The Sheen Center

18 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012

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

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

For the affirmative:

David Leonhardt is a senior writer at The New York Times and the author of Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of American Dream. The Atlantic, the Financial Times and McKinsey & Co. named it one of the best books of 2023. David writes The Morning, The Times's flagship newsletter, and has previously been The Times's Washington bureau chief, founding editor of The Upshot and a podcast host. He also led a strategy group that helped shape The Times's digital future. He has won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

For the negative:

John Early is a mathematical economist, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and president of the consultancy Vital Few, LLC. His experience includes two appointments as assistant commissioner at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, chief operating officer of an international consultancy in quality, chief strategy and customer officer for a Fortune 100 company, and legislative assistant to Senator George McGovern. His more than 80 publications include The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate, with Phil Gramm and Robert Ekelund and topics including measuring price change, labor force dynamics, income measurement, fiscal dynamics, improving healthcare, and customer loyalty.

The Sheen Center

18 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012

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

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

For the affirmative:

Santiago Forster is an Argentine-American who advocates for free markets and sensible politics. He is a youth leader within the Argentine political group, Enlaces, which is adherent to President Javier Milei’s political party. Santiago is currently carrying out his studies in Boston, where he is a student in International Business & International Affairs at Northeastern University. In 2019, Santiago was recognized as one of the top 10 individual debaters nationwide by the Argentine Debate Association (ADA). He now works in finance in the U.S. and is the co-founder and President of the LatAm Business Club at Northeastern University. In this role, he has hosted and interviewed notable figures such as the former President of Ecuador, Jamil Mahuad, as well as CEOs of multinational companies. With experience in areas such as finance and strategic communications, Santiago has become passionate about the overlap between the private and public sectors and sees them as mutually supportive.

For the negative:

Agustín Dante Rombolá was born and raised in Buenos Aires. He is a lawyer who graduated from Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) in 2017, specializing in Constitutional Law and Human Rights. He started working in politics ten years ago, as a member of the Unión Cívica Radical (Radical Civic Youth), a socialdemocratic party and the oldest party in Argentina. He is the current President of its Youth arm, Juventud Radical (Radical Youth). In 2023, he worked on the political campaigns of Horacio Rodríguez Larreta (for President) and Martín Lousteau (for Buenos Aires City Governor).

The Sheen Center

18 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012

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

Moderated by Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein.

For the affirmative:

Elizabeth Price Foley is a Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law, a public law school in Miami, Florida, where she teaches constitutional law and separation of powers. She also serves Of Counsel in the Washington, D.C. office of Baker Hostetler, where she practices constitutional and appellate law. Professor Foley is the author of three books on constitutional law published by Yale, Harvard and Cambridge University Presses. She has testified before Congress on numerous constitutional topics and her op-eds appear regularly in the Wall Street Journal. She has previously served as a judicial clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a Fulbright fellow at the National University of Ireland, and a senior legislative aide on Capitol Hill.

For the negative:

Glenn Greenwald is a constitutional lawyer, investigative journalist, and best-selling author. Acclaimed as one of the 25 most influential political commentators by The Atlantic, one of America’s top 10 opinion writers by Newsweek, and one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2013 by Foreign Policy, Greenwald’s fiercely adversarial reporting has won the highest awards in journalism around the world, including the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for the NSA-Snowden revelations. Leaving The Intercept—which he co-founded—in 2020, he is now an independent journalist and host of SYSTEM UPDATE nightly on Rumble.