Enactus is inviting a socialist to campus.
Socialist Party-USA Vice Chairman John Strinka and Buckeye Institute Executive Vice President Rea Hederman are coming to discuss the role of entrepreneurship in alleviating poverty.
The debate aims to answer the question of how we can help the poor and will be held at 4 p.m. on Sept. 19 in Dow A and B.
“The topic surrounds the idea of the Good Samaritan and tries to consider whether public, government assistance is preferable to helping the poor or if private entrepreneurship is preferable,” Enactus President Nick Brown said.
Strinka is an outspoken socialist and a candidate for state representative for Indiana’s 39th District. He’s the first socialist candidate in decades to qualify for the ballot in the Hoosier State.
The Hederman-Strinka debate on Friday will be the first debate that Enactus has sponsored.
“This is one of the first times at Hillsdale when there’s been some kind of debate that tackles an issue outside of the classical liberal education,” junior Forester McClatchey said. “It is a nice influx of real world pertinence and it is kind of an exotic topic for us. I am pretty excited — it should be informative.”
Brown connected with Hederman during a summer internship in New York, and later invited him to Hillsdale College.
Getting a conservative participant to come to Hillsdale for a debate proved much easier than finding an opposing speaker.
“Nick [Brown] probably sent out about 400 emails trying to get someone to come to the college,” Enactus Secretary junior Aaron Schreck said.
“In the spirit of free discourse and inquiry, I think it’s a great idea,” Schreck said. “I think it will be really good for Hillsdale’s intellectual culture. We are a homogenous place ideologically and that can contribute to an insularity to our thought. This should be a very interesting, thought-stimulating time. I think we’ll all learn a lot.”
The candidates will each have a five-minute opening statement. The moderator, Hillsdale’s new assistant economics professor, Christopher Martin, will ask the candidates prepared questions. Hederman and Strinka will take turns answering the question first and responding to his opponent’s remarks. There will be no Q&A section for students to ask questions.
“We’re using this as a centerpiece for the idea of what Enactus is doing,” Brown said. “They’re going to go back and forth over these questions of what it means to be an entrepreneur and the entrepreneur’s role in fighting poverty. The target is to pick at the weak points of both arguments, open them up a little bit, and get to the bottom of how their viewpoint works.”
Brown said that even he does not know what to expect from Strinka.
“I don’t completely understand his side yet. From my understanding, I think he might be arguing for small, localized commune cooperatives,” he said. “The idea is that people work together in these to be productive and do different tasks. And, in exchange, the government will provide for their needs. It has a much more communal feel than private sector capitalist free markets. But, in the end he’s not a big fan of a large government bureaucracy. I can’t completely spell out how that works.”
Students are welcome to contact Brown or Schreck with questions about the upcoming debate or how it pertains to Enactus’ larger mission.
“This is a great opportunity for students to get involved, take things we learn from this, and apply it to the real world by helping people who are struggling,” Brown said. “It’s also an opportunity to hear a viewpoint that is not well-expressed at Hillsdale and better understand where the socialist viewpoint comes from and how we should think about it.”