. In recognition of his promotion of the understanding of Finnish education in the United States, the Finnish government in 2014 made Abrams a Knight, First Class, Order of the Lion of Finland.