{"id":30933,"date":"2024-03-27T15:00:41","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T19:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=30933"},"modified":"2024-06-11T09:25:49","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T13:25:49","slug":"up-close-ive-always-loved-a-good-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/up-close-ive-always-loved-a-good-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Up Close: \u2018I’ve Always Loved a Good Debate\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before August 2023, Temidayo Aganga-Williams \u201908 had only been back to visit Furman once, in 2013, early in his legal career as an associate in a Wall Street firm. Since that trip, he\u2019s added a few more lines to his re\u0301sume\u0301, including Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York and, as of February 2023, partner in the New York City firm Selendy Gay Elsberg.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it was one of his other jobs \u2013 senior investigative counsel on the U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol \u2013 that led to his routinely providing insights to CNN, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets, and ultimately back to his alma mater.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what litigators do: We investigate,\u201d Aganga-Williams told a crowded McAlister Auditorium this past fall during \u201cStraightTalk 2023: Our Fragile Democracy,\u201d a speaker series presented by The Riley Institute and the Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning in association with Furman\u2019s Department of Politics and International Affairs. \u201cWe find facts \u2013 the who, what, where and when,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aganga-Williams\u2019 dedication to the profession began with his childhood in Atlanta, Georgia.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn my fifth-grade yearbook, everybody had to put their future profession, and what I wanted to be was a lawyer,\u201d he said in an interview prior to the panel discussion at Furman. \u201cIt\u2019s something that has guided my academic life as well as how I\u2019ve seen the world. I\u2019ve always loved a good debate and trying to figure out what\u2019s right and what\u2019s wrong.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Aganga-Williams saw Furman as \u201cclose enough to home that I could come home easily, but far enough away that I wasn\u2019t right under my parents\u2019 umbrella,\u201d he said. He arrived as a first-year student ready to plunge into the conversations happening across campus in the shadow of the Iraq War.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a lot of room for people to have their thoughts challenged,\u201d he said, recalling classes with Akan Malici and Teresa Cosby, professors of politics and international affairs. \u201cThere were a lot of opportunities for me to have to defend my views. This allowed me to intellectually grow \u2013 to think about both how to craft an argument and how to defend one.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, debates occurred outside the classroom as well for Aganga-Williams, particularly during controversies over campus visits by drag troupe Kinsey Sicks and (in a later appearance) conservative commentator Ann Coulter. After earning his bachelor\u2019s degrees in political science and philosophy at Furman, Aganga-Williams earned a law degree at Cornell Law School before starting his career in New York City.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, Aganga-Williams often reflects on his work investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the efforts by some to keep former President Donald Trump in power despite his election loss.<\/span><\/p>\n

The political attack began months before Jan. 6, 2021, said Aganga-Williams \u2013 but he sees evidence that \u201cthe best of America is ahead.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat gives me hope is that our institutions did take a beating and survived, and people … who had the option to go an easier route, didn\u2019t.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Temidayo Aganga-Williams \u201908 balances concern for democracy with hope for its future. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":30930,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2665,1963,2660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-notes-spring-2024","category-furman-magazine","category-spring-2024"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30933"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32569,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30933\/revisions\/32569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}