Rules of engagement

Those who tuned in for one or more of the 12 debates during the primary season might have felt something similar to what John Kasich voiced during the February South Carolina CBS News debate. Surrounded by a flurry of ad hominem attacks and non sequiturs haphazardly hurled by his fellow debaters, he lamented, “This is just crazy. This is just nuts. Jeez, oh man.” A cynic might claim that Governor Kasich was just trying to earn some easy contrast points against his opponents. A more charitable person, however, might argue that he was making a statement about the declining health of debate in both the Republican primaries and the country at large.

If the second person were right, Kasich would have a point. Debate, once a calmer ordeal, is now often characterized by frenetic melees of insults and one-liners—it has devolved into fancy bickering. Three main factors, among others, are to blame for its deterioration. First, common debate has been reduced to loose exchanges of barbed soundbites. It has become more valuable to spit out twenty seconds of cheap, witty diatribe than to consider and respond to opposing arguments. Second, extending that: debaters often fail to actually engage with each other. Their attacks run like skew lines—endlessly progressing, but never interacting. Third, people have accepted fallacies as a norm in debate. Hyperboles, straw men and rhetorical bunkum that once would have drawn due scorn are now considered fair game.

The decay of debate has been especially pernicious for the Duke campus. Although the political diversity of the student body—an amalgam of liberals, libertarians, socialists and more—ought to be a boon to the intellectual environment, a failure on the part of most parties to engage in substantive debate has instead turned it into fuel for campus-wide shouting matches. Groups and persons who adamantly disagree with each other throw around rhetoric high in volume but low in substance. As they become frustrated with others’ futile arguments, their negativity percolates through the general atmosphere of the university, poisoning the air and breeding a climate of hostility and disrespect.

Fortunately, that atmosphere can be cleared by taking a couple of clear, discrete steps to improve debate and dialogue at Duke. To begin with, each student can take it upon his/her self to improve the quality and variety of information they ingest. As we’ve written earlier, consuming a poor diet of news sources makes it difficult to add value to conversations and debates. That often leads to the loud rehashing of low-value talking points and limits the constructive back-and-forth nature of good debate. Next, students can slow down the pace of debates and remain mindful of their words. The three factors leading to bad debate described previously often make an appearance when people work themselves into a frenzy of opinionated fervor, grow indignant at others and become sloppy in their hastiness to rebut arguments, turning a potentially meaningful debate into little more than an exchange of guff-filled invectives. Slowing debates down allows people to keep calm and incisive, avoiding stormy emotions.

Duke students are as intelligent as they are impassioned. Setting down and following ground rules for debate will allow that intelligence to shine and will generally benefit the intellectual climate of the campus. Protester or reactionary, liberal or conservative, standard bearer or apathetic bystander—everyone can agree that a change in the standards of debate stands to offer a breath of fresh air.