The New York Sophist

There are a lot of smart people whose only conception of debating is that it is a game played by the controlling class – by those that C. Wright Mills might call the “power elite,” those who don’t have to worry, or struggle, or fend for things in their lives. By those who engage in a number of social, cultural, and educational practices that serve to preserve and extend the domination of a class as equally as they provide individual benefits.

In these terms, debate is the game that is designed to offer the hope and promise of agency only to bend that agency back toward submission. “We’ve debated it,” the teacher will say, “and now we see why things are done this way.” The whole process is one that makes a game out of agency and choices precisely to eliminate the open or imaginative use of agency and choices. Students feel they can offer their own researched views, but once defeated they then see that the only choice that makes sense is the status quo. This is best done in exercises where the limits of the topic are constrained by historical accident (counter-factual debates) or debating large decisions made in science or other fields – “We debated it, you now see why things had to end up that way.” These exercises and activities are far more prominent than a model of debate that introduces elements of uncertainty into the curriculum – one where the teacher is also caught by surprise by the way the arguments unfold and the way a decision is reached.

Many people view the introduction of debate as the introduction of the possibility of horrible choices that wouldn’t be available to think about if they were not offered up for consideration. It’s not a straw person: Debate is regularly used around the world by educators as a steam valve for resistance, and a creative way to ensure the best possible compliance to authority – that is, false choice freely chosen, authority filled in with reasons from the bottom-up.

Debate’s service to oppression and domination is regular and consistent – like writing, or mathematics, or history, it has the capacity to serve as a tool that helps terrible ends as often as good. There are two levels of this that I’ve thought of, and there might be more, but the two I want to explore are the use of debate to get people to assist in their own subjugation to dominant ideology, and the co-opting of debating into a useless game of the privileged, stripped of its power to be revolutionary or productive toward alternative ends.

Some of the ways around this are to not plan debates as the result of research. Often teachers will have students engage in vigorous research on an issue, and the debate becomes the cap or end product of that research. This renders debate toothless, as the evaluation process is not on persuasion or conviction or moving minds, but on the presentation of research. Debate is reduced in these cases to a science fair poster board. It’s the content delivery mechanism for truths discovered elsewhere.

To engage those who have had a negative debating experience like this is difficult. This is why it is essential to always include discussion of debate as epistemology vibrant in any conversation about debate. Most of the time it’s easy to get sidetracked by discussing the competition, or weird arguments, but debate as a way of knowing should be made prominent as well. The result of such inclusion is a debate practice that can be on par with other forms of knowing in the university – such as science, mathematics, history, and the like. 

The only debate epistemological defense that gets offered these days is the skill-based one: Debate provides training in research skills, the skills of democratic decision making, etc. This is not the level of epistemology that we should be talking about. Good teaching in debating allows people to see how participation in debate reveals ideas, methods, and actions that nobody thought were possible before the debate began. Good consideration of debate as epistemic is one where people, performing the role of committed advocates in a controversy, reveal to an audience through discourse that there are many more possibilities than the research indicated. Such possibilities can only come out through the performance of a debate. 

This authentic acceptance and engagement with uncertainty is not popular – no teacher that I have ever worked with in debating is willing to accept uncertainty in the classroom head on. I think it is because uncertainty can also be coded as a lack of discipline, a lack of focus, planning, etc – and a threat to teacher power. It’s an unfortunate accidental read of the situation. 

Introducing uncertainty and letting debate be the method for exploring or determining the nature of uncertainty is the primary way that debate can be offered as an epistemological approach. With everyone sharing what they know of a situation, and disagreeing about alternate accounts, the teacher maintains that authority not by rigging the game, but by being a good executive of what the class decides. Holding them to the decision makes the debate not more contentious, but more careful.  One way of practicing this approach might be to use David Bohm’s method of Dialogue. Although not referencing or indicating any familiarity with debate as a competitive school activity, Bohm nails a lot of the reasoning behind many of the features that debate has when in an educational environment (or appended to an educational institution). 

Debate is only as good as those who are working with and in it. Continuation of the conversation of the value of debate as epistemology is essential for the defense and health of debate in the face of a vast number of people who have only been spun as a top within debate as a tactic of domination, a way for those who are at the top of society make it appear the result of a natural and reasonable decision. Resistance to this sort of use of debate must be paramount in any preservation of debating as a valuable part of schooling. 

There are a lot of smart people whose only conception of debating is that it is a game played by the controlling class – by those that C. Wright Mills might call the “power elite,” those who don’t have to worry, or struggle, or fend for things in their lives. By those who engage in a number of social, cultural, and educational practices that serve to preserve and extend the domination of a class as equally as they provide individual benefits.

In these terms, debate is the game that is designed to offer the hope and promise of agency only to bend that agency back toward submission. “We’ve debated it,” the teacher will say, “and now we see why things are done this way.” The whole process is one that makes a game out of agency and choices precisely to eliminate the open or imaginative use of agency and choices. Students feel they can offer their own researched views, but once defeated they then see that the only choice that makes sense is the status quo. This is best done in exercises where the limits of the topic are constrained by historical accident (counter-factual debates) or debating large decisions made in science or other fields – “We debated it, you now see why things had to end up that way.” These exercises and activities are far more prominent than a model of debate that introduces elements of uncertainty into the curriculum – one where the teacher is also caught by surprise by the way the arguments unfold and the way a decision is reached.

Many people view the introduction of debate as the introduction of the possibility of horrible choices that wouldn’t be available to think about if they were not offered up for consideration. It’s not a straw person: Debate is regularly used around the world by educators as a steam valve for resistance, and a creative way to ensure the best possible compliance to authority – that is, false choice freely chosen, authority filled in with reasons from the bottom-up.

Debate’s service to oppression and domination is regular and consistent – like writing, or mathematics, or history, it has the capacity to serve as a tool that helps terrible ends as often as good. There are two levels of this that I’ve thought of, and there might be more, but the two I want to explore are the use of debate to get people to assist in their own subjugation to dominant ideology, and the co-opting of debating into a useless game of the privileged, stripped of its power to be revolutionary or productive toward alternative ends.

Some of the ways around this are to not plan debates as the result of research. Often teachers will have students engage in vigorous research on an issue, and the debate becomes the cap or end product of that research. This renders debate toothless, as the evaluation process is not on persuasion or conviction or moving minds, but on the presentation of research. Debate is reduced in these cases to a science fair poster board. It’s the content delivery mechanism for truths discovered elsewhere.

To engage those who have had a negative debating experience like this is difficult. This is why it is essential to always include discussion of debate as epistemology vibrant in any conversation about debate. Most of the time it’s easy to get sidetracked by discussing the competition, or weird arguments, but debate as a way of knowing should be made prominent as well. The result of such inclusion is a debate practice that can be on par with other forms of knowing in the university – such as science, mathematics, history, and the like. 

The only debate epistemological defense that gets offered these days is the skill-based one: Debate provides training in research skills, the skills of democratic decision making, etc. This is not the level of epistemology that we should be talking about. Good teaching in debating allows people to see how participation in debate reveals ideas, methods, and actions that nobody thought were possible before the debate began. Good consideration of debate as epistemic is one where people, performing the role of committed advocates in a controversy, reveal to an audience through discourse that there are many more possibilities than the research indicated. Such possibilities can only come out through the performance of a debate. 

This authentic acceptance and engagement with uncertainty is not popular – no teacher that I have ever worked with in debating is willing to accept uncertainty in the classroom head on. I think it is because uncertainty can also be coded as a lack of discipline, a lack of focus, planning, etc – and a threat to teacher power. It’s an unfortunate accidental read of the situation. 

Introducing uncertainty and letting debate be the method for exploring or determining the nature of uncertainty is the primary way that debate can be offered as an epistemological approach. With everyone sharing what they know of a situation, and disagreeing about alternate accounts, the teacher maintains that authority not by rigging the game, but by being a good executive of what the class decides. Holding them to the decision makes the debate not more contentious, but more careful.  One way of practicing this approach might be to use David Bohm’s method of Dialogue. Although not referencing or indicating any familiarity with debate as a competitive school activity, Bohm nails a lot of the reasoning behind many of the features that debate has when in an educational environment (or appended to an educational institution). 

Debate is only as good as those who are working with and in it. Continuation of the conversation of the value of debate as epistemology is essential for the defense and health of debate in the face of a vast number of people who have only been spun as a top within debate as a tactic of domination, a way for those who are at the top of society make it appear the result of a natural and reasonable decision. Resistance to this sort of use of debate must be paramount in any preservation of debating as a valuable part of schooling. 

For the past three years, I have come to Houston at the end of July to teach and learn at the Houston Urban Debate League summer institute. I was invited to help introduce non-American derived debating to the students and teachers here, and I accepted. I rank that decision as one of the best I’ve made in my life. It’s a wonderful program with wonderful students and a great way to welcome the end of the summer and a return of the academic year. I took this photo on the University of Houston campus last summer. Next week the camp starts up again, and I’m getting very excited to see what the week has in store for us. 

The summer debate camp is a very American thing. Normally, at the high school level, the objective to having it is pretty clear – get a leg up on the competitive year by doing research, having some practice debates, and focusing on debate when there’s nothing else to really get in the way, such as all the obligations that appear during the regular school year. 

I feel that the summer debate institute is a waste of an opportunity if it does not also focus on the larger aspects of debate practice – that when you practice debating, you are practicing being a particular kind of subject, a particular kind of ethical being in the world, and that practice has implications that go well beyond winning a big tournament.

Debate summer institute is one of the few places where we can sit down and openly discuss what we get out of practicing it, and what we should get out of practicing it. Without the tournament pushing and squeezing the air out of the room, debate practitioners can explore the many ways that debate has influenced their agency, their being, their thoughts – everything. It’s also a great place to locate and explore connections to the larger world of discourse. Debate is a tiny part of this universe, but when doing the tournament shuffle, one can easily substitute debating as the set of “all valuable discourse” – which leads to disaster once you take a breath and speak to other intelligent people who do not participate in the practice of debating. 

This spring I was invited to teach at a college debate summer institute, and it was an exciting possibility – but I wondered what I could offer. I have little to no interest in teaching people tricks and tips for tournament victory. I have even less interest in trying to figure out how to approach a motion. My interests are in the relationship between the person and that same person, practicing debate. How much space is there? What does it consist of? When you are practicing debate, are you your identity, or are you some other? 

Are debate practitioners enlightened critical minds or people who just speak a different language from other critical thinkers? Is debate helpful or harmful to the traditional model of politics that we have adopted in the US? What is the nature and function of research in casual debates among peers? I feel like these questions should be the questions that a summer institute should include in its programs. Such questions, if thought about and worked on, or – in my favorite phrasing, if they are used as a point of departure for our normative claims – would radically alter tournament norms and practices. They would have to. Judges can only judge what debaters do in debates. That’s how all of our practices to this point came to be. Debaters’ careful reflection (or uncareful adoption of norms in order to win) are the thing that shapes what debate tournaments are, which shape our understanding of debating.

The point of the debate institute is not to make people better at winning tournaments, but to make people better at debate. This includes being better at understanding the scope and scale of debate as a system of practices designed to improve the self. Debate will not serve to improve the self if it is always focused on the tournament victory as the only endpoint of practice.

The HUDL debate institute does this in a very creative way, hosting programs for the students in the evening where people from community politics, the practice of law, and other realms come to host discussion panels, talks, or presentations about the city and communities they live in. These presentations keep the work done during the day on debating in a context of outside community and the city. This raises important questions about the distinctions between advocacy designed for a tournament and advocacy designed for a courtroom. 

Instead of a smooth process of “do these three things and you will win,” summer debate institutes should be the place where we step back from tournament competition and consider the gaps, the spaces, and the people that we become when we practice debate. A practice changes a person, and reflection on that practice and those changes are essential to the recognition and appreciation of what debate does for us. 

For the past three years, I have come to Houston at the end of July to teach and learn at the Houston Urban Debate League summer institute. I was invited to help introduce non-American derived debating to the students and teachers here, and I accepted. I rank that decision as one of the best I’ve made in my life. It’s a wonderful program with wonderful students and a great way to welcome the end of the summer and a return of the academic year. I took this photo on the University of Houston campus last summer. Next week the camp starts up again, and I’m getting very excited to see what the week has in store for us. 

The summer debate camp is a very American thing. Normally, at the high school level, the objective to having it is pretty clear – get a leg up on the competitive year by doing research, having some practice debates, and focusing on debate when there’s nothing else to really get in the way, such as all the obligations that appear during the regular school year. 

I feel that the summer debate institute is a waste of an opportunity if it does not also focus on the larger aspects of debate practice – that when you practice debating, you are practicing being a particular kind of subject, a particular kind of ethical being in the world, and that practice has implications that go well beyond winning a big tournament.

Debate summer institute is one of the few places where we can sit down and openly discuss what we get out of practicing it, and what we should get out of practicing it. Without the tournament pushing and squeezing the air out of the room, debate practitioners can explore the many ways that debate has influenced their agency, their being, their thoughts – everything. It’s also a great place to locate and explore connections to the larger world of discourse. Debate is a tiny part of this universe, but when doing the tournament shuffle, one can easily substitute debating as the set of “all valuable discourse” – which leads to disaster once you take a breath and speak to other intelligent people who do not participate in the practice of debating. 

This spring I was invited to teach at a college debate summer institute, and it was an exciting possibility – but I wondered what I could offer. I have little to no interest in teaching people tricks and tips for tournament victory. I have even less interest in trying to figure out how to approach a motion. My interests are in the relationship between the person and that same person, practicing debate. How much space is there? What does it consist of? When you are practicing debate, are you your identity, or are you some other? 

Are debate practitioners enlightened critical minds or people who just speak a different language from other critical thinkers? Is debate helpful or harmful to the traditional model of politics that we have adopted in the US? What is the nature and function of research in casual debates among peers? I feel like these questions should be the questions that a summer institute should include in its programs. Such questions, if thought about and worked on, or – in my favorite phrasing, if they are used as a point of departure for our normative claims – would radically alter tournament norms and practices. They would have to. Judges can only judge what debaters do in debates. That’s how all of our practices to this point came to be. Debaters’ careful reflection (or uncareful adoption of norms in order to win) are the thing that shapes what debate tournaments are, which shape our understanding of debating.

The point of the debate institute is not to make people better at winning tournaments, but to make people better at debate. This includes being better at understanding the scope and scale of debate as a system of practices designed to improve the self. Debate will not serve to improve the self if it is always focused on the tournament victory as the only endpoint of practice.

The HUDL debate institute does this in a very creative way, hosting programs for the students in the evening where people from community politics, the practice of law, and other realms come to host discussion panels, talks, or presentations about the city and communities they live in. These presentations keep the work done during the day on debating in a context of outside community and the city. This raises important questions about the distinctions between advocacy designed for a tournament and advocacy designed for a courtroom. 

Instead of a smooth process of “do these three things and you will win,” summer debate institutes should be the place where we step back from tournament competition and consider the gaps, the spaces, and the people that we become when we practice debate. A practice changes a person, and reflection on that practice and those changes are essential to the recognition and appreciation of what debate does for us. 

Just finishing up the amazing book, Organizing Enlightenment and it has surpassed my expectations which were pretty high. The book chronicles the history of the formation of the research university in Europe, and the reasons behind it. The short version is that the Ph.D. oriented research university that we all know and some of us love more than others was a reaction to perceived information overload.

The ethos of books and printed matter was eroding in the 18th century. The transformation of books from the source of knowledge to commodities created a crisis in confidence about information. The university was the technology that stepped in to move the ethos of information away from a collection of print to an ethic – a group of people committed to working on a particular ethic of knowing – and through that commitment, they can know which books are valuable and which are not. But collecting books and memorizing them no longer served as the site of knowledge. The university community was that site. 

Long after that came the American Land-Grant college project, which gave land and resources to create huge state colleges and universities on the principle that the university creates things that are not only valuable to those who don’t attend the university or work there – the members of society. Many land-grant colleges worked in tandem with farmers and engineers to test designs and do experiments that would benefit them, change methods, or test out ideas they always wanted to try themselves, but the stakes were too high.

After reading this book, I feel an essential tension exists at the university today – the tension between creating ethical subjects of knowledge and providing a social and societal benefit seem like they could be at odds anyway, but add to the mix that most universities are now focused on student careers, individual “branding” of students, and spending a lot of resources showing them how to get internships, write cover letters, and other menial tasks. University as job-placement center doesn’t clash with these two larger aspirations – it erases them. 

Faculty are also caught in the echoes of this rhetorical DNA of the university, often adrift to find a viable identity outside of publishing niche essays that are barely readable in journals that have no coherence from essay to essay, which are hardly read as a journal, but serve more as repositories for resources for future journal creation. It’s like the verbal version of the sci-fi clone organ farm come to life. 

What we need is a faculty-led move to make the university an agent of intervention again. Organizing Enlightenment shows how a few thinkers managed to be convincing that the orientation of the university should move away from books to people as the locus of knowledge. The land-grant project still haunts us – are our graduates the only social benefit we produce? This essential tension – between serving students who we are to make the ethical loci of knowledge vs. the obligation to also benefit society through our work and research – should be the focus of faculty intervention. And it can be a great source, historically rooted, with which to fight administrations who are dug into the perspective that the university should be engaged in job-placement services across the board. 

There are many ways to do this, more than there are faculty I bet. But the important thing is not to find the solution, but to think about that essential tension in everything we teach and write. The faculty need to adopt an ethic of knowing first, and there’s no better way to do that than through practicing it in little ways, every day.