Debate Me! Online debate culture from a feminist perspective

Write anything, post anything as a woman on the internet, and they will gather: the Debate Me Bros. They are owed more arguments, further justification. They are experts, and they aren’t sure you are. In the first of our Clayman Conversations Online, journalist Nhi Le and scholar Moira Weigel will discuss online debate culture from a feminist perspective. Is the demand for free and open debate online really as neutral as it often presents itself? How are dominant power structures replicated or challenged in online debate culture?  As with all Clayman Conversations, the panelists will consider dimensions of race, class, gender and sexuality in untangling this timely issue.

Clayman Conversations is a series bringing feminist leaders who are driving conversations in their respective fields and who are experts in gender-related subjects that are current and pressing.

About the Speakers

Moira Weigel is a writer, translator, and scholar currently at the Harvard Society of Fellows. In 2017, she received her PhD from Yale University. She is the author of Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times,The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Nation, The New Republic, and n+1, among other publications, and she is a cofounder of Logic magazine. 

Nhi Le is a journalist, host and public speaker from Leipzig, Germany. In her work, Le primarily engages the topics of feminism and racism in contemporary media and digital media culture. As a journalist, Nhi Le has worked for influential newspapers like taz - Die Tageszeitung as well as for Germany’s national public television broadcaster ZDF/funk. Most recently, Le was featured in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for an interview about anti-Asian sentiment in Germany following the outbreak of the coronavirus. As a speaker, Le has held talks and/or participated in panel discussions for TEDx, Reporters Without Borders, Disney Germany and many more. In 2019, the German national weekly newspaper Die Zeit recognized her as one of the 100 most important young persons from East Germany.

Nhi Le has a Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Media Studies from Leipzig University and is soon to conclude a dual master’s degree program in Global Mass Communication and Journalism between Leipzig University and Ohio University. For her master’s thesis, Le is currently studying the effects of online harassment and misogyny on female journalists and their work.