Harvard Debate

NESTLED IN a basement grotto in Quincy House is the cluttered headquarters of the Harvard University Debate Council. In this room, unnoticed by the rest of the University, undergraduate debaters devote countless hours to preparation for a national schedule of tournaments. In 1961 and 1969 their efforts brought Harvard the Sigurd Larmon trophy, intercollegiate debate's Stanley Cup.

This year the Debate Council deserves a note of congratulations for producing yet another national championship team. Winning the American Forensic Association's National Debate Tournament were Charles E. Garvin '74 of Mather House and Jackson, Miss., and Greg A. Rosenbaum '74 of Quincy House and Toledo, Ohio. Mark G. Arnold, a 1970 graduate of Oberlin College, coached the pair.

Harvard's varsity record over the year was the finest in the University's history. In fact, the team has one of the three best intercollegiate debate records ever compiled. Out of twelve major tournaments attended during the regular season, Garvin and Rosenbaum placed in all of them, and won top honors at six, including contests at MIT, the University of Kentucky, the University of Georgia, Emory University, Marrietta College and Dartmouth College.

On the basis of this performance, Harvard was selected as the nation's top team by a committee of the American Forensic Association, and seeded first in the National Debate Tournament held this April at the Air Force Academy. Harvard's victory at the tournament represents the first time in eight years that an intercollegiate team has been able both to dominate national competition during the regular season, and then to emerge on top at the nationals. One rival coach wrote, "Many times in the past the best team in the nation has not won the NDT. This year it did."

The skills demonstrated by the Harvard team in winning this championship encompass qualities very different from the debater's stereotyped image as a William F. Buckley-type of verbal gymnast. Instead, academic debate has been evolving toward emphasis on such scholarly values as thoroughness of research and analytic depth. Although presentation is still important, academic debate today is much more a practical exercise in the techniques of evaluating public policy than a contest in rhetorical and persuasive skills. Ideally, tournament debate may be viewed as a laboratory in which alternative ideas generated by the social sciences are subjected to the test of hostile criticism, although many debates fall short of this standard.

National debate topics are traditionally selected from among very broad social and foreign policy questions, with affirmative teams free to narrow their analysis to specific issues. For example, this year's resolution that "the federal government should control the supply and utilization of energy in the United States" was often interpreted in individual debates to mean that the Congress should ban nuclear power plants, pass strict coal mine safety legislation, enforce energy conservation measures, or restructure controls on air pollution resulting from power generation and use. The need to cover a large number of issues in depth demands a staggering amount of research.

Compounding this research burden is the emphasis on empiricism which characterizes tournament debate. Following the lead of economic and public policy research, standards of proof in academic debate have become increasingly quantitative. The last two years have witnessed the rise of statistical methodology as an important issue in many debate rounds.

The outcome of all this preparation is a form of cost-benefit analysis, where successive rebuttal opportunities help weed out poorly - reasoned and insufficiently-documented arguments. Teams succeed or fail on their ability to produce and defend concrete and empirically demonstrable advantages and disadvantages for particular proposals.

In the context of debate's evolution toward social science research, Garvin and Rosenbaum's accomplishment is more than an elecutionary victory or a shown of virtuosity in an isolated game. Debate's peculiar value is as a forum for the intensive testing of policy alternatives. For their demonstrated ability with this form of policy evaluation, the members of Harvard's championship team merit a great deal of respect.