Curative Debate
A Commitment to Campus Bridge Building
Through the Global Debate Fund, NYU paticipates in competitive debate, community service and curative debate. Curative debate fosters dialogic strategies to encourage bridge buidling between parties, especially when they appear be deeply divided.
Toxic polarization has moved beyond the political arena to impact universities, houses of worship and relationships with family and friends, faculty. Too many exchanges revolve around scoring points rather than advancing the discussion.
Israel/Gaza placed universities in the crossfire on questions of free speech and safety and dialogic activities with their students, parents, donors and the federal government. With individuals from hundreds of countries and backgrounds, disagreements at elite universities are inevitable and should be celebrated as the product of a robust, academic enterprise. Whether those disagreements make a community toxic or healthy comes down to communicating across chasms of difference.
Institutions faced a gap in their preparation to engage in hard conversations much less prepare professors, administrators and student groups with the strategy and grammar needed. Traditonal debate practices can assist in navigating divisive issues countering misinformation from social media and deloping a vocabulary for constiuencies to communicate better.
To create a campus of student and faculty leaders, we must equip individuals with the ability to engage, listen to and navigate among those whose ideas and starting points may be radically different from their own. Curative Debate provides safe spaces for contentious conversations essential to appreciating each other's perspectives. The premise of switch side debate (described on the right) is the need to understand and anticipate the strongest arguments and rebut them.
Making understanding the goal is paramount. Replacing the win/lose incentive with the incentive to truly be heard invites parties to contextualize their lived experiences with compelling reasoning and evidence. The better we know each other's stories, the closer we are to respecting our differences even when we still disagree..
SSD - Cornerstone of the Curative Debate model
Switch-side debate (SSD) refers to teams defending both sides of the topic in alternating rounds at tournaments. Success mandates extensive research, listening effectively to opposing arguments and framing the most persuasive case for the judges. Students develop defenses to attacks crafted by top coaches at Wake Forest, Emory, NYU, Harvard, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Michigan and other elite programs.
Casey Harrigan's thesis cites the benefits of SSD observed over 70 years stating: SSD has been lauded for fostering tolerance and undermining bigotry and dogmatism (Muir, 1993), creating stronger and more knowledgeable advocates (Dybvig and Iversion, 2000), and fortifying the social forces of democracy by guaranteeing the expression of minority viewpoints (Day, 1966).
As a leader in the Urban Debate movement, when students pushed to include their lived experiences in debates on domestic and international policy, Baker helped develop a grammar to persuade judges with divergent worldviews of its relevance. In college debate, Baker trained people of all ethnicities, races and political affiliations to debate disability, queerness, capitalism, settler colonialism, antiblackness. The NYU team didn't hold diversity training sessions. Students were incentivized by competitive success which required rigorous preparation. The result was deeper understanding even when they disagreed. His methods were recgonized by many awards including the Melissa Maxcy Wade Service Award for Debate as a Public Good from Emory University (pictured above).
Working as both a debate coach and management consultant, Will Baker saw the potential for wider applications of SSD beyond debate. Whether it's the Brooklyn Public Library or a Wall Street hedge fund, effective organizations need mechanisms to compare ideas, develop better solutions, increase understanding and settle differences. He incorporated it into trainings at churches, NGOs, corporate partners, and global conferences in London, Iksan City, South Korea, and across North America.
Many of the world’s greatest crises are traceable to the inability of individuals to resolve their differences constructively.
Baker coined the phrase Curative Debate to emphasize the difference between debating and arguing and position open debate as an essential part of the solution not the problem. Curative debate provides a viable framework to disagree without being disrespectful.
Depolarization research concludes that the most effective strategies develop methods for engaging, listening and cooperating. It is imperative that we learn to disagree better by fostering inquiry not hate. Institutions can choose from a a suite of training options focused on critical thinking, refutation, effective listening, cross examination, research and issue framing.to design a customized structure that encompasses the major drivers of the conflict and empower change agents. Experts are deployed as facilitators and guides or when the parties are too far apart, debaters who can conduct demonstration debates initially to establish baselines for trust and dialogue.
The model designs tools for exchanges on deeply-rooted conflicts across communities. Whether the goal is peace or policy change, the process always starts with one person persuading another that they have a good idea worth pursuing and galvanizing support for change to begin the healing.
NYU CEDA Statement on Difference
The multi-racial, multi-ethinic roster of NYU CEDA stands in solidarity with everyone;s right to have their own opinions heard and respected. We acknowledge those battling centuries of violence and exploitation fueled by a climate of intolerance. Systems of power embedded in our laws and norms intensify polarization, poverty and the politics of fear weighing heavily on communities nationwide of every politcal and racial make-up.
Our debaters spend their weekends exploring questions of public policy action on domestic and international issues intermeshed with social, economic and racial injustice using in-depth, well-researched evidence from scholars, journalists and advocates from all sides. Debaters and coaches should use our agency to a) encourage listening and respect even when we may disagree b) hold ourselves and others accountable for how and where we communicate c) raise awareness about detecting disinformation & bias in reporting, in goverment and on social media and d) help introduce vocabulary to have hard conversations across chasms of difference that echo demands of the voiceless across America.
The distinction between demonizing and difference makers is sometimes quite small. We are destined to make mistakes along the way. That’s not a reason to hide. It’s a call to listen, illuminate, give grace and learn.
A nation was transfixed by the story of George Floyd. That led many to learn the stories ofTamir Rice, Eric Garner, and so many others. Since then, our people observed unfolding crises in Ukraine and Gaza, increases in antiqueer, anti-Asian, antisemitic anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim behaviors by indepednent and goverment actors. Lives are being brutally cut short. Others are silenced, censored and excluded from the marketplace of ideas. All of us need storytellers, interpreters, and most of all advocactes who are willing to persuade, object, and push each of us to reasoned, empathic discourse for a better tomorrow.
We encourage all NYU teams, departments and organizations, as well as debate programs at other institutions, to devote some of their digital real estate to demanding more from those in our networks. . Every small step improves our chances to be heard and achieve a better world.
