Intellectual Juicing

18 January 2008
Shawn Macomber

The Oxford-style Open to Debate formerly known as Intelligence Squared U.S. debates at the Asia Society are precisely what I hoped to discover moving to New York City last spring: Provocative, unabashedly intellectual, lively. How could anyone who slogs through the pathetic, pandering spectacle of modern American politics not love a debate series with a mission statement that includes a promise to “transcend the toxically emotional and reflexively ideological”?