How Debate Can Revolutionize Education and Help Save Our Democracy
This episode invites you into a conversation with Robert Litan, a non-resident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, a practicing lawyer in St. Louis and Chicago, and author of Resolved: Debate Can Revolutionize Education and Help Save Our Democracy.
To learn more, check out this article and/or read the book.
In the interview, Robert brought up a free training for teachers who wanted to learn how to facilitate debate-centered instruction (with CE credit available). You can learn more about the free training (with one upcoming opportunity at July 13-15, 2021) along with a chance to work with a coach for the next year. You can learn more about it at TheNYS.org.
Follow or DM Robert on Twitter . He noted that he is happy to accept friend requests.
More about Robert…
As an economist and attorney, Robert Litan has had nearly four decades of experience in the
worlds of the law, economic research and policy, and as an executive in both the private, public
and government sectors. Through his extensive publications and many speeches and testimony,
he has become a widely recognized national expert in finance and financial regulation, antitrust,
entrepreneurship, innovation and international trade, among other policy subjects.
Litan currently is a Partner with Korein Tillery, a law firm based in St. Louis and Chicago
specializing in large case antitrust litigation and a Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings
Institution.
Litan has directed economic research at three leading national organizations: the Brookings
Institution, the Kauffman Foundation and Bloomberg Government. He has also been a member
of the international advisory board of the Principal Financial Group, and a member of Domestic
Policy Advisory Board of the Smith Richardson Foundation.
Litan is a well-known speaker who has given hundreds of talks during his career before a wide
range of audiences in the U.S. and around the world. His TedEx Kansas City talk, “An
Economist Who Walks Into a Bar” has been viewed (as of June, 2018) on Youtube over 400,000
times.
Litan has held several appointed positions in the federal government. In 1993, he was appointed
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department,
where he oversaw civil non-merger litigation and the Department’s positions on regulatory
matters, primarily in telecommunications. In 1995, he was appointed Associate Director of the
Office of Management and Budget, where oversaw the budgets of five cabinet level agencies. He
later was a consultant to the Department of Treasury on financial modernization and the
effectiveness of the Community Reinvestment Act and co-authored several reports on these
subjects. In the early 1990s he served as a Member of the Presidential-Congressional
Commission on the Causes of the Savings and Loan Crisis. He has chaired two panels of studies
for the National Academy of Sciences and has served on one other NAS Committee. He began
his career as a Staff Economist at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers.
During his research career, Litan has authored or co-authored 30 books and edited another 14,
and authored or co-authored more than 200 articles in professional and popular publications. His
recent books include the Trillion Dollar Economists (Wiley Press, 2014), The Need for Speed
(Brookings Institution Press, 2013, co-authored with Hal Singer); Better Capitalism, co-authored
with Carl Schramm, published by the Yale University Press in 2012, and Good Capitalism, Bad
Capitalism (co-authored with William Baumol and Carl Schramm), also published by Yale in
2007, and which is used widely in college courses, and has been translated into 10 languages.
His latest book, Resolved: Debate Can Revolutionize Education and Help Save our Democracy,
was published by the Brookings Institution Press in May, 2020.
Litan earned his B.S. in Economics (summa cum laude) at the Wharton School of Finance at the
University of Pennsylvania; his J.D. at Yale Law School; and his M. Phil. And Ph.D. at Yale
University.