Guest: Robert Lynch — President and CEO of Americans For The Arts (AFTA), the nation’s largest non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the role of art in American life and advancing appreciation for the arts in American culture.

Americans For the Arts’Website

Host: Mahesha Subbaraman — A high school Lincoln-Douglas debate coach in Minnesota, an Amherst College graduate, the founder/owner of Trinity Briefs, and creator of Colloquy.

Topic Discussed: Should secondary education in America value the fine arts over athletics?

Resources Cited During Interview:

Center on Education Policy — Report on “Instructional Time in Elementary Schools”
Dana Foundation Research on Fine Arts & Cognitive Development
Americans For The Arts — Arts Education
National Arts Policy Database ( Search Database )
ArtsEDGE (Kennedy Center)
Arts Education Partnership
Project Zero (Harvard University)
Music Educators National Conference
National Association of Music Merchants

Scholars Cited During Interview:  Daniel Pink;  Richard Florida

Length: 51 min.

Resolved: Limiting economic inequality ought to be a more important social goal than maximizing economic freedom.

Resolved: US policies established after September 11, 2001 have substantially reduced the risk of terrorist acts against the United States.

Guest: Mike Feinberg — Co-Founder of the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), a network of free, open-enrollment, college preparatory public schools serving low-income students and underprivileged communities throughout the United States.

Guest’s Education: B.A., University of Pennsylvania (1992)

Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) Website

Host: Mahesha Subbaraman — A high school Lincoln-Douglas debate coach in Minnesota, an Amherst College graduate, the founder/owner of Trinity Briefs, and creator of Colloquy.

Topic Discussed: Should secondary education in America value the fine arts over athletics?

Length: 23 min.

    

Guest: Robert Compton —Entrepreneur, Venture Capitalist, and Producer of 2 Million Minutes, a documentary film which offers an international comparison of high schools in America, India, and China, and asks whether American high schools are adequately preparing their students to meet the competitive demands of the global marketplace in the 21st Century.

Guest’s Education:  B.A., Principia College (1978); M.B.A., Harvard Business School (1984)

Guest’s Personal Website

Guest’s Documentary:  Website  /  Weblog  /  Purchase DVD

Video Trailer for Guest’s Documentary:

Topic Discussed: Should secondary education in America value the fine arts over athletics?

Resource Cited During Interview:  The World Is Flat (Tom Friedman)

Length: 45 min.

To this end, there are three simple, yet important ways you can show your support for Loquitur:

1. Join The Loquitur Facebook Group

It doesn’t cost you a thing to become a member of the Loquitur Facebook Group — and by joining, you let us know that you really care about the work we are doing.

2. Tell Us What You Think

E-mail us your thoughts on the interviews that we have already posted — and feel free to send us suggestions for future episodes, particularly regarding experts we should interview and/or the questions we should ask them. Our e-mail address is loqdebate-at-gmail.com.

And if don’t want to e-mail us, then consider posting your thoughts directly to this blog  – all this requires is clicking directly on the title of the post you wish to comment on, and then typing your comments into the text box that appears in the resulting window.  

Again — we really want to hear what you think about the work we are doing.

3. Spread The Word About Loquitur

If you like the Loquitur interviews that you’ve listened to thus far, then please (please!) tell your friends and colleagues about us.

The easiest way to do this is by using the ShareThis Link located at the bottom of each post on this blog. Using ShareThis, you can e-mail links to this blog directly to your friends, and you can also share links to this blog via any of the major Web content aggregators (e.g., Digg). 

Also, if you happen to have your own weblog or website, please consider posting a link to our site.

It may not seem like much, but by showing your support for Loquitur in these three ways, you make a huge difference in terms of the work we do — and we can’t thank you enough for it.

    

Guest: Joanne Jacobs — Education blogger, former Knight-Ridder columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, and author of Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the Charter School That Beat the Odds.

Guest’s Personal Weblog

Host: Mahesha Subbaraman — A high school Lincoln-Douglas debate coach in Minnesota, an Amherst College graduate, the founder/owner of Trinity Briefs, and creator of Colloquy.

Topic Discussed : Should secondary education in America value the fine arts over athletics?

Resource Cited During Interview:  NFHS Article on High School Activities

Length: 43 min.

Welcome JoanneJacobs.Com Readers, to Loquitur.

And thank you, Joanne Jacobs, for the link. We really appreciate it.

If you’re wondering what the Loquitur Blog/Podcast is all about, please consult the following post addressed to Instapundit Readers.

Welcome Instapundit Readers, to Loquitur.

And thank you, Professor Reynolds, for the link. We really appreciate it.

Now, I’m sure that more than a few of you out there are wondering about who we are and what this podcast is all about.

In short, Loquitur is a brand-new Internet podcast dedicated to interviewing academic and professional experts on current National Forensic League debate topics for the free educational benefit of high school students competing in Lincoln-Douglas and Public Forum Debate. 

To that end, for those of you who are familiar with the world of competitive high school debate — particularly, Lincoln-Douglas Debate and Public Forum Debate — please read our open letter to high school debate coaches and students.

And for those of you academics and professionals out there visiting our blog for the first time, please read our open letter to academics and professionals.

Please also visit our About Page to learn more about the “geniuses” behind Loquitur.

Otherwise, we hope you enjoy the show!

And do tell us what you think about the podcast and our mission — or if you’d like to help us out with what we’re trying to accomplish here.

E-mail us at  loqdebate-at-gmail.com. 

       

Guest: Lawrence Douglas — James Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought (LJST) at Amherst College and author of The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust.

Host: Mahesha Subbaraman — A high school Lincoln-Douglas debate coach in Minnesota, an Amherst College graduate, the founder/owner of Trinity Briefs, and creator of Colloquy.

Topic Discussed :  Are hate crimes enhancements unjust in the United States.

Authors Cited During Interview:   Robert Kahn,  D.D. Guttenplan,  Kent Greenawalt

Length: 35 min.

      

Guest: George Fletcher — Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia Law School and author of With Justice For Some: Victims’ Rights in Criminal Trials.

Guest’s Personal Website

Host: Mahesha Subbaraman — A high school Lincoln-Douglas debate coach in Minnesota, an Amherst College graduate, the founder/owner of Trinity Briefs, and creator of Colloquy.

Topic Discussed:  Are hate crimes enhancements unjust in the United States?

Authors Cited During Interview:  Michael Moore & Heidi Hurd, Alon Harel

Length: 36 min.

Guest: Geoffrey Woglom — Chair of the Economics Department and Richard S. Volpert Professor of Economics at Amherst College.

Guest’s Personal Website: http://www.amherst.edu/~grwoglom/

Host: Mahesha Subbaraman — A high school Lincoln-Douglas debate coach in Minnesota, an Amherst College graduate, the founder/owner of Trinity Briefs, and creator of Colloquy.

Topic Discussed: Can the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 successfully mitigate economic slowdowns over the next year?

Length: 27 min.