Moderating

I had the opportunity to moderate a couple of public debate events at James Madison University (JMU) recently. Two weeks ago, I moderated the final round of the 12th annual Madison Cup Debate, a debate tournament that utilizes the long-table format. The final round, which results in thousands of dollars in scholarship money, included teams from the College of William & Mary, University of Cape Town (South Africa), Yale University, and Cornell University. The resolution was "This House stands resolved that: The United States has an obligation to support emerging democracies in the Middle East and Northern Africa." Yesterday, I moderated an event hosted by the Madison Debate Society on the problem of politicians not feeling the need to participate in debates. The event was called "Too Safe to Care? What is the Responsibility of Elected Officials to the Citizenry?" In addition to two JMU professors, panelists included Stuart Bain (who ran as a Libertarian candidate against U.S. Representative Bob Goodlatte in 2010) and Karen Kwiatkowski (who is running against Goodlatte in the Republican primary challenger this year). It provided good dialogue on a critical democratic issue (the photo is one I took of Bain speaking, with Kwiatkowski in the background).The Harrisonburg Daily News-Record ran an article about the event today that included a photo of me talking with Kwiatkowski.