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LGBT rights and business

Should businesses work to advance the rights of LGBT people broadly, rather than focusing only on their own employees?

February 13th 2016 to February 20th 2016
Debate Complete

Representing the sides

Moderator
Adam Smith, Assistant community editor, The Economist
Adam Smith is the assistant community editor at The Economist. His job is to ensure that the publication’s content is prominent on social networks and to engage with readers and viewers. He is particularly involved in disseminating The Economist’s podcasts, films, videos and science coverage. His journalistic background is principally in the politics of science. Adam is co-chair of WILDE, The Economist Group’s staff LGBT network, and a volunteer with Diversity Role Models, a charity. Follow him on Twitter @AdamCommentism.  
Yes
Deborah Sherry, Partner solutions director, UK and Ireland, Google
Deborah Sherry is partner solutions director, UK and Ireland, for Google, where she has worked for more than eight years. Before Google, Deborah worked for France Telecom, was a board director at Wanadoo UK, and worked at Samsung Korea and Citibank London. She has an MBA from the London Business School, an MA in law from Oxford University and a BA from Columbia University. Deborah is a Woldingham Parish Councillor and actively promotes equality for women and LGBT people.
No
Jonathan Cooper, Chief executive of the Human Dignity Trust
Jonathan Cooper is an international human-rights lawyer and the chief executive of the Human Dignity Trust. The trust is a charitable organisation that supports people seeking to challenge laws that criminalise homosexuality by providing technical legal assistance to local activists and lawyers for use in test-case litigation. As a barrister in private practice, he has extensive experience in litigating LGBTI issues. Most notably, he was junior counsel in a British case in 1995 on whether gays could serve in the armed forces. In 2007 he was awarded an OBE for services to human rights.

Online pornography

Can porn be good for us?

November 17th 2015 to November 27th 2015
Debate Complete

Representing the sides

Moderator
Helen Joyce, International section editor, The Economist Newspaper
Helen Joyce became editor of The Economist's international section in January 2014. Until October 2009 she was international education editor. She then worked on a project for the editor-in-chief, looking at what The Economist should be doing with data, both in print and online. In July 2010 she moved to Brazil to become the paper's São Paulo bureau chief. Previous jobs include editor of Plus, an online magazine about maths published by the University of Cambridge, and founding editor of the Royal Statistical Society's quarterly magazine, Significance.
Yes
Cindy Gallop, Advertising consultant and founder, MakeLoveNotPorn
Cindy Gallop consults on brand and business innovation for companies around the world. She started up the US office of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, and ad agency, in New York in 1998 and in 2003 was named Advertising Woman of the Year. Her 2009 TED talk, “Make love not porn”, has been viewed 1.4m times, and led to the launch of the pro-sex, pro-porn website www.makelovenotporn.tv. Most recently she acted as Jury President at Cannes Lions 2015 for the inaugural Glass Lion awards, supported by Sheryl Sandberg to shatter gender stereotypes in advertising and popular culture. She is on Twitter @CindyGallop.
No
Robert Jensen, Journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin
Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. His research draws on a variety of critical approaches to media and power. Much of his work has focused on pornography and the radical feminist critique of sexuality and men’s violence, and he also has addressed questions of race through a critique of white privilege and institutionalised racism. His books include “Plain Radical: Living, Loving, and Learning to Leave the Planet Gracefully” and “Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity”. You can follow him on Twitter @jensenrobertw and on Facebook.

Cloud computing

Should companies do most of their computing in the cloud?

May 26th 2015 to June 5th 2015
Debate Complete

Representing the sides

Moderator
Ludwig Siegele, The Economist's technology editor
Ludwig Siegele is The Economist's technology editor. He joined the newspaper as US technology correspondent in 1998. In 2003 he went to Berlin as Germany correspondent, relocated to London in 2008 to cover the IT industry until 2011, and then ran part of The Economist's website as online business and finance editor. He started his journalistic career in 1990 as the Paris business correspondent of Die Zeit, a Germany weekly. In 1995 he moved from France to California to write about the internet for several German publications. He is co-author of a book on SAP, "Matrix der Welt: SAP und der neue globale Kapitalismus" and is the author of The Economist's special report on startups.
Yes
Simon Crosby, Co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Bromium Inc.
Simon Crosby is a co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Bromium Inc., a pioneer of micro-virtualisation, which enables PCs to defend themselves by design from all malware. Previously he was CTO, data centre and cloud, at Citrix Systems, which acquired XenSource, where he was co-founder and CTO; a principal engineer at Intel, where he led strategic research on platform security and trust; and founder and CTO of CPlane Inc., a pioneer in software defined networking. He was a faculty member in the computer laboratory at the University of Cambridge from 1994 to 2000. 
No
Bruce Schneier, Chief technology officer at Resilient Systems
Bruce Schneier is a security technologist. He is chief technology officer at Resilient Systems, a cyber-security firm, a fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). His latest book is “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World”. He blogs and tweets at @schneierblog.