Debate is a practice of understanding human relationships through words, and relating the human beings you are speaking to and with to the ideas and information you find meaningful and valuable. To do this one must be able to practice some level of disconnect to one’s own convictions, which many find unnerving. (Llano 2021)
provides respect and familiarity with the process of creating meaning within uncertainty.
explores what’s possible
is the process of engaging in evaluating ideas through the use of words, primarily oral (Llano 2021)
assigning sides on an issue randomly to participants. Divorced from their own conviction, they engage in a process of building a strong case for their side rather than honing in on what they believe to be true. This exercise separates claims of something being true from something being persuasive. (Llano 2021)
Like facts, the remediation of debate back into the accepted educational practices of writing and reading is not an ending point, but a starting point for the larger conversation of what we mean when we try to say what we think is important. (Llano 2021)
. . .
Liberal ironists are those opposed to cruelty but who do not rely upon a metaphorical universal truth to back their claim and have the strength to face the (ironic) tentativeness of their own values, the arbitrariness of life, and contingencies of history. (Rorty 1989)
If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. (Popper 1945/2013, p. 581)
Each week, I seek out the office hours of a philosophy department professor willing to discuss with me complex ethical questions raised by her course on gender and sexuality. We keep our voices low, as if someone might overhear us. (Camp 2022)
According to a 2021 survey administered by College Pulse of over 37,000 students at 159 colleges, 80 percent of students self-censor at least some of the time. Forty-eight percent of undergraduate students described themselves as “somewhat uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” with expressing their views on a controversial topic in the classroom. At U.Va., 57 percent of those surveyed feel that way. (Camp 2022)
Brad Wilcox, a sociology professor here, told me that he believes that two factors have caused self-censorship’s pervasiveness. “First, students are afraid of being called out on social media by their peers,” he said. “Second, the dominant messages students hear from faculty, administrators and staff are progressive ones. So they feel an implicit pressure to conform to those messages in classroom and campus conversations and debates.” (Camp 2022)
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