This coming Wednesday (that’s day after tomorrow!), I’ll be heading back out to New York, New York where I will be a part of it indeed, “it” being an Intelligence Squared Debate!

IQ2 is a series of Oxford-style debates where four “thought leaders” (or, in this case, three thought leaders and me) get together to discuss two sides of an important issue facing our time. We argue fer or agin’ a motion, and then spend some time answering audience questions before they vote and declare a supreme victor, who I believe is contractually obligated to do the Nae Nae.

Wednesday’s motion is: “More Clicks, Fewer Bricks: The Lecture Hall is Obsolete.” I am part of the agin’ team, alongside Columbia University’s Jonathan Cole, who is an emeritus Dean and Provost and now holds an extremely prestigious endowed professorship. Yep, he’s with me. He must be so proud.

Our worthy competitors are Anant Agarwal, MIT super-prof and CEO of the MOOC provider EdX (!), and Ben Nelson, the founder and CEO of Minerva Schools at KGI, which seem  to me like the Institut Benjamenta of Silicon Valley (if you get that reference, you count among my nearest and dearest).

I have been preparing my statements for months, and am now just polishing them up; my outfit has been chosen; it’s all happening.

As with all IQ2 debates, mine will be live-streamed online, as well as broadcast on over 200 NPR radio stations nationwide (and available as a podcast for download). It will also run on Thirteen in NYC.

I will be posting an embed of the stream right here on Pan Kisses Kafka day-of, so those Secular Schumanists who wish to watch here are heartily encouraged to do so.

At any rate, as you can imagine the whole thing’s got me very excited, and more than a little bit nervous. I hope to see some of you there in person, and I hope the rest of you will wish me luck from afar! Fingers crossed, thumbs pressed, etc. etc. blargh.