UTNIF Debate

UTNIF Website Under Construction

2011-09-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

The www.utdebatecamp.com site is currently under re-construction.

Check back for 2012 camp dates and program information.

Star Hustler talks IFOs

2011-08-01T15:34:00.001-07:00

Session 1 files working link

2011-07-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

http://db.tt/wppO8iM

Session 2 files...

2011-07-16T23:19:00.000-07:00

...will be accessible here.

UTNIF Session 1 - Topic Lectures

2011-07-15T13:51:00.000-07:00

ORION STEELE - Cal State Fullerton - INTRO TO SPACE

UTNIF 2011 Topic Lecture Series -- Orion Steele from UTNIF on Vimeo.

CLAIRE MCKINNEY - The Kinkaid School/University of Chicago - TOPICALITY

UTNIF 2011 Topic Lecture Series -- Claire McKinney from UTNIF on Vimeo.

RICKY GARNER - Harvard/SUNY Buffalo - AFFS ON THE TOPIC PART 1

UTNIF 2011 Topic Lecture Series -- Ricky from UTNIF on Vimeo.

ALYSSA LUCAS BOLIN - UNLV/UNT - HISTORY OF SPACE POLICY

2011 UTNIF Topic Lecture Series -- Alyssa from UTNIF on Vimeo.

MISAEL GONZALES - Trinity University - AFFS ON THE TOPIC PART 2

2011 UTNIF Topic Lecture Series -- Misael from UTNIF on Vimeo.

UTNIF Session one neg files

2011-07-08T19:12:00.000-07:00

All the .doc versions of the UTNIF session one negative files can be found here.

NASA’s space shuttle images

2011-07-07T08:23:00.000-07:00

NASA’s space shuttle images

NASA spacecraft offers detailed views of Saturn's Great White Spot

2011-07-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

NASA spacecraft offers detailed views of Saturn's Great White Spot

Lab Gifts!!

2011-06-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

Bryan, Flynn, and I are very grateful for these books our students gave us today. Hopefully we can learn how to implement gentle discipline in the Sophomore Select lab.

What a great group of debaters we have this summer at the UTNIF!!!!

HOME

2011-06-29T11:44:00.000-07:00

Fake till you make it

2011-06-29T08:47:00.000-07:00

2011-06-28T18:39:00.000-07:00

Sophomore Select: 2011

2011 UTNIF T SHIRT

2011-06-28T16:41:00.000-07:00

Topic Lecture Files

2011-06-26T01:12:00.001-07:00

Claire's topicality lecture powerpoint: Here

A-L-B's Prezi on Affs

.doc Versions of Starter Pack

2011-06-26T00:54:00.001-07:00

Starter Pack Files - UTNIF 2011 First Session

2011-06-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

Mars Mission

China Cooperation

Reusable Launch Vehicle

SKFTA & 2AC Link Turn

Still Accepting Applications

2011-06-14T08:13:00.000-07:00

Time is running out, but WE ARE STILL ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR ALL UTNIF programs. Please contact us ASAP to reserve yourself a spot. It is shaping up to be another great summer. We are happy to have added Orion Steele, former Redlands debater, 2 time First Round at Large bid recipient to the NDT, and current coach at Cal State Fullerton, to our Session 1 staff. Contact J.V. Reed at jv.reed@mail.utexas.edu for last minute applications.

Blake Johnson asks: Why Are You Losing to Framework?

2011-05-05T08:19:00.000-07:00

Why Are You Losing to Framework?

The thing about being a K debater (especially in high school) is that 90% of the arguments your opponents make will be the same from one round to the next. The other thing about being a K debater is that you’re probably lazy. Only the latter can be blamed for you losing to teams with generic K frontlines who put no real thought into the particular argument that you’re making in executing their readymade strategy against it.

Read all of that again and ask yourself this question: “why am I losing to framework?!”

The Big Picture: Two Notes

1. Basically all framework arguments reduce to one of two: fairness or education. I’m pretty sure I’ve not heard a “standard” or “reason to prefer” that isn’t ultimately an internal link to one of those two impacts.

1a.) The thing to remember about fairness is that there are no rules to debate – hence no objective expectations of how a debate round should go down. To appeal to certain routines as neutral is to ignore the history of how they became routinized. This is especially true in debate, where the question of what is fair has never been settled, but has always been an evolving question, the source of conflict. This history is important – just as conservatives claim your K moots the 1ac, they once cried that the PIC was topical, that the counterplan stole the aff, even that the disad wasn’t intrinsic to the plan.

1b.) The thing to remember about education is that you can call anything that. It is almost never a question of simply whether you can learn anything at all, but rather what you learn about.

2. Some K debaters realize number 1 and handle it by arguing in favor of prioritizing one impact (typically education) over the other (typically fairness). That’s not bad, but not great either. Any GOOD K debater will write the K so as to include a component that challenges the traditional understanding of what fairness and education are, so as to upset the terminal impact calculus of the opponent.

An example or two:

If I were writing a cap K, it would certainly include a component that said that traditional debates about the topic area took for granted and/or reinforced the ideology of global capitalism. This would allow me to say that their arguments about fairness were just appeals to the traditional ways of solving problems which all amount to stabilizing capitalism. I could also say that their education is bad education, which trains us to be passive technocrats in a genocidal global economy. I would say that the alternative is a way to invent new ways of doing things, routinize new methods, make new things seem normal (fair), and produce new kinds of education.

If I were writing a fem K I would include a similar component that allowed me to say that their ideas about fairness only make sense if you assume the neutrality of an overtly masculinized way of looking at politics. Their model of education doesn’t teach us how to solve problems, it teaches us how to treat them within the same epistemological frame that gave rise to them in the first place.

All the Small Things…

The way that you handle specific FW args should depend on the particular K you’re deploying. That said, here’s a little bit of general thinking on their silliness to jog your mindball…

Predictability. This is the best example of the fair = routine argument I explained above. What is predictable in debate is only what we’ve done so many times as to expect its repetition. There is no value in doing something over and over again if it doesn’t produce good results. The point of the K is that we should routinize new approaches rather than repeating disastrous ones.
I also don’t really think that this is that huge of an internal link to fairness. “We don’t have a file on it” doesn’t mean “we can’t debate it.” You wouldn’t make the same argument against a politics scenario you haven’t researched. Think! Be smart! Debate!

Competitive Equity. This is a joke. Look at the state of debate. Their model of competition doesn’t produce an equal playing field! It results in the same handful of teams winning the TOC year in and out. Theirs is the neoliberal model of equality – if everyone competes on this artificially designed but unregulated playing field, benefits will be distributed justly. Works out in debate just like in the real world – those with the most resources dominate those with fewer. Ask any successful small college program from the last 10 years – most win with the K.

Limits. They sound like just what they are – constraints on political imagination. The point of the K is always that X limits politics to itself – the alt is about redrawing the lines.

Roleplaying. Surely there is a question about what roles we should play, right? All of our link arguments prove that we come out of the other end of your particular experiment worse off.

Aff Choice. This one is so stupid that I almost didn’t include it. It’s not shotgun! You can’t just “call it!”

Jurisdiction. Again, the point of the K is to call into question where “jurisdiction” lies.

Moots the 1ac. No it doesn’t! It directly challenges the 1AC! You wrote the damn thing and did so taking for granted that (American exceptionalism, neoliberalism, environmental control, etc) was good. Without that presumption, no part of the 1ac makes sense. Now defend that presumption!

Debate Will Die. Don’t be so arrogant. We’re not that special. Debate has survived tons of innovation. Your argument is empirically stupid.

Sartre Wars

2011-04-27T16:32:00.000-07:00

Jean Paul Sartre has never made too big of a splash in debate. Debaters have tended toward the post - Sartrean french intellectual crowd (Foucault, Deleuze) or the Guy Debord (and the Baudrillardian d/e/volution of Debord ) strain of thinking. Even still, it was too much to resist re-posting this attempt to combine french philosphy and S P A C E.

Early Days of "the K" # 7: Georgia BN vs Texas BE - 2NR AND 2AR

2011-04-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

This is the final installment of the 1995 NDT Octafinals debate between Georgia BN and Texas BE.

The 2NR - Jon Brody from Texas:

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs. Texas BE - 2NR from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post 2NR Commentary from Brian McBride and Joel Rollins:

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs Texas BE - Post 2NR Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

The 2AR from Georgia's Paul Barseness:

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs. Texas BE - 2AR from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post 2AR Commentary by Joel Rollins and Brian McBride:

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs Texas BE - Post 2AR Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

A Few UTNIF Announcements

2011-04-27T12:29:00.000-07:00

Tell your friends to pull themselves together and send in their applications. Don't find yourself in the midst of some giant monstrosity of a lab at another workshop. Join us in Austin for some hard work and good fun. A few things to keep in mind and pass on to your friends and teammates:

1. Remember that the initial registration deadline is May 1. After May 1 applications will still be accepted but there is a late registration fee added to the tuition price of $100.

2. There are still a few spaces left in the Sophomore Select lab taught by Nick Fiori and Brian McBride (and assisted by Flynn Makuch.) Please contact J.V. Reed (jv.reed@mail.utexas.edu) to inquire about applying. One of Fiori's teams from Damien just won the NDCA National Tournament, so if you think you could benefit from the instruction of a champion coach, you might want to take this opportunity.

3. Consider the 6 Week Summer Survivors. At $5200 it is one of the best deals around for a time-expansive summer camp experience. Ricky Garner, former CEDA National Champion and current coach for Harvard debate, is a hard working instructor who will work the lab hard as well. If you want a close-knit, intensive summer experience in a lab that will dig deep and cut a copious amount of high quality cards, this lab is for you. Led with 6 week survivor alum and former NAUDL and NFL champion Misael Gonzalez, the Survivors is not to be missed.

4. The Session 1 Topic Intensive lab will be taught by the University of Oklahoma's Blake Johnson and Claire McKinney of the Kinkaid school. A solid pairing that will be capable of leading students to both policy and kritikal successes.

5. The Session 2 Topic Intensive lab will be taught by Blake Johnson and former Georgetown University debater Max Hantel. Again, a pairing well-schooled in both policy and kritikal styles of debating.

Early Days of "the K" # 6: Georgia BN vs Texas BE - 1AR

2011-04-25T12:22:00.000-07:00

Georgia BN vs. Texas BE in the 1995 NDT Octafinals. Here is the 1AR from Georgia's Len Neighbors and post - speech commentary by Brian McBride and Joel Rollins.

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs Texas BE - 1AR from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post 1 AR Commentary from Rollins and McBride:

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs Texas BE - Post 1AR Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Early Days of "the K" # 5: Georgia BN vs Texas BE - 1NR

2011-04-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

Here is the 1NR from Texas' Eric Emerson. This is a 1995 Octafinals debate between Georgia BN and Texas BE:

Georgia BN vs. Texas BE 1NR from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post 1NR Commentary by Joel Rollins and Brian McBride:

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs Texas BE Post 1NR Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Early Days of "the K" # 4: Georgia BN vs Texas BE 2NC

2011-04-21T17:49:00.000-07:00

The 1995 Octafinals debate between Georgia BN and Texas BE continues with the 2NC from Texas' Jon Brody :

1995 NDT Octafinals. Georgia BN vs Texas BE 2NC from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post-2NC Commentary by Brian McBride and Joel Rollins:

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs Texas BE - Post 2NC Commentary by Joel Rollins and Brian McBride from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Cross Examination of Jon Brody by Paul Barseness:

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs Texas BE CX of the 2NC from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post CX Commentary by Brian McBride and Joel Rollins:

1995 NDT. Georgia BN vs. Texas BE Post CX of 2NC Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Congratulations to Nick Fiori and Damien College Prep for their NDCA National Championship!

2011-04-20T12:14:00.001-07:00

Congratulations to Nick Fiori and the Damien College Prep team of Pablo Gannon and Nadeem Farooqi on their NDCA National Championship!

Pablo Gannon was also named top speaker at the tournament.

Nick Fiori will be teaching in the UTNIF Sophomore Select in the first session of this summer's UTNIF and the UTNIF Skills Intensive Session 2.

Early Days of "the K" # 3: Georgia BN vs Texas BE 2AC

2011-04-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

The the 2AC from Georgia's Paul Barseness, and, the Cross Examination of the 2AC by Eric Emerson of Texas. Both videos are followed by a commentary video from Rollins, McBride, Reed. Later in his debate career, Barseness would become an NDT finalist with Dan Davis. Eric Emerson is currently the Director of Debate at the Kinkaid School in Houston, Texas.

NDT 1995 - Octafinals - Georgia BN vs Texas BE 2AC - Paul Barseness:

Wayback Machine: 1995 NDT. Texas v Georgia. 2AC from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post 2AC Commentary by Joel Rollins, Brian McBride, J.V. Reed:

1995 NDT Octafinals. Georgia BN vs Texas BE- Post 2AC Commentary by Joel Rollins and Brian McBride from UTNIF on Vimeo.

NDT 1995 - Octafinals - Georgia BN vs Texas BE. CX of the 2AC - Eric Emerson CX's Paul Barseness:

Wayback Machine: 1995 NDT. Texas v Georgia. CX of the 2AC. from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post CX of the 2AC Commentary by Joel Rollins, Brian McBride, J.V. Reed:

1995 NDT Georgia BN vs. Texas BE POST CX OF 2AC Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Early Days of "the K" # 2 - Texas BE vs Georgia BN 1995

2011-04-14T13:17:00.000-07:00

The series continues with the 1NC from Texas' Eric Emerson, and, the Cross Examination of the 1NC by Len Neighbors from Georgia. Both videos are followed by a commentary video from Rollins, McBride, Reed.

NDT 1995 - Octafinals - Georgia BN vs Texas BE 1NC:

Wayback Machine: 1995 NDT. Texas v Georgia. 1NC from UTNIF on Vimeo.

1995 NDT Georgia BN vs Texas BE - Post 1NC Commentary by Joel Rollins and Brian McBride:

Georgia BN vs Texas BE Post 1NC Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

NDT 1995 - Octafinals - Georgia BN vs Texas BE Cross Ex of the 1NC:

1995 NDT Georgia BN vs Texas BE CX of the 1NC from UTNIF on Vimeo.

1995 NDT Georgia BN vs Texas BE - Commentary on the CX of the 1NC by Joel Rollins and Brian McBride:

Texas Be vs Georgia BN - Post CX of 1NC Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Early Days of "the K" #1 - Texas BE vs Georgia BN 1995 National Debate Tournament

2011-04-14T11:16:00.000-07:00

Today we are beginning a series of posts that will be of some historical interest to all you other debate nerds out there. We have dusted off and digitized an old VHS tape of a 1995 NDT Octafinals debate between the Georgia team of Paul Barseness and Len Neighbors and the Texas team of Jon Brody and Eric Emerson.

Each day, a new speech of the debate will be posted here along with another video post with commentary by Joel Rollins, Director of Debate at the University of Texas, Brian McBride, former University of Texas debater and current coach at USC, and myself, J.V. Reed, former Texas debater, current Texas coach, and director of the UTNIF (only occasional commentary by me, anyway, chiming in as the disembodied voice sounding off from behind the camera.)

The goal of this project isn't to laud the past and lament the present state of debate, or to re-live the good old days. The idea was to take an old debate featuring two very accomplished teams, watch it, critique it, and think a bit about where debating conventions were at in 1995 and what they've become in 2011. We think the results are thought provoking and make for an enjoyable viewing experience.

It is particularly interesting to have a window into the past and to see how K debating has changed on the Aff and the Neg. Debate conventions evolve rather quickly, often for the better. Even still, it is worthwhile to revisit old debates and see what might be learned from their juxtaposition with the debates we are currently competing in, coaching for and judging. At the time of this debate "the K" as an argument form had only been around for about 2 years. Because, the University of Texas was the chief instigator of this argumentative turn, this debate provides a good example of early K debate practices for review. The use of Foucauldian theory in debate, now quite commonplace, was a new innovation at the time this video was shot.

We hope you enjoy watching this series as much as we enjoyed making it.

Below, I will provide some basic introductory context for the debate featured in this series.

Year - 1995
Tournament - NDT
Host - West Georgia College

This debate is an OCTAFINALS debate. The title cards are incorrect - it is not the Quarters. (The editor for this project was summarily fired.)

Texas BE was the Number 5 First Round At Large team at the NDT. Georgia BN was the Number 13 First Round At Large team at the NDT.

Georgia BN was having a great tournament, racking up 7 wins and 18 ballots to earn the 3rd seed. Texas BE had emerged from the prelim's a bit bruised, as the 19th seed with 5 wins and 14 ballots.

Texas BE had won a close Double Octafinal debate vs the Emory team of Jamie McKown and Charlie Henn. Georgia BN had advanced through the Doubles without debating.

As anyone who has attended the NDT can attest, the level of competition and intensity is quite high. The intensity is further magnified by the sense that the debate one is judging or competing in, could be the competitors' very last debate ever. This debate had a senior on both of the teams competing - Jon Brody, the 2n from Texas, and, Len Neighbors, the 1A from Georgia.

The topic - RESOLVED: That the federal government should substantially change rules and/or statutes governing criminal procedure in federal courts in one or more of the following areas: pretrial detention, sentencing.

I believe that Georgia's affirmative was a new Aff, although they had run it earlier in the tournament. The Georgia Aff is concerned with the sentencing rules for attorneys who are held in contempt of court. Some attorneys are subject to what is called "summary sentencing" in which they are sentenced for their contempt offense, right there in the court, on the spot, by the same judge who has held them in contempt. Or at least that's what I gathered from listening to the 1AC.

You'll notice that much of the commentary from Joel and Brian in this first video revolves around the strategic value of this particular Aff vs. a Foucaultian "Disciplinary Power" argument. It was no secret that Brody and Emerson's preferred negative argument was Disciplinary Power, and Georgia's decision to run this particular Aff reflected that intel about Texas' typical 2NRs. For audiences new to this debate, the commentary should become clearer once the 1NC speech has been posted.

Viewers will likely get the most out of this series by flowing the debate, just as one would if you were an in-person spectator.

That's probably enough to get this thing started, so I will shut up for now and let the games begin!

The 1AC:

Wayback Machine: 1995 NDT Texas v Georgia - 1AC from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post 1AC commentary by Joel Rollins and Brian McBride:

Georgia BN vs Texas BE Post 1AC Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

CX of the 1AC:

Wayback Machine: 1995 NDT. Texas v Georgia. CX of 1AC from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Post CX Commentary by Joel Rollins and Brian McBride:

Georgia BN vs Texas BE Post 1AC Cross Ex Commentary from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Why are we always looking for new frontiers? An Arendtian Kritik of Space

2011-03-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

Claire McKinney

Inevitably, many, most, if not nearly all camps this year will write a security kritik and a Heidegger kritik, perhaps a capitalism kritik, and then leave it at that. These are tried and true literatures and unfortunately in coaching high school students on kritik, we rarely push the bounds for new literature to expand critical debates. In this post, I will suggest that perhaps there are other critical concerns that may be related to our well-tread kritiks, but open up different possibilities for kritik debate. I will argue that the work of Hannah Arendt may offer us a different standpoint from which to kritik the quest to explore space beyond the mesosphere. This post will not be filled with cards, but will discuss the general contours of the kritik and its strategic value.

Hannah Arendt, in The Human Condition, seeks to answer the question, what is the nature of human society and how has it reacted to unprecedented change in the modern age? The book, published in 1958, begins with a meditation on the meaning of the launching of Sputnik into space. She writes, “The immediate reaction, expressed on the spur of the moment, was relief about the first ‘step toward escape from men’s imprisonment to the earth.’” (1) Why do we have this desire to leave the earth? Arendt argues that it’s because of a deep desire to escape the human condition, which is the condition of plurality of human life, with its attendant uncertainty, spontaneity and uncontrollability. She speculates that,

It could be that we, who are earth-bound creatures and have begun to act as though we were dwellers of the universe, will forever be unable to understand, that is, to think and speak about the things which nevertheless we are able to do. In this case, it would be as though our brain, which constitutes the physical, material condition of our thoughts, were unable to follow what we do, so that from now on we would indeed need artificial machines to do our thinking and speaking. If it should turn out that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought have parted company for good, then we should indeed become the helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is. (The Human Condition, 3)

So here, we have several debate-worthy claims: the desire to escape the earth, left unexamined, will lead us to a position where we accept the technological solution to all problems, unable to critically evaluate for ourselves whether they create the type of life that allows thought and human action, leading to our subservience to murderous technological thought. Arendt forces us to think about what it means to be human as opposed to a mere biological life process and argues that if we leave technology unexamined politically (not by politicians, mind you, but by individuals who constitute human society), we will no longer be able to live life as humans. The alternative? Well, in some regards, asking and answering the question, what is the Human Condition, through the process of kritik is the alternative because we could leave the means-end thinking that dominates the way the aff thinks about politics. This is a “thinking kritik,” not a representations kritik. The aff thought about the world incorrectly. We should think about it differently. Because the plan is not a part of this thinking, but rather, only its conclusion, the kritik may very well come to the same conclusion, but with radically different results (some call this a Floating PIC. I just call it an irrelevant question of the debate.)

Arendt has an extremely idiosyncratic use of concepts, but she is very clear in terms of setting out the priorities of human life, what human community is for, and the perils of science. This makes her both accessible, but tricky because her idiosyncrasies make her malleable in debate yet her prose is extremely clear (in distinction to Heidegger). Her own intellectual commitment to understand how Nazi Germany could have happened makes her easy to assimilate to current ways of understanding in debate, but the standard sorts of responses do not work against her because, ultimately, she does not reject anything in toto; she only believes that the political sphere has to exclude certain things, like means-end logic, in order to provide a space where freedom is actually possible. Plus, some people who are the favorites for impact calculus are interpreters of Arendt (George Kateb comes to mind as an author who has shown up recently in debate that provides arguments for valuing freedom above security). Plus, she actually wrote about space exploration. Beyond this preface, she wrote an essay called “The Conquest of Space and the Stature of Man.” These are all reasons I find Arendt an intriguing author on this year’s topic and I’d implore debaters to consider branching out from both the oft-trodden kritiks of old and to consider who else may have something to say about this year’s topic. Plus, she was never a Nazi (here that, Schmitt and Heidegger?) If Arendt isn’t your cup of tea, that fine, but there is educational and strategic value to considering the work of different authors who are not easily assimilable into the already-known universe of kritik literature.

In order to do this, you need to learn your authors well. Just as the best debaters know everything about their aff (if you do not know the status of negotiations with the Taliban, current reports from Gates and Petraus on our troop successes and setbacks, and the political situation of Karzai, you probably will not sound nearly as good on your COIN aff than those who do), the best kritik debaters know a lot about their primary authors. The difference between running a kritik as a strategic option and being a kritik debater is the ability to speak knowledgably about how the author’s entire worldview works. Even though the majority of Arendt’s work is not about space, reading her major works will give you a leg up against any affirmative who just has their stock K answers without ever having read the author in question. If your season is over and you want to be one of those kritik debaters who other teams are scared of, use this time now to invest in a position and an author to a degree that will be impossible at camp. Think about how their arguments fit into debate and what standard aff claims they answer. Then, you will be at least two steps ahead of any affirmative team for a substantial part of the year. Continue reading, even if there are no cards to be cut. Knowledge is invaluable (see Max Hantel’s earlier post if you doubt me).

Red Mars; Or, Progressive Astropolitics

2011-03-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

Ricky Garner

For those of us more critically inclined in our affirmations, the space topic proposes something of a dilemma. As Derrida has argued, “no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, never have so many men, women, and children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on the earth” (card below). In a world of such suffering, what possible justification can there be for spending billions upon billions of dollars on programs that have effects on the lives of the very few, and the very privileged.

The premise of this criticism extends across many schools of thought. From an ecological perspective, the astropolitics not only fetishizes technological mastery over the natural world, it also reaffirms the model of infinite economic growth, but on a scale infinitely more vast. From a feminist perspective, the narratives of penetrating hostile environments and the predominantly masculine culture of space exploration. Progressives in the United States can point toward poorly funded social welfare programs, poor schools, and racially stratified economic inequality as good examples of the concrete tradeoffs against which space funding must be judges. Critics of militarism will note that the overarching institutional architecture and goals of U.S. space policy are tied into the goals of global hegemony. And last but not least, the qualms of a Marxist analyst might look similar to that of Derrida’s assessment above, noting that in a capitalist system, space policy will benefit capitalism. Obviously, the list could go on. Space is fertile ground for critique.

But against this critical astropolitics, we can see the outlines of some new and potentially innovative ways of thinking about space. To begin with, let us take up one of the central tenets of a new school of philosophy, Speculative Realism: “Such a massive scientific output—concentrated in such a relatively short time-span—has had an enormous cultural impact outside laboratories and observatories, largely thanks to the increased resources dedicated to public outreach from the scientists’ side. Whether because of their eagerness to share the revolutionary discoveries of their discipline, or for the more pragmatic realization that general public interest aids the acquisition of governmental and private funding; natural scientists have come to represent intellectuals in close contact with the public” (card below). In other words, today, the grip of scientific themes on the public imagination is immense, whereas for a great number of people “philosophy has become boring.”

Science is not going away, and neither is space. Space policy cannot be reduced to its criticisms, however valid they are, because the desire to explore and develop space intersects with the everyday lives of millions of people across the globe. It may be exploited and coopted, but the desire for space is there, as it has been for the last century.

The choice, then, is not between space or no space, but for the vision of the future which will guide space policy, a vision for the future that for good or for ill will be heavily influence by the actions of the United States of America. With that realization in mind, let us look at some areas in dire need of a progressive astropolitics.

First, Neoliberalism in space: One of the most important developments in recent space policy is the increasing privatization of the space program. As noted in Business Insider, “The Obama administration wants to outsource whole swaths of the space program to the private sector.” Capitalism sees a lot of dollars going to government space programs, and it wants some of that money. Just as privatization is increasingly stripping collective economic wealth accumulated in government institutions over the last century from the energy sector, welfare, the internet, and entitlements, the final frontier for capitalism is outer space. If space exploration and/or development is an inevitable part of our future, then an affirmative that rolls back this wave of privatization and calls for space to be treated as a commons would seem to be extremely productive critical ground.

Second, militarism in space: In today’s world, it’s not really a question of space militarization at all, it’s a question of weaponization. The Air Force’s stated purpose today is “fly, fight, and win … in air, space, and cyberspace” (cite below). Indeed, Simon Huntley has argued that “space is already militarized (defined here as employment of space-based capabilities for terrestrial military purposes, including use of force) but not yet weaponized (defined as the projection of destructive mass or energy forces from, into, or through space)” (card below). The entire information architecture of U.S. militarism is heavily dependent space, from observation satellites to flaying unmanned drones from half a world away, the military is already occupying the ultimate high ground. This presents an opportunity for numerous affs which rollback the tide of space militarization. In particular, one good affirmative in this area could ratify and implement a new treaty to prevent this. Some have advocated a PAROS Treaty, or a treaty for the “prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS)” (card below). Such an aff could not only tackle one of the core issues in the future of space policy, but could also access the critical literature on the necessity of treaties as vehicles of universal human rights and multilateral constraints on sovereignty.

Third, other areas: Energy policy in space is another controversial area. Karl Grossman argues that the Obama administration is “seeking to revive the use of nuclear power in space” (card below). The use of plutonium raises the specter of a horrifying space accident spreading radioactive debris across the earth. Another potential area, which this post discussed above, is critical science studies. Whether from the perspective of Speculative Realism, or maybe a Deleuzian argument about how science breaks down destratifies social structures and cultural schemas of the body, science could become the newest terrain of critique. Finally, aliens.

Karl Grossman, 2010, Investigative reporter, Huffington Post, June 25, 2010, huff.to/ePG29m

Despite its huge dangers, the Obama administration is seeking to revive the use of nuclear power in space. It wants the U.S. to produce the plutonium isotope that has been used for electric generation in space and is also looking to build nuclear-propelled rockets for missions to Mars... Plutonium-238 has been used to generate electricity on space probes and rovers and also satellites. But in 1964 a satellite with a plutonium-fueled generator, after failing to achieve orbit, fell to Earth, breaking up as it hit the atmosphere and dispersing 2.1 pounds of Pu-238 from its SNAP -- (for Systems Nuclear Auxiliary Power) 9A system. A study by a group of European health and radiation protection agencies reported that "a worldwide soil sampling program in 1970 showed SNAP-9A debris present at all continents and at all latitudes." Dr. John Gofman, professor of medical physics at the University of California at Berkeley, long linked that fall-out to an increase of lung cancer on Earth. The accident caused NASA to pioneer the use of solar panels on satellites.

United States Air Force, accessed 3/18/2011, “Air Force Mission,” 1.usa.gov/fo1yxG

The mission of the United States Air Force is to fly, fight and win...in air, space and cyberspace. To achieve that mission, the Air Force has a vision: The United States Air Force will be a trusted and reliable joint partner with our sister services known for integrity in all of our activities, including supporting the joint mission first and foremost. We will provide compelling air, space, and cyber capabilities for use by the combatant commanders. We will excel as stewards of all Air Force resources in service to the American people, while providing precise and reliable Global Vigilance, Reach and Power for the nation. The Air Force has three core competencies: Developing Airmen, Technology-to-Warfighting and Integrating Operations. These core competencies make our six distinctive capabilities possible: Air and Space Superiority : With it, joint forces can dominate enemy operations in all dimensions -- land, sea, air and space. Global Attack: Because of technological advances, the Air Force can attack anywhere, anytime -- and do so quickly and with greater precision than ever before. Rapid Global Mobility: Being able to respond quickly and decisively anywhere we're needed is key to maintaining rapid global mobility. Precision Engagement: The essence lies in the ability to apply selective force against specific targets because the nature and variety of future contingencies demand both precise and reliable use of military power with minimal risk and collateral damage. Information Superiority: The ability of joint force commanders to keep pace with information and incorporate it into a campaign plan is crucial. Agile Combat Support: Deployment and sustainment are keys to successful operations and cannot be separated. Agile combat support applies to all forces, from those permanently based to contingency buildups to expeditionary forces. The Air Force bases these core competencies and distinctive capabilities on a shared commitment to three core values -- integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do.

Reaching Critical Will, No Date, accessed 3/18/2011, a project of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, bit.ly/ijM0f7

The United Nations General Assembly is consensus-building body, where issues of international peace and security are collectively discussed among all UN member states. Its regular session convenes in September of each year, and after two weeks of General Debate, it breaks up into six specialized committees. Every member state is entitled to participate in each of the committees, where they consider proposals relevant to the substantive topics covered by the committee, and recommend resolutions for adoption by the General Assembly. While these resolutions are not legally binding, they can be normative—that is, they can indicate the establishment of customs, standards, and guidelines for appropriate behavior. Resolutions adopted by consensus also indicate substantive areas of agreement that are ripe for negotiation and can enable the creation of new treaties and the emergence of international legal norms. Furthermore, they demonstrate global governmental opinion, showing which governments support peace and security, and which choose to remain outside of or even impede the development of international cooperative security. The General Assembly's work on disarmament is conducted through one of its main committees, the First Committee on Disarmament and International Security. Each year in the First Committee and then again in the General Assembly as a whole, a resolution on the prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS) is introduced and adopted by an overwhelming majority of UN member states. In fact, every country in the world votes in favor of negotiating a treaty on PAROS—except for the US, which has voted “NO” for the past three years, and Israel, which has abstained. The US administration argues that the existing multilateral arms control regime is sufficient, and that there is no need to address a non existent threat. As one US representative said in 2006, “there is no—repeat, no—problem in outer space for arms control to solve.” The PAROS resolution reaffirms the importance of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, saying that PAROS efforts are in conformity with that Treaty. However, the resolution also notes that the current outer space legal regime “does not in and of itself guarantee the prevention of an arms race in outer space.” The PAROS resolution calls for states, especially those with space capabilities, to refrain from actions contrary to the objective of PAROS and to “contribute actively” to that objective. It argues for consolidation and reinforcement of the outer space legal regime, and says the Conference on Disarmament (see below) is the place for a new treaty on PAROS to be negotiated.A PAROS treaty would complement the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which aims to preserve space for peaceful uses, if it prevented the use of space weapons and the development of space-weapon technology and technology related to so-called “missile defense.” A PAROS treaty would also prevent any nation from gaining a further military advantage in outer space and would hopefully reduce current military uses of outer space. In recent years, the UN General Assembly has started to move beyond merely calling on the Conference on Disarmament to commence negotiations on PAROS, to recommending measures on transparency and confidence-building in outer space. Many states have called on space-capable states to guarantee transparency in their outer space activities and to engage in confidence-building measures. In 2005, 2006, and 2007, Russia has introduced a resolution on transparency and confidence-building measures in outer space activities. As with the PAROS resolution, the overwhelming majority of member states vote in favour of this resolution, with only the US objecting and Israel abstaining.

Nicholas Carlson, 2009, Business Insider, Aug. 24, 2009, 12:01 PM, Obama Wants To Privatize Space Travel, read.bi/g9o9H6

The Obama administration wants to outsource whole swaths of the space program to the private sector, the Wall Street Journal reports. Mostly, these private firms would be tasked with transporting cargo and astronauts into space. NASA would stick around, but proponents of the plan see it turning into a "conduit" for tech developed outside the federal government. WSJ: Contract winners would use corporate funds to build and test rockets, provide compatible space capsules and then try to recoup those investments by offering commercial-style transportation services to the agency. Essentially, NASA would be paying a set fee for every pound or person transported to orbit. This is great news for a group of mostly West Coast-based space travel startups founded by already-rich enterprenuers like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and John Carmack. The Journal singles out PayPal and Tesla cofounder Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp -- known as SpaceX -- as a startup that stands to benefit from the shift in policy. But there are plenty of other private-sector firms set to take advantage of the new policy, including Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic and United Launch Alliance, a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Wade L. Huntley, 2007, Simons Centre for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Research, Univeristy of British Columbia, “Smaller State Perspectives on the Future of Space Governance,” Astropolitics 5.3, 237-271

Introduction The twenty-first century will see the human presence in space develop into an integral aspect of social and economic life. Today, military, commercial, exploratory, and even recreational space presence is advancing rapidly. Yet, the pace and direction of future development are highly uncertain. The security dimension of space is a focal issue for this future. By many accounts, space is already militarized (defined here as employment of space-based capabilities for terrestrial military purposes, including use of force) but not yet weaponized (defined as the projection of destructive mass or energy forces from, into, or through space).1 Technologically-specific definitions of "space weapons" are highly contested, and the difference in practice between "aggressive" and "peaceful" uses of space is hazy. But maintaining these conceptual distinctions is vital for analytical purposes.2 The factors that will shape the future evolution of the military security dimension of space are complex and opaque. Ongoing technological developments are creating genuine national security implications that are making today's international regimes dealing with space increasingly inadequate to cope with emerging challenges. The United States (U.S.) is increasingly reliant on space-based military assets, making threats to those assets a serious U.S. national security concern. Yet many of these capabilities support arms control verification and deterrence stability, promoting peace on Earth as well as in space. The vulnerability of these capabilities is therefore a global security concern as well.

Jacques Derrida, 1994, director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Specters of Marx, p. 84-85

Let us return now to the immediate vicinity of the subject of our conference. My subtitle, "the New International," refers to a profound transformation, projected over a long term, of international law, of its concepts, and its field of intervention. Just as the concept of human rights has slowly been determined over the course of centuries through many socio-political upheavals (whether it be a matter of the right to work or economic rights, of the rights of women and children, and so forth), likewise international law should extend and diversify its field to include, if at least it is to be consistent with the idea of democracy and of human rights it proclaims, the worldwide economic and social field, beyond the sovereignty of States and of the phantom-States we mentioned a moment ago. Despite appearances, what we are saying here is not simply anti-statist: in given and limited conditions, the super-State, which might be an international institution, may always be able to limit the appropriations and the violence of certain private socio-economic forces. But without necessarily subscribing to the whole Marxist discourse (which, moreover, is complex, evolving, heterogeneous) on the State and its appropriation by a dominant class, on the distinction between State power and State apparatus, on the end of the political, on "the end of politics," or on the withering away of the State, and, on the other hand, without suspecting the juridical idea in itself, one may still find inspiration in the Marxist "spirit" to criticize the presumed autonomy of the juridical and to denounce endlessly the de facto take-over of international authorities by powerful Nation-States, by concentrations of techno-scientific capital, symbolic capital, and financial capital, of State capital and private capital. A "new international" is being sought through these crises of international law ; it already denounces the limits of a discourse on human rights that will remain inadequate, sometimes hypocritical, and in any case formalistic and inconsistent with itself as long as the law of the market, the "foreign debt," the inequality of techno-scientific, military, and economic development maintain an effective inequality as monstrous as that which prevails today, to a greater extent than ever in the history of humanity. For it must be cried out, at a time when some have the audacity to neo-evangelize in the name of the ideal of a liberal democracy that has finally realized itself as the ideal of human history: never have violence, inequality, exclusion, famine, and thus economic oppression affected as many human beings in the history of the earth and of humanity. Instead of singing the advent of the ideal of liberal democracy and of the capitalist market in the euphoria of the end of history, instead of celebrating the "end of ideologies" and the end of the great emancipatory discourses, let us never neglect this obvious macroscopic fact, made up of innumerable singular sites of suffering: no degree of progress allows one to ignore that never before, in absolute figures, never have so many men, women, and children been subjugated, starved, or exterminated on the earth. (And provisionally, but with regret, we must leave aside here the nevertheless indissociable question of what is becoming of so-called "animal" life, the life and existence of "animals" in this history-This-question-has always been a serious one, but it will become massively unavoidable.

Fabio Gironi, 2010, AHRC funded PhD student in the department of Study of Religions in SOAS, University of London, “Science-Laden Theory: Outlines of an Unsettled Alliance,” Speculations volume 1, bit.ly/gsYuQL

The Copernican Revolution, in Colour The most obvious place to look, when seeking a condition7 for this new philosophy, is to direct our attention to the developments of the natural sciences in the last forty years, both in terms of their dramatic internal growth (the elaboration of successful new theories or promising new research projects) and external public engagement (the increased interest amongst broader society in the results of science). My contention is that these two elements, by shaping the last decades of western intellectual history, have indirectly contributed to the re-emergence of realism as a philosophical trope. Within speculative realism, a science-friendly attitude is explicitly associated with the rejection of a certain kind of (post-critical, human-centred, phenomenological—in a word—correlationist) philosophy: see for example Ray Brassier’s demand that science be taken seriously, since [t]aking as a given the empirical fact that all philosophical attempts to define conditions of possibility for scientific thought have proved to be dismally unsuccessful, we conclude that these failures are a matter of principle rather than empirical circumstance, and that it is the presumption that philosophy is in a position to provide a transcendental footing for science which must be abandoned. There is no first philosophy. Consequently, although relatively autonomous vis a vis science, philosophical ontology can neither ground nor disregard the ultimately physical description of the universe provided by the natural sciences.8 Or, take Graham Harman’s claims about the dullness of philosophical literature, as opposed to the speculative range of scientific texts: pick up a random book of recent physics and you will find dazzling speculation on all manner of things: the creation and destruction of the universe, the existence of parallel worlds, chance and necessity, hidden spatial dimensions, time travel, and two-dimensional holograms that delude us into believing in three….We have reached a point where I, a passionate reader of philosophy, prefer any section in bookstores except philosophy…[P]hilosophy has become boring.9 And, of course, the entire argument against correlationist thought in Meillassoux’s After Finitude is another such example, which hinges upon a precise dating of ‘ancestral phenomena’ such as the origin of the universe, something which has only been possible through (relatively recent) scientific techniques. So, rather than a contemporary philosophy flat-lined by the phenomenological climate, it was science that made it meaningful to disagree about what there might have been when we did not exist, and what there might be when we no longer exist—just as it is science that provides us with the means to rationally favour one hypothesis over another concerning the nature of the world without us.10 The authority of contemporary science is fuelled by its achievements. The extraordinary experimental success of the Standard Model of particle physics and of the description of quantum mechanical interactions between those particles, the observational data confirming the Big Bang theory and the age of the universe, as well as the discovery of its accelerating expansion (not to mention more speculative hypotheses/research programs such as those linked to the Multiverse and String Theory), are momentous results that have been achieved in less than half a century. Such a massive scientific output11—concentrated in such a relatively short time-span—has had an enormous cultural impact outside laboratories and observatories, largely thanks to the increased resources dedicated to public outreach from the scientists’ side. Whether because of their eagerness to share the revolutionary discoveries of their discipline, or for the more pragmatic realization that general public interest aids the acquisition of governmental and private funding; natural scientists have come to represent intellectuals in close contact with the public. Following this increase in public engagement with science in the last decades we have witnessed pieces of scientific equipment raise, possibly for the first time,12 to the status of cultural icons and sources for entertainment and awe. A solid example of this is the Hubble Space Telescope (hst), whose huge impact on physical astronomy since the early 1990s is matched by its impact on the ‘general public’, providing us with an unprecedented peek into the far universe via a dazzling series of images of distant galaxies and nebulae making their way onto the front covers of hundreds of magazines. Pictures of these astronomical objects, immensely far in both space and in time, have offered us a whole new understanding and visual grasp of the term ‘things in themselves’.13 By opening up a space beyond ‘the moon, the outer planets, and the icy Oort Cloud with its stagnant mist of dim future comets’ the Space Telescope14 has allowed us to probe deeper into the fabric of the universe while at the same time imposing upon us the humbling acknowledgement of our myopia, since ‘beyond the gaze of these instruments are sites more distant than these, some of them grimmer than the plains of Hell’.15 So strong has the cultural impact of the hst been, that the 20th anniversary of its commissioning (24th of April 2010) has been celebrated with full-page articles in several major newspapers around the globe, commemorating its ‘birthday’ with a selection of its most iconic images accompanied by words of praise for this overworked piece of technology. And the hst is only the most iconic of an army of such instruments: we have enjoyed the sunset on Mars thanks to the images from the Mars Exploration Rover, we have peered at the distant Earth through the rings of Saturn when receiving the images from the Cassini probe and we have observed the aeons-old first light of the universe thanks to the wmap satellite. Moreover, it is thanks to the discoveries granted by the data received from less iconic but equally successful probes, that our vocabulary has extended to include terms like ‘expanding universe’, ‘black hole’, ‘dark matter’, ‘dark energy’ and ‘exoplanets’, concepts that soon proved fertile new metaphors for philosophers—and speculative realists.16 It is well known how speculative realists call for a return to the true meaning of the Copernican Revolution, against the Kantian hijacking of this term. If, according to Meillassoux it is due to ‘a sense of desolation and abandonment which modern science instils in humanity’s conception of itself and of the cosmos’17 that we are forced to face the contingency of thought and therefore to rethink the priority of human access, it appears that no cultural force has managed to present more powerfully to humankind as a whole the disconcerting vastness of the ‘great outdoors’ than the last forty years of physical sciences, particularly astronomy. To substantiate this claim, I would like to take a brief historical excursus. In his Earthrise, historian Robert Poole explains how the famous Earthrise picture taken in 1968 by the crew of the Apollo 8 mission (showing the planet rising from the lunar horizon), and its even more popular ‘Blue Marble’ successor, taken in 1972 by the astronauts of the Apollo 17 (showing the planet in its full spherical appearance) were appropriated and diffused in popular culture by the dominant ideologies of the time. In a complex network linking such different forces as the technical constraints of the Apollo missions, cold-war era political interests, the amazement of the first astronauts seeing the planet from above, and the lsd-fuelled rise of 1970s hippie counterculture, the first images of planet Earth ended up as bearing an unprecedented meaning. In particular, Poole argues that [t]he famous Apollo 17 ‘Blue Marble’ photograph appeared in December 1972, just in time to supply the environmental movement with its most powerful icon. It was, however, the Apollo 8 image of December 1968 that had started it all off. Both images owed much of their instant power to the way they tapped into a ready-made agenda: in the case of the ‘Blue Marble’ it was the eco-renaissance; in the case of Earthrise it was ‘Spaceship Earth’. What happened over the years in between was that natural metaphors for the planet began to take over from technological ones.18 Hence ‘Blue marble’, according to Poole ‘the single most reproduced image in human history’,19 was fruitfully assimilated by contemporary culture, and at the same time produced a feedback effect, fuelling the amazement for a living planet, and shaping a holistic attitude which subsequently appropriated the ‘Gaia’ hypothesis as a scientific proof of the life-cycles of the global organism that Earth was. The picture from outer space, even if showing the fragile beauty of Earth, effectively increased the intrinsic value of the planet, so that the focus of the environmental movement (and of the emergent New Age spirituality) which adopted the photograph as a graphic reminder of the wonders of our planet, ‘was not “wilderness” or “nature” but “the environment”, with humankind very much in the picture’,20 a humankind now seen as never before as the lucky inhabitants and custodians of a natural marvel, strikingly alive in an empty, dark, and colourless space. Let us try to compare the ‘Blue Marble’ picture, and its effect on the cultural unconscious, with another, more recent picture of our planet. On the 14th February 1990, the Voyager probe, having completed, the main part of its mission in its first 13 years of interplanetary flight, was instructed to turn its camera around, and to take a picture of Earth from a distance of approximately 6 billion kilometres. The alive, dynamic planet that in the early 70s was shown in its blue marble glory was now, in the famous words of Carl Sagan (the man responsible for convincing nasa to take the picture and for its successive popularization),21 a ‘pale blue dot’, a handful of pixels on a background of black nothingness. The Earth, which thirty years earlier had been a glorious ‘Blue Marble’ was now shown as a ‘pale blue dot’. If this picture did not directly slide so glamorously into the popular media and in popular culture it is not only because of its inferior intrinsic aesthetic value, but also because of the radically different social climate of the early 90s. And yet, I believe that we can fruitfully look at the ‘pale blue dot’ picture as having as strong a cultural significance as its predecessor. Indeed, where to find a better, more powerful representation of the true meaning of the Copernican Revolution—as we are reminded by Meillassoux—than in this ‘pale blue dot’ picture, sent as a faint electromagnetic signal by an unmanned probe, from a distance where no human had ever, or has since, reached? If humanity could previously be seen as the privileged custodian of a sacred cosmic gem, it was now merely dwelling on a infinitesimal speck of dust, a planet whose awe-inspiring face was now irresolvable, irrelevant, disfigured. If the coloured face of the planet dominated the ‘Blue Marble’ picture, it is the featureless cosmic space which dominates this second picture, a space where the Earth, and the environment it hosts, is but a mere point floating across an arbitrary set of coordinates.22 Science delivered the photographic evidence of the—at best—provincial placement of our planet, a graphic memento that there is much more to the universe than our ‘world’ (both in the sense of a correlationally defined existential space and in the sense of our material planet), a picture that indeed in its coarse immediacy strikes a powerful blow to the ‘pathetic twinge of human self-esteem’.23 The philosophical trope of ‘otherness’ itself was now to be revised: from the otherness of a human neighbour to that of a nonhuman, utterly alien,24 external reality. Eight years after the ‘pale blue dot’ picture, physical cosmology delivered some even more stunning results: the empty, cosmic space, through which our planet, our solar system and our whole galaxy is wandering, is not only expanding but accelerating in its expansion.25 The discovery of this increasing rate of expansion effectively sanctioned the fate of the universe to be one of cold dissipation, and thus created the possibility for a passage like the following to appear in a philosophy book not merely as a thought experiment, but as a factual truth to be philosophically appraised and exploited: sooner or later both life and mind will have to reckon with the disintegration of the ultimate horizon, when, roughly one trillion, trillion, trillion (101728) years from now, the accelerating expansion of the universe will have disintegrated the fabric of matter itself, terminating the possibility of embodiment. Every star in the universe will have burnt out, plunging the cosmos into a state of absolute darkness and leaving behind nothing but spent husks of collapsed matter. All free matter, whether on planetary surfaces or in interstellar space, will have decayed, eradicating any remnants of life based in protons and chemistry, and erasing every vestige of sentience—irrespective of its physical basis. Finally, in a state cosmologists call ‘asymptopia’, the stellar corpses littering the empty universe will evaporate into a brief hailstorm of elementary particles. Atoms themselves will cease to exist. Only the implacable gravitational expansion will continue, driven by the currently inexplicable force called ‘dark energy’, which will keep pushing the extinguished universe deeper and deeper into an eternal and unfathomable blackness.26 If, to quote this important passage once again, contemporary philosophical thought needs to engage with ‘the sense of desolation and abandonment which modern science instils in humanity’s conception of itself and of the cosmos’,27 it is because of such scientific narrations of the fate of our universe, holding today such a powerful social and cognitive authority and offering us a ‘speculative opportunity’.28 By exposing the cosmic irrelevance of humankind and its dwelling place and by denouncing the contingency of its existence as subordinate to random cosmic caprices, science has set the scene for the development of a new metaphysical revolution consisting in a new ‘blow to human narcissism, where man is dethroned from his position of centrality in the order of being and situated in his proper place as one being among others, no more or less important than these others’.29

Perfomative Contradictions in policy debate: the limit(lessness) of negative conditionality.

2011-03-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

PART 1

Nicholas Fiori – March 2011

I feel comfortable in speculating that the most popular Kritik on the military presence topic has been some iteration of the Security K. Something along the lines of, the drive to securitize/stabilize/control various predicted threat scenarios is a mode of biopolitical control/technological thought/enlightenment rationality that should be rejected in favor of a multifaceted epistemology of the international system, or interrogation of our ontology etc. These type of Kritiks almost invariably argue that the drive to war, or political violence, is driven by the ontology/methodology of security and securitization and that these scenarios of risk, their discursive utterance, produces regimes of truth that make the playing out of those scenarios highly likely. These arguments, presented in the 1NC, often times have alternative texts that advocate the absolute, or at least in the instance of the 1AC rejection of the criticized, logic/discourse. Moreover, this kritik cannot argue that it is the plan action that it disagrees with since most authors writing critically of American foreign policy would advocate a reduction in overseas military presence. Rather, teams that read the security K must argue that it is the representations/methodology/ontology of the affirmative that should be rejected.

Yet, despite this vehement rejection of securitization, on the next flow I often find myself jotting down the outline of some form of the deterrence disadvantage. The disad will argue that only the preservation of the US military deterrent force in the region can prevent some hostile threats to national security from mustering the will to start and all-out war. So in one breath, the negative argues that all forms of securitization should be rejected and then engages in first-rate securitization of their own. The negative is committing the same rhetorical sins of the affirmative and they know it. This is the problem of the performative contradiction, an argument not new to debate by any stretch of the imagination, but one, I think, conditionality theory debate will know that allowing the negative to argue contradictory positions puts the affirmative in the position of making answers to one argument that are links to the other, contradictory, position. When the negative decides that they no longer want to advocate the terrible six party talks counterplan, they can use all the arguments about why international dialogue fails and only changes in military positioning can solve North Korean conflict as realism links to the security K. Moreover, the negative gets the block, which means while the 2ac may have only been able to allocate 2-3 minutes to answer the K, the negative gets 13 minutes to respond.

And certainly there exists a pre-disposition against performative contradictions in debate; only by mistake do negatives read a hegemony good disad and a hegemony bad disad in the same 1NC. But this type of contradiction is less problematic because any reasonably experienced 2AC could exploit the contradiction to their advantage by conceding some arguments and turning others. But with advocacies, by this I mean arguments that would produce a change over the status quo (counterplans, alternatives), it’s more tricky, and when those advocacies exists on conceptually different levels like a counterplan and Kritik, the contradiction seems to take on actual and not just debate practice problems. If it is true, as the negative’s had argued, that it wasn’t the effects of the plan that were the problem, but the rhetoric of the 1AC, then why is it that the negative is allowed to make such utterances but the affirmative cannot? I speak only from my personal experience, but it seems to me that there is a general default among debate judges that this position is perfectly defensible. Why is it so incredibly rare for the aff to be able to win on the argument that the negative links to their own Kritik when, on face, it seems largely unfair?

I don’t think there is any certain way for us to determine exactly where this pre-disposition arose from, but I think that it probably has to do with the general acceptance of negative conditionality (by this I mean having more than one counterplan in the 1NC and advocating just one in the 2NR) that has become predominant over the last decade or so. You can disagree with my timeline for when multiple conditional advocacies gained prominence, and certainly they had their heyday in the 80s as well, but it is hard to deny that the latest resurgence in conditionality combined with the mainstreaming of the Kritik has produced the curious situation of permitting contradictions. Of course, debate did away with the idea of aff conditionality (multiple plans, plan amendments, etc) long ago, largely, even if not explicitly, as a way to counter perceived affirmative side bias. Negative conditionality was another attempt at such balancing, as was the advent of list topics in college and the military presence topic in high school. On a side note, this topic has become highly (at least perceptually) negative biased; I rarely see teams flip affirmative in elimination rounds anymore. And interestingly, what before the season seemed to be a huge topic, has been so narrowed down, that there are hardly more than 6 affirmatives that a nationally competitive team as to prepare for (absent critical affs). This is, of course, the tangible result of how we as a community usually votes in topicality debates throughout the season. From this historical perspective, the acceptability of performative contradictions could be explained as a way of correcting for affirmative side bias, a drive evidenced in a number of contemporary debate norms.

It is possible to argue that performative contradictions are unfair and are a reason to vote affirmative. It is not entirely obvious that the sides need to be more balanced. I think it is relatively easy to make the case that allowing contradictions gives the negative too much ground. And considering the move toward the negative on other practices I mentioned, sides maybe need to be re-balanced back toward the affirmative. More importantly, the theoretical considerations of these contradictions seem to defy the most basic tenant of the kritik: that what is said and how it is said matters as much or more than the tangible outcome of a policy. If it is true that the utterance of the reality of security threats produces them as real in our conscious, shouldn’t the negative also have produced some security truths as well? Particularly when the kritik argues for a representations as opposed to ontological or methodological framework, it is fairly persuasive argue that the contradiction is unfair. I think this stems from a pre-deposition as a critic to see the effect of each side’s utterances as equally reasons to reject. The reality, however, is that this argument is hard to win, except for with some particular critics. This is an unfortunate fact I feel, considering the ‘truth’ of the problem with this contradiction at the philosophical level the affirmative should be able to win more of these debates. The first step to changing this norm is to go for this argument more often and spend more time thinking of arguments you want to make.

I will continue this discussion of negative conditionality with advice on how to both go for performative contradictions bad and how to answer this argument soon.

Space Ecology I: What do hippies know about space travel?

2011-03-17T06:15:00.000-07:00

Photo of the earth taken on the Apollo 8 Mission

NASA SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Kirk Evans - University of Texas

Part 1.

“Maybe it is no accident that the first Earth Day so closely followed the ﬁrst Moon landing… . We are already engaged in deep space exploration that frames not just the Earth as a single whole, but the entire solar system, or even larger wholes. Profound challenges to established ways of thinking—now including environmentalism itself—arise once again, as we begin to recognize ourselves not merely as Earthlings but as ‘Solarians,’ or maybe ‘plain cosmic citizens.’ For one thing, the vast horizons of space offer a sort of express trip beyond anthropocentrism—not so easy a voyage to get off, either physically or conceptually… We are also reminded that Earth’s ‘environment’ is not a closed system. It may turn out that we are only a local corner of a cosmic ecosystem. How would our systems of Earth-centered ethics, themselves only recently and so very laboriously won, look then? If, on the other hand, life is rare in the universe, maybe it is our very own task to spread it to the stars. Could we even imagine genetically engineered living forms, trees maybe, inhabited by myriads of still others, pushed by the vast “solar sails” already being tested—giant wooden sailing ships again going forth to unknown adventure? How will environmental philosophy, or its successors, rise to this challenge?”-Anthony Weston, The Incompleat Eco-Philosopher p. 20

The word “ecology” can be traced back to the Greek word for “home,” and it is thus unsurprising that most ecological thinking to date has focused on our home—the Earth. As far as we know, space seems ecologically barren… vast space-scapes empty of the thriving biological systems that tend to attract the attention of ecologists.

Furthermore, a strong anti-technological streak runs through much ecological thought. which is unsurprising given the vast damage wrought by technological modernity. By contrast, interest in space travel tends to correlate with a sort of techno-utopianism… a vision of humankind achieving prosperity and perhaps even immortality by journeying to the stars.

And yet it is not difficult to extrapolate some of the concerns driving Earth-bound ecological thought to the issue of space travel. The topic mandates space exploration and/or development. While preservation of more-than-human life motivates much work in current ecology, others are equally concerned with the “abiotic”—non-biological existence. For example, activists in West Virginia oppose forms of mining that blow off the tops of mountains. Even those not drawn to ecology might feel a paign of regret if the Grand Canyon were to be filled with trash. Might we have similar concerns about asteroid strip mining? What about terraforming of other planets?

And yet the interaction between space exploration and ecology is a two way street. On the one hand, ecology cautions us against turning the known galaxy into an industrial wasteland. On the other, an encounter with the vast diversity of existence beyond the Earth’s mesosphere offers a challenge to our human-centered prejudice. Anthropocentrism (“human-centrism”) seems more precarious as we leave behind the cocoon that shelters the delusions of hominid brain. As Nietzsche wrote in “On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense:

"In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the haughtiest and most mendacious minute of “world history”—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.
One might invent such a fable, and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist, and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission, that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that it float through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world."

We may or may not be alone in the universe. Either way, the notion that the universe was built for humanity may one day become as quaint as geocentric cosmology.

The next two post will mostly be written from a negative perspective. The first will review some of the Ecology Kritiks that have been common on previous topics, and discuss their potential relevance for the coming resolution. The third post will discuss in more detail theories of non-anthropocentric value and their potential implications for the desirability of space exploration and even human survival. In the fourth, I will explore the “affirmative” side of the topic… justifications for space travel that go beyond and even challenge anthropocentric hubris.

A2: Why Debate? - Claire McKinney

2011-03-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

The Slightly Younger Woman Respondeth

Sean’s post is a thoughtful defense of why we ought to spend some time not just asking how we can win debates, but also to consider what makes the activity as a whole worth fighting for. Coaches know the necessity of justifying this activity to administrators and budget allocators on a near yearly basis, so spending time reflecting whether are goals are good ones or if we are achieving them is a worthwhile endeavor, at least in my mind. I, however, would like to respectfully disagree with much of Sean’s post because in the end, I do not think we are doing that bad of a job teaching argumentation (of course, I’m a relative novice at the task because I am not a Communications PhD, but my non-debate professional life requires I know how to argue persuasively, so at least I have some working knowledge in this area).

First, I think the claim that debate isn’t centrally any of the things you mention is an example of poor argumentation. Just because we can get these benefits elsewhere (and many of us do), that doesn’t mean we do not engage in debate for the exact same reasons. I can also learn how to make arguments from a writing class, a communications major, or blog posting and commenting. For me, I engage in debate partially because I am seduced by the combination of the contestation of ideas in a competitive framework. I was never good at sports, so winning or coaching others to win gives me the adrenaline rush that I couldn’t get otherwise. However, this does not respond to why we should be engaged in debate, but asserting the truth claim that because other forums exist, debate is not about those things is a misunderstanding of how human activities often have the same ends or how the same desires motivate engaging in multiple activities.

Of course, this also means these other focuses are not exclusive with the pedagogical goal of teaching argumentation, but I disagree that the focus on argumentation has disappeared. I think that we need to recognize the fundamental tension between the dual poles of debate: education and fairness. In a world of absolute fairness, Sean is right that the ideal judge would be truly a blank slate and all judges would consistently apply the same criteria for wins and losses without concern for argumentative content. In a world of absolute education, then debate would probably not result in one winner and one loser and more time would be given towards the actual teaching of argumentation, clash, and differentiation between weak and strong arguments and engage in some strong degree of truth seeking. However, we have to weigh both values, which ultimately means some education and some fairness are always sacrificed in debate.

I cannot speak to the Ulrich-Rowland exchange because I’ve never read the articles, but I can respond to how Sean is mobilizing that debate in his argument. I think in the end, Sean has set up the extreme case that undermines the overall argument. While I am only familiar with high school debate nowadays, I do not think people are unilaterally willing to vote on anything as long as it is asserted. At the TFA state tournament, I voted neg on presumption because there was no uniqueness extended to the aff advantage in the 2AR and the extension of the link turn on politics was too blippy to justify the 2AR extension of it. I voted neg on a kritik because never was there an explanation of how the permutation resolved the offense on the kritik despite the 2NR never addressing the permutation explicitly. And I often refuse to vote on theory that doesn’t have a link or impact articulated in the debate. I don’t think I’m alone in these types of behaviors. I think judges have different standards for what constitutes a complete argument, and when that standard isn’t met, then the claim is not factored into the decision.

It seems that Sean is saying that because debaters are not uniformly good at making arguments, debate fails to teach argumentation. I just do not agree. I think that’s like saying because the majority of people in a math class will not get A’s, we have failed to teach math. The majority of debaters probably will not become the paradigm of good argumentation and thus will rely on poor argumentation in order to win debates, but I don’t think that signals a failure to teach argumentation. I think it signals that everyone makes due with the skills they currently have in order to win, but as they get better, they will rely less on those tactics in the bulk of the debate because better argumentation is much more difficult to win against.

Sean’s argument that we reward bad debating because we vote on dropped arguments with no truth value also seems to rest on a fallacy. While it may be true that often decisions are based on the part of the debate with the least coverage, and thus may ‘reward bad argumentation’, the only way you get a team to undercover and issue is if you force them to spend time on other issues where good argumentation has occurred. The win does not just correlate to the one argument that the team wins, but to the totality of the debate and how strategically arguments have developed throughout the hour and a half.

I’m not trying to paint an overly rosy picture of debate. I do think that there are practices in debate that fail to maximize the transportable skills that we develop in debate. But I do think that we are better at developing argumentative skills than this and other ‘crisis in debate’ posts give us credit for. Ultimately, I think this is part of the mission of most camps. At the UTNIF, we definitely are focused on good argumentation, skills development, and encouraging good debate as opposed to merely winning debate. I think there is a reason debate camps do not put out Spark or comprehensive ASPEC files or whatever hobgoblin of bad debate is your favorite.

Ultimately, I do fear that if good argumentation becomes our only standard for evaluating debate, a couple things will happen:
1) This will force judges either to give double losses in a minority, but still good portion of debates when no one has made either a “true” or “good” argument, or it will devolve into our current system because the requirement to declare one winner and one loser.
2) Teams will lose because of the expertise of judges, not their opponents. I know that right now, the South Korea Free Trade Agreement won’t pass because Baucus refuses to let it out of committee. Even if the affirmative never makes this argument against a KORUS good DA, the neg would still lose, because “Their argument is stupid” and I know “It’s just not true.” With mutual preferred judging (MPJ), I know then my position of truth over all else in judging would be quickly eliminated from mattering because debaters would stop putting me in the back of rooms. Without MPJ, I would still discourage good argumentation, because no matter what a team did in providing persuasive reasons why their position is true, I could discount it because I was impossible to persuade. I can think of nothing worse for deterring argumentation and the required open mindedness to the world.

Finally, I think we have the middle ground Sean asks for. Many judges do not evaluate debate in an offense/defense paradigm. Perhaps you could describe us as having a reasonability standard to judging. A counterplan with marginal solvency doesn’t actually solve. A DA with miniscule risk actually has no risk. An aff advantage than could not plausibly be solved has no risk. A theory block without warrants does not constitute a reason to reject the team. Perhaps we should convince more people to judge in this way, but if we don’t, that’s more a failure on our own argumentation, rather than a failure of the activity.

Why Debate? - Sean Tiffee

2011-03-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

The Old Man Speaketh.

I’d like to begin this short post with an even shorter question: why debate? What is the activity’s purpose, what is its function, and what do we hope to accomplish from a pedagogical position? In short, why debate? If you asked a dozen different debaters, you would most likely get a dozen different answers, all of which are probably right in their own way. Some debaters want to sit back and pontificate about poststructuralist theory. Others want to discuss the ins and outs of policymaking and what constitutes good governance. Some want to find a higher Truth, some want to learn to speak well, some want to improve their research skills, some think it looks good on a college application, and some just think that a weekend isn’t complete unless at least 6 hours are spent in a van or bus.

To me, these are all a part of debate and part of what makes debate a wonderful activity, but none of them are central to what we do. None of them fully answers the question, why debate? If there were no debate, we could still ponder Derridean deconstruction and the implications of setting up a global system to map asteroids. There would still be philosophy departments and schools of public policy and while, yes, they debate there, they don’t debate like we debate and you know it. What is it that makes our activity unique, that constructs the way we see the world in such a way that you can tell when someone has been trained in “our debate?”

The American Forensic Association, the oversight body for the NDT and publisher of debate’s academic journal, Argumentation and Advocacy, states the obligation of the debate teacher is “to expand students' appreciation of the place of argument and advocacy in shaping their worlds, and to prepare students through classrooms, forums, and competition for participation in their world through the power of expression; and … seeks to empower through argument and advocacy.” While debate will most certainly make us better critical thinkers, activists, policymakers, etc., and while the mission statement does include the notion of advocacy, what is central to our activity, and what separates it from others, is our commitment to argumentation. As teachers, we first and foremost teach argumentation, and, as debaters, you first and foremost engage in argumentation. Why debate? To learn how to argue. Interestingly, the framework debates that I see never seem to focus on argumentation – they focus on good policymaking, or good research, or possibly the fairness of the game, but never about what makes for the best argument. Our fundamental commitment to argumentation seems lost and I believe it is time we refocus our attention.

I made the decision to make my blog post about argumentation for two seemingly contradictory reasons. First, debate evolves at a pace that is simply staggering. The ninth grade debaters of today will be the ones shaping our activity in under a decade. As we all know, debate is a time intensive and life encompassing activity. While there are certainly coaches who have committed their lives to the activity, more and more seem to hit their early to mid 30s and decide they don’t want to lose every weekend for a minimal stipend, which leaves the activity in the hands of 20-somethings. A large-scale commitment of high school debaters to focus on argumentation today means that high school and college debate looks a whole lot different in less than 10 years. Second, as fast as our activity can change, we attempt to innovate among calcified thought. Some of these debates have already been had, they say, and there’s no point in going over them again. I disagree. While some of these debates have been had, it can be a good idea to revisit them with fresh eyes and the benefit of hindsight. In particular, I’d like to revisit a portion of a debate that took place in the Fall 1984 edition of The Journal of the American Forensic Association between Robert Rowland and Walter Ulrich. I know this is old school, but hear me out. Further, in the interest of full disclosure, I intend to cherry pick from these articles in an effort to initiate discussion and encourage you to seek out and read these relatively short articles yourself.

From the outset, I believe that this article explains the lack of focus on argumentation in today’s debate. For Rowland, argumentation serves several functions and his commitment to dialectic as concept is unwavering, even while he questions dialectic as practiced in academic debate. For him, good argumentation is the prerequisite to good critical thinking skills as students will learn to differentiate between strong and weak arguments. In turn, this offers an epistemological question as debates between formal and informal logic, (ir)rationality, and language as structure all contaminate the issue of debate as epistemic. For Rowland, dialectic overcomes these limitations in that “the adversary process serves as the best check on argument quality. … The proper standard for evaluating the argument can be discovered in the dialectical exchange itself.” The problem for Rowland, however, is that tabula rasa judging removes the critic from the dialectic process. While no judge would ever claim to truly be a “blank slate” and the ubiquity of detailed judging philosophies has allowed certain judges to claim an overt bias for or against certain arguments, I contend that most judges still attempt to intervene as little as possible. For Rowland, this leaves critics to “evaluate arguments based only on what the debaters say about them … A debater can often win a weak argument be presenting so many reasons for it that one of the reasons slips by unrefuted.” Even though written in 1984, this line describes 90% of the college rounds I watched in 2011.

I understand that this sounds like an old man ranting that debate just ain’t like it used to be, but, well, okay so this IS an old man ranting, but it doesn’t mean that I’m wrong. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve voted on a link to the criticism only because it was dropped by a 1AR who didn’t answer the 2NC “link wall” that was really nothing more than an “ink wall.” I cringe every time I read “evidence” that consists of 6 pages of 8 point font with 5 words highlighted to a page making a grand total of 3 sentences. “But,” I think to myself, “I can’t intervene.” But why can’t I? Why shouldn’t the critic be part of the dialectic? Should I vote on an argument that was dropped even though it is clearly factually wrong? It’s not that I disagree with it; it’s that it is objectively stupid. No, the earth is not hollow with little elves living inside of it, even though I’ve got cards that say that’s “true.” I also wonder if critics should vote on a dropped “severance perms bad” argument when the perm was neither severance nor intrinsic (because the 1NR mindlessly read that block too) to begin with. And how can I justify voting on the 15 point condo bad block in the 2AC that was really just 3 arguments said in different ways, all of which were just unwarranted claims to begin with, and when can I pull the trigger on that 8 second A-Spec shell the 1NC spit out? Ultimately, here’s the point I’m trying to make: debaters engage in poor argumentation because critics refuse to enforce standards of good argumentation. Be honest, as you read the last paragraph, your number one thought was: how can I get my hands on that sweet sweet Hollow Earth file?

Ulrich responds to Rowland by arguing that if “either side wishes a higher standard for argument to be used, they can introduce that standard in the round.” Honestly, this isn’t unheard of, as recently several teams at the University of Texas have argued for a “data standard” to determine what constitutes evidence. The question remains, though, if debate is better when judges remove themselves from the dialectic and pretend as though argumentative ignorance is actually impartiality. Why is the responsibility of the debaters alone to create the standards for what constitutes “good debate?” It’s at the bottom of MY ballot (and, ultimately, your ballot relatively soon) that asks who did the better job debating. To abdicate this responsibility to the debaters seems to “encourage debaters to make weak arguments and support them with pseudo reasons. It also has the potential to legitimize presentation of arguments which could destroy the debate process.” Ah, a “destroys debate” claim that you have no offense against. In an offense-defense paradigm, this means you lose. Then again, the offense-defense paradigm means that I continue to vote for weird little procedural counterplans where the solvency evidence is marginal (at best) and seems like it might be talking about the Sweedish parliamentary system, but the Affirmative never said that, and the net benefit with 26 internals has a .00000000000001% risk, so I guess counterplan solves case with no risk of the net benefit so the Negative wins. By the way, I find myself voting Negative like it’s my job these days. And, yes, I speak in generalities. It is quite possible that you don’t engage in any of the behaviors I’ve outlined, but a lot of debaters do and I think they shortchange everyone when they do.

I would like to end like I began, with the simple question: why debate? We debate to learn how to argue. We debate for other reasons as well, but argumentation still resides as the core of what we do. In my mind, topics should be even and topics should be interesting, but we could debate about anything and the activity would have immeasurable value because students would learn how to argue. That point, however, seems to be lost as we move forward through the calcified thought that judge “impartiality” is a good thing. Are judges who remove themselves from what is going on in the room, hoping to “follow the path of least intervention,” truly helping the activity? To me, we’ve gone too far. Of course I don’t want a critic to dismiss Lacan out of hand because they personally disagree with psychoanalysis, but do we have to allow for that to say that judges should apply some standard to arguments? Isn’t there a middle ground? I do know that I think what passes for evidence today is laughable. The links to the K are fabrications. The counterplan solvency doesn’t assume the affirmative. The disad only wins because the PIC solved the case. And the affirmative arguments are getting worse because they try to compete with all of the above.

Maybe the alternative is worse, but I’m afraid the activity is moving further and further away from the core value of argumentation and it leaves me wondering: why debate? What are your thoughts? Speak loud, my hearing is going. References to 1970s punk earn you extra speaker points. A good X-Ray Spex joke might get you up to a 26.5. What? 26 isn’t average anymore? I know what my next old man blog rant will be about.

Congratulations to UTNIF alums at TFA!

2011-03-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

Congratulations are in order to all UTNIF alums participating at TFA State.

Special congratulations to UTNIF lab leader Claire McKinney who coached two Kinkaid teams, Zack Rosenthal (UTNIF 09) and Vivek Dathla, AND, Nikhil Bontha and Robert Baldwin (UTNIF 08), to the SEMIFINALS of the tournament.

Other teams that include UTNIF alums who appeared in the elimination rounds of TFA:

Thorndale - Hank Stolte and Ethan White
Dulles - Kayla Chang Calk and Sabrina Zakaria
Dumas - Chris Leonardi and Thomas Maneer
Westlake - Anne Baker and Alex Dzeda
Winston Churchill - Noah Barshop and Adam Lipton
Dulles - Humza Tariq and Tanweer Rajwani
Liberal Arts and Sciences - Clara Yoon and Emily Wang
Dulles - Saad Khalid and Zain Sheikh
Westlake - Emily Furnish and Kevin Presley

UTNIF Testimonial: Nick Fiori

2011-03-09T14:10:00.000-08:00

UTNIF Testimonial - Nick Fiori from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Testimonial - Misael Gonzalez on the UTNIF

2011-03-08T13:38:00.000-08:00

UTNIF Testimonials - Misael Gonzalez from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Testimonial - Blake Johnson on UTNIF 2011

2011-03-07T20:10:00.000-08:00

Untitled from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Thunder Rods and Aliens: Beginning Preparation for the Space Topic

2011-03-07T05:48:00.000-08:00

MAX HANTEL - Georgetown/Rutgers

As the season wraps up, it is time to start turning our attention to next year's topic: SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER. This topic presents an area of policy and critical literature only treated in passing (and often irreverently) in any given debate year--everyone's read a few space militarization cards or some crazy article about China's outer-space assassins. This post is about preparing for the space topic in general terms, that is, how one should prepare for any topic. It goes doubly for the space topic, however, because while we might have had some popular knowledge about Afghanistan and Iraq going into last year, very few people have an intimate knowledge of United States space policy. I propose three tips in the following to guide you.

I. Stop Carding, Start Reading

Between now and debate camp, or between now and the debate year starts, you certainly need to be doing all the usual card work--make sure your impact defense files are in order, cut promising affirmative directions etc. But for that work to be good and useful as you delve into a new topic, you absolutely have to engage in deep topic reading. That means reading scholarly articles, full books (!), and immersing yourself in cutting-edge, topic-relevant blogs. A lot of this reading will not seem to have an immediate impact in terms of evidence output, but it will be absolutely invaluable once the year starts in terms of guiding further research (more on this in point III).

So for the space topic, before you start reading about thunder rods (http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/space-weapons/issues/space_weapons_earth_wars.htm) and aliens, get into the nitty gritty of the birth of US space exploration and its relationship to other programs, like those of the Soviet Union and China. At the bottom of this section I've included some helpful links to begin the deep reading process so that by the time camp starts you're eating and breathing space exploration beyond the mesosphere. I might add, for the super nerds out there, it could be worth getting into some physics literature as well--the history of space exploration is a struggle between humans and the laws of physics.

I know from personal experience how important deep reading is. My senior year at Georgetown University, our entire affirmative approach was guided by the initial decision to read about the birth of the nuclear arsenal in relation to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So even if some of that reading did not manifest in "cards," the value of knowing the ins and outs of nuclear history came into play every single round and strategy session.

The next two points are not tips on their own, exactly, but hopefully will prove to you why this approach is best.

http://phg.sagepub.com/content/31/5/592.abstract

http://www.rand.org/topics/outer-space.html

http://carnegie.org/fileadmin/Media/Publications/PDF/spaceUS.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Heavens-Earth-Political-History-Space/dp/1597404284

http://www.amazon.com/Astropolitik-Classical-Geopolitics-Strategy-History/dp/0714681970/ref=pd_sim_b_4

II. Don't try to fit outer-space into a box

Do you hate capitalism? Duh! Do you love agenda-based politics disads? Of course! Just because you have certain pet arguments that you consider the most fun, or your strength, does not mean those have to be the arguments you read every year. The first corollary to my deep reading advice is that the topic literature will reveal the best arguments to you--you won't impose them on the topic. It's a bad idea to go into the topic thinking, "I've been really into this Emmanuel Levinas guy…so I'll just read him on the topic no matter what." If, on the other hand, you stumble across a whole bunch of stuff about Levinas, physics and outer-space (http://www.kalpakjian.com/Grandy.html), you might have the makings of an argument (another aside for the super nerds--Levinas criticized Heidegger's philosophy rather extensively, but he did so specifically in the context of outer space! The article is called "Heidegger, Gagarin, and Us," Gagarin being the first cosmonaut to go into outerspace. Now that's topic relevant).

As a judge, it is frustrating to hear generic evidence for generic arguments that are only tangentially related to the topic. Why read Zizek when you can read someone actually talking about outer-space? It is generally evident when someone has just taken a back file, cut a link card or two about space, and called it a day. The same goes for process counterplans and generic DA's. Why read politics (the Zizek of disads) when you can read space specific arguments about debris or the impending disappearance of NASA? You will never get to those argumentative areas, however, if you didn't do the work before the topic started to understand the central concerns of US space policy, the thorniest issues in its history, and the common (and not so common) projections for its future.

III. Controlling History In-Round; or, the Ben Crossan method to skull busting

Good solid analytics win debate rounds, and often win them in convincing style. And really good analytic arguments on substantive issues generally stem from a deep understanding of history. As a critique debater in college, I can say that historically grounded analytics--not just quick asides like, "that's empirically denied because China did that once," but involved re-tellings of both the history of space exploration and the affirmative's place in that history according to your theoretical framework--is the sine qua non of effective K debating. No one does it better than an UTNIF alum who currently debates at Towson, Ben Crossan. Section III is dedicated to him because he is truly an analytic samurai when it comes to wielding history. If you think a lot of debate evidence is dumb, which it is, your chance to kill it in cross-examination requires a pretty deep knowledge of a topic's history so you can frustrate the other team at each turn. A Crossan cross examination on the history of non-violent political struggles would generally end the round right there--but only because he had a control over that history from Jesus to Mandela and beyond (and yes, he once owned on the biblical question of Jesus' political tactics).

This advice does not just go for K debaters, however. While it is essential for a good K 2NC to win the specificity battle, and recontextualize the affirmative within a pernicious history (as opposed to the neutral snapshot of the world the affirmative claims to be), quality policy arguments are all about winning the specificity battle too. Good impact calculus, for instance, often incorporates strong historical basis for its claims about regional flash points or a particular space program. Doing that practically writes the ballot for the judge, instead of just saying "MAGNITUDE WAR AND STUFF."

Dominating cross-examination, winning the race to specificity every 2NR or 2AR, a year-long resource guiding research and argument strategies---that should be enough reason to start your deep topic reading right this second!

UTNIF PRICING UPDATE

2011-03-04T09:32:00.000-08:00

The price for the 6 week summer survivors has been reduced to $5200.

The price for the 3 week Topic Intensive has been reduced to $2750.

Remember - deadline for application to the Sophomore Select is March 15.

The Bad Faith of Impact Calculus: Value to Life versus Existence debates

2011-03-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

Claire McKinney

“To sound off with a cheerful ‘give me liberty or give me death’ sort of argument in the face of the unprecedented and inconceivable potential of destruction of nuclear warfare is not even hollow; it is downright ridiculous…which of course is not to say the reverse…As a matter of fact, to the extent that the discussion of the war question today is conducted in these terms, it is easy to detect a mental reservation on both sides. Those who say ‘better dead than red’ actually think: The losses may not be as great as some anticipate, our civilization will survive; while those who say ‘better red than dead’ actually think: Slavery will not be so bad, man will not change his nature, freedom will not vanish from the earth forever. In other words, the bad faith of the discussants lies in that both dodge the preposterous alternative they themselves have proposed; they are not serious.”
--Hannah Arendt, On Revolution pp3-4, 1963

In the high school kritik debates I have recently judged, it seems that kritikal debaters have shied away from what can be grouped under “value to life” claims in favor of large security impacts and extinction. There is, of course, a fundamental tension in this form of impact calculus in kritik debate because so many of these authors are, at their base, criticizing the survivalist impulse that has driven us to the valuation of securing ourselves from violent death over any other concerns, such as human flourishing, justice, or equality. While it is mere cant to suggest that debate distorts the authors it relies on, there is a strategic flaw with ceding the ground to evaluating the debate through the lens of body-counts alone: as soon as the debate becomes about lives saved, several arguments easily tip in the favor of the policy-oriented: proximate versus root cause (or justifying logic), aff solvency versus alternative solvency, and the deployment of add-ons that do not link to the kritik. In this post, I will argue for the revitalization of debates around question of what human life is for and how to eliminate the “bad faith” of traditional value to life versus extinction debates.

What is value to life?

This is an especially difficult question for most debaters to answer. I think there are a couple of reasons for this. First, most debaters I know have grown up in the United States, and thus share an assumption of many in the West as developed by John Stuart Mill and the liberal theorists who followed in his footsteps. Namely, that there is not one social good that all ought to aspire to. Rather, society ought not interfere with the pursuit of whatever goods the individual wants to pursue so long as that pursuit does not harm another individual (this is the Harm Principle as articulated in On Liberty). This tremendous innovation of being agnostic regarding what people ought to pursue has fundamentally structured liberal democracies like the United States for decades, and thus as members of such a polity, it is often difficult to answer questions regarding what the value of life actually is. Since each individual, in theory, develops that value for herself, to answer the broader question, we would have to fight against unquestioned assumptions of what it means to be a part of this society.
Second, as debaters, we are trained from the earliest moments that every decision is one of mass life or mass death. The drive to every impact to become an extinction-level impact betrays that more than anything else, we believe life to be the ultimate and often, the only good. Because arguments like ‘you have to be alive to value life’ are so intuitive in this framework, it becomes difficult to convince debaters, even those critically oriented, that there is another way to frame these questions.
Of course, none of the critiques being run today are Mill inspired. His belief in democracy, the state, liberalism, and his development of a theory of utilitarianism make him pretty useless for kritik debaters except as an object of criticism. Therefore, critical debaters need to shed their liberalist backgrounds and fully embrace their adopted critical roots.
When we speak of ‘value to life,’ we are not really speaking about some intrinsic value to being human (that would too easily fall into the need to secure life qua life). Depending on what sort of criticism you are running, there are several different answers to the question of what ‘value to life’ might mean. For example, Nietzsche’s normative orientation was towards human flourishing; critique was about discovering whether some set of values is “a sign of distress, of impoverishment, of the degeneration of life” or “betray the fullness, the power, the will of life, it courage, its confidence, its future.” (On the Genealogy of Morality, 3). That is, there was a greatness possible in being human that could be denied and destroyed or celebrated and fostered. For authors that follow in this tradition, the problem with some orientations to the world is that they make being alive into a state that one could do with or without.
In some respects, the phrase ‘value to life’ is a misnomer. It is not a question of whether or not life has value, but rather a question of what we ought to see as the point of human existence and what the consequences of either retaining that vision or replacing it with another are. If the purpose of life is just to propagate the species, then of course security, reproduction, and bare life matter. Of course, then eliminating threats to the health of the species, often enslaving certain portions of the population, and denying the ability for anyone to truly risk their life for some higher purpose all seem like normatively neutral or positive policies. If the purpose of life is to encourage human freedom, then these policies become untenable. Debaters need to make clear what their principle (what is life for?) is and generate link arguments against the principles from which their opponents are arguing.

The Debate

There are several elements to the value to life versus extinction debate. This section will describe some of the most obvious parts of the debate and some ways to fight for value to life considerations in a debate round.

Life is a prerequisite to Value to Life

The argument: There is no way to have a value to life if we are all dead. Human existence is a prerequisite to human flourishing or human freedom or whatever else is the value the kritik isolates, and since we have extinction-level impacts, that means it is try or die for us.

I will say that this is perhaps the argument most often deployed and most often successful for eliminating consideration of value to life. The popularization of this argument is, I would argue, partly responsible for the relegation of value to life to a sort of tie-breaker for impact calculus. While its logic seems pretty irrefutable, this argument epitomizes the “bad faith” discussed in the opening quote.

The responses: This argument relies on two things which are probably not really true: first, the aff is actually winning as extinction level impact and second, losing the value the negative has isolated isn’t all that bad. Relating to the first, because no team will win absolute probability of their extinction claims (intervening actors, solvency defense, timeframe considerations, and whatever defense you’ve generated against the link and impact) all mean that it probably is not extinction that will actually occur. Life will go on, even if the catastrophes the affirmative describes do occur. Second, all good kritik debaters should be using their kritik to call into question the knowledge claims of the 1AC. Your authors are operating from the position that what security experts or think tank analysts believe is true is actually the result of a certain way of seeing the world and thus has diminished veracity. Third, you should also be winning a turns case sort of argument (for instance, a self-fulfilling prophecy claim, or a claim about how the tyranny of cause and effect logic ends to totalitarianism because it denies the ability for humans to act differently), which means that the affirmative brings about the loss of life that dooms the value to life. These are all standard arguments one will see in most debates.

Regarding the second, that eliminating value to life isn’t all that bad, is an assumption rarely pointed out or argued against in debate. Because value to life claims are kept so generic, it often is difficult for kritik debaters to argue why it is more important that risking extinction. Consider the situations where the deprivation of human flourishing has been most severe: the concentration camp, refugee camps, chattel slavery, maquiladoras (sweat shops), Guantanamo Bay, the situation of the homeless in America, mental institutions, the prison, etc. Imagine being in a situation where arbitrary force can be used against you physically, sexually, and psychologically. Where your well-being is only a concern insofar as your death may make the administrators look bad, but anything short of death is considered acceptable or below notice. Where your relationships with others can be denied if they are deemed unacceptable or risky and thus you are deprived of the most enriching elements of life (being with others). Yes, it’s true most people in these situations do not commit suicide (the other favorite argument as to why life is more important than value to life); but the most admirable are the ones who put their bodies on the line in order to effectuate change (think hunger protests, mass suicide attempts like in Guantanamo, attempts to escape, etc; people may not commit suicide, but they risk almost certain death to change their situation). Also, the argument about suicide ignores a couple of fundamental truths. First, these populations are often actively denied the means to take their own life. Second, it is speaking from a position of extreme callousness and privilege to make the ‘better red than dead’ argument. Isn’t there a third option that we ought to normatively dedicate ourselves to? If not, then the value judgments such as being free is better than being a slave lose all meaning. To argue that it is ok to subjugate large swaths of the population as long as existence is secured is ethically suspect, but more importantly, the debater ought to implore the judge to make their judgments from a position of such subjugation. The fact that we cannot imagine what it would be like in chattel slavery, the concentration camp, or working 18 hours in a sweat shops is a pretty good indication that such life is no life at all.

Positing a value to life destroys value to life

The Argument: Once you ascribe a value to life, you can isolate those whoa re missing that value and then eliminate them, making the kritik genocidal.

This argument hopefully is obviously fallacious given the above discussion. This is more of a reason to abandon the language of ‘value to life’ in favor of the specific thing you value (freedom, human flourishing, etc) than it is a good argument.

The response: The kritik does not posit a human essence or a particular end that all most aspire to. Rather, it is arguing for a recognition that it is the ability to deprive people of [freedom, human flourishing] is implicated the in the ability to kill them for the greater good or to let them die in neglect or to actively destroy their lives because to furthers something greater than themselves. We can argue that the essence of being human is in plurality, that each of us is different and unique, and therefore, freedom and human flourishing requires that we encourage that difference and diversity rather than destroy it.

Value to Life is circular

The Argument: Value to life is only important because when one is denied the value to life, then they can be killed. Which means value to life only matters because life itself is important. Which means life is still the highest value, so vote aff because we save the most lives.

This is almost the reverse of the first argument about life being a prerequisite, but it is persuasive because of the mistake most kritik debaters make of only discussing the body count aspects of the kritik.

The response: This one is easiest to respond to if you just avoid linking to it in the first place. The impact to value to life should not be death (the Dillon 99 evidence often used to make the value to life claim is impacted by the Holocaust, not death; maintaining that distinction is important. Genocide, the ghettos, death camps, and targeted racism is much more meaningful than death because of the system of valuation that then can be translated to all human life). Yes, you are making a turns the case argument as well, insofar as denying value to life often results in mass death, but that is not the primary reason why value to life matters; it is an ancillary concern.

What this does mean is that you have to win why the value you isolate matters. This requires hard thinking on the part of the debater. Body counts are the easy valuation system, but the purpose of critique is to move us from those standard forms of judgment and logic. Putting more thought into your critique, cutting cards by those who think freedom, human flourishing, justice, equality, etc. matter in and of themselves will place you in a position to move out of the deadlock critiques are currently in.

Just when you thought you were safe...

2011-02-28T10:59:00.000-08:00

Wired.com offer's us:

How One Nuclear Skirmish Could Wreck the Planet
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/nuclear-war-climate-change/

* By Dave Mosher
* February 25, 2011
Updated: Feb. 25, 2011; 11:40 p.m. EST

WASHINGTON — Even a small nuclear exchange could ignite mega-firestorms and wreck the planet’s atmosphere.

New climatological simulations show 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs — relatively small warheads, compared to the arsenals military superpowers stow today — detonated by neighboring countries would destroy more than a quarter of the Earth’s ozone layer in about two years.

Regions closer to the poles would see even more precipitous drops in the protective gas, which absorbs harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun. New York and Sydney, for example, would see declines rivaling the perpetual hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. And it may take more than six years for the ozone layer to reach half of its former levels.

Researchers described the results during a panel Feb. 18 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, calling it “a real bummer” that such a localized nuclear war could bring the modern world to its knees.

“This is tremendously dangerous,” said environmental scientist Alan Robock of Rutgers University, one of the climate scientists presenting at the meeting. “The climate change would be unprecedented in human history, and you can imagine the world … would just shut down.”

To defuse the complexity involved in a nuclear climate catastrophe, Wired.com sat down with Michael Mills, an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, who led some of the latest simulation efforts.
‘It’s pretty clear this would lead to a global nuclear famine.’

Wired.com: In your simulation, a war between India and Pakistan breaks out. Each country launches 50 nukes at their opponent’s cities. What happens after the first bomb goes off?

Michael Mills: The initial explosions ignite fires in the cities, and those fires would build up for hours. What you eventually get is a firestorm, something on the level we saw in World War II in cities like Dresden, in Tokyo, Hiroshima and so on.

Today we have larger cities than we did then — mega cities. And using 100 weapons on these different mega cities, like those in India and Pakistan, would cause these firestorms to build on themselves. They would create their own weather and start sucking air through bottom. People and objects would be sucked into buildings from the winds, basically burning everything in the city. It’ll burn concrete, the temperatures get so hot. It converts mega cities into black carbon smoke.

Atmospheric scientist Michael Mills of NCAR. Dave Mosher/Wired.com

Wired.com: I see — the firestorms push up the air, and ash, into the atmosphere?

Mills: Yeah. You sometimes see these firestorms in large forest fires in Canada, in Siberia. In those cases, you see a lot of this black carbon getting into the stratosphere, but not on the level we’re talking about in a nuclear exchange.

The primary cause of ozone loss is the heating of the stratosphere by that smoke. Temperatures initially increase by more than 100 degrees Celsius, and remain more than 30 degrees higher than normal for more than 3 years. The higher temperatures increase the rates of two reaction cycles that deplete ozone.

Wired.com: And the ozone layer is in the stratosphere, correct?

Mills: OK, so we live in the troposphere, which is about 8 kilometers [5 miles] thick at the poles, and 16 km [10 miles] at the equator.

At the top of the troposphere, you start to encounter the stratosphere. It’s defined by the presence of the ozone layer, with the densest ozone at the lowest part, then it tails off at the stratopause, where the stratosphere ends about 50 km [30 miles] up.

We have a lot of weather in the troposphere. That’s because energy is being absorbed at the Earth’s surface, so it’s warmest at the surface. As you go up in the atmosphere it gets colder. Well, that all turns around as you get to the ozone layer. It starts getting hotter because ozone is absorbing ultraviolet radiation, until you run out of ozone and it starts getting colder again. Then you’re at the mesosphere.

How Nukes Gobble Up Ozone

When we talk about ozone, we’re talking about the odd oxygen family, which includes both ozone (O3) and atomic oxygen (O). Those two gases can interchange rapidly within hours.

Ozone is produced naturally by the breakdown of molecules of oxygen, O2, which makes up 20 percent of the atmosphere. O2 breaks down from ultraviolet solar radiation and splits it into two molecules of O. Then the O, very quickly, runs into another O2 and forms O3. And the way O3 forms O again is by absorbing more UV light, so it’s actually more protective than O2.

Ozone is always being created and destroyed by many reactions. Some of those are catalytic cycles that destroy ozone, and in those you have something like NO2 plus O to produce NO plus O2. In that case, you’ve gotten rid of a member of the odd oxygen family and converted it to O2. Well, then you’ve got an NO which can react with ozone and produce the NO2 back again and another O2. So the NO and NO2 can go back and forth and in the process one molecule can deplete thousands of molecules of ozone.

It’s a similar process to chlorofluorocarbons, Those are the larger molecules that we’ve manufactured that don’t exist naturally. They break down into chlorine in the stratosphere, which has a powerful ozone-depleting ability. —Michael Mills

Wired.com: Where do the nukes come in? I mean, in eroding the ozone layer?

Mills: It’s not the explosions that do it, but the firestorms. Those push up gases that lead to oxides of nitrogen, which act like chlorofluorocarbons. But let’s back up a little.

There are two important elements that destroy ozone, or O3, which is made of three atoms of oxygen. One element involves oxides of nitrogen, including nitrogen dioxide, or NO2, which can be made from nitrous oxide, or N2O — laughing gas.

The other element is a self-destructive process that happens when ozone reacts with atomic oxygen, called O. When they react together, they form O2, which is the most common form of oxygen on the planet. This self-reaction is natural, but takes off the fastest in the first year after the nuclear war.

In years two, three and four, the NO2 builds up. It peaks in year two because the N2O, the stuff that’s abundant in the troposphere, rose so rapidly with the smoke that it’s pushed up into the stratosphere. There, it breaks down into the oxides like NO2, which deplete ozone.

Wired.com: So firestorms suck up the N2O, push it up into the stratosphere, and degrade the ozone layer. But where does this stuff come from?

Mills: N2O is among a wide class of what we call tracers that are emitted at the ground. It’s produced by bacterias in soil, and it’s been increasing due to human activities like nitrogen fertilizers used in farming. N2O is actually now the most significant human impact on the ozone, now that we’ve mostly taken care of CFCs.

Wired.com: You did similar computer simulations in the past few years and saw this ozone-depleting effect. What do the new simulations tell us?

Mills: Before, we couldn’t look at the ozone depletion’s effects on surface temperatures; we lacked a full ocean model that would respond realistically. The latest runs are ones I’ve done in the Community Earth System Model. It has an atmospheric model, a full-ocean model, full-land and sea-ice models, and even a glacier model.

We see significantly greater cooling than other studies, perhaps because of ozone loss . Instead of a globally averaged 1.3-degree–Celsius drop, which Robock’s atmospheric model produced, it’s more like 2 degrees. But we both see a 7 percent decrease in global average precipitation in both models. And in our model we see a much greater global average loss of ozone for many years, with even larger losses everywhere outside of the tropics.

I also gave this to my colleague Julia Lee-Taylor at NCAR. She calculated the UV indexes across the planet, and a lot of major cities and farming areas would be exposed to a UV index similar to the Himalayas, or the hole over the Antarctic. We’re starting to look at the response of sea ice and land ice in the model, and it seems to be heavily increasing in just a few years after the hypothetical war.

Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict. Michael Mills/NCAR/NSF

Wired.com: What would all of this do to the planet, to civilization?

Mills: UV has big impacts on whole ecosystems. Plant height reduction, decreased shoot mass, reduction in foliage area. It can affect genetic stability of plants, increase susceptibility to attacks by insects and pathogens, and so on. It changes the whole competitive balance of plants and nutrients, and it can affect processes from which plants get their nitrogen.

Then there’s marine life, which depends heavily on phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are essential; they live in top layer of the ocean and they’re the plants of the ocean. They can go a little lower in the ocean if there’s UV, but then they can’t get as much sunlight and produce as much energy. As soon as you cut off plants in the ocean, the animals would die pretty quickly. You also get damage to larval development and reproduction in fish, shrimp, crabs and other animals. Amphibians are also very susceptible to UV.

A 16 percent ozone depletion could result in a 5 percent loss in phytoplankton, which could result in a 7 percent loss in fisheries and aquaculture. And in our model we see a much greater global average loss of ozone for many years; the global average hides a lot.

Wired.com: This doesn’t sound very good at all.

Mills: No, as we said it’s a real bummer. It’s pretty clear this would lead to a global nuclear famine.

You have the inability to grow crops due to severe, colder temperatures and also the severe increases in UV light. You have the loss of plants and proteins in the oceans, and that leads to widespread food shortages and famine (PDF).

The first three layers of the atmosphere. NOAA

Wired.com: There have been thousands of nuclear tests. Why hasn’t this already happened?

Mills: We’re not talking about direct impacts of the explosions themselves, but the firestorms that result when you detonate these in cities. Most tests were in deserts or atolls or space or underground.

Wired.com: When you talk nuclear reductions, you’re wading into political territory. As a scientist, how do you handle that?

Mills: The response to this from the policy community has been rather underwhelming. We know, from what both Gorbachev and Reagan have said in anecdotes, that these kinds of studies had a big impact on thinking at the time. People started realizing nuclear war was not something you can win. You’d just destroy the whole planet.

That led to some of the dramatic reductions we saw in the original START treaty, but we still have the ability to basically destroy the planet with one-tenth of 1 percent of the world’s current arsenals.

By the way, there’s nobody really funding these kinds of studies. All of us here are doing these on our own time. You can’t get grants to do this kind of research. It’s puzzling to me.

Wired.com: What would you like to see happen?

Mills: We’d all like to see much more dramatic reductions in the number of nuclear weapons we’re seeing proposed in the new START treaty, and the SORT treaty under the Bush administration. These just seem like refinements, in which the number of weapons is reduced, but each airplane counts as one weapon that can carry multiple bombs. So we might not be seeing any reductions.

Wired.com: Should nations have any nukes?

Mills: How many times do you need to explode a nuclear weapon in your enemy’s capital to deter them? I think just once. But given the consequences, I don’t think it’s reasonable to have any.

Next Level **** : beyond the stupid in framework debating

2011-02-25T07:02:00.000-08:00

Debating Framework - Brian McBride

I judge way too many ‘clash of civilization’ debates (essentially a kritikal aff in some form versus a framework argument) for my liking. Most of the time this debate super seriously sucks because the neg has their ‘sweet’ copy of Klinger’s framework file from years back (sorry Klinger, nothing personal) and the aff is real good about describing any concern for limits or fairness as white supremacy, biopower or genocide. No one really cares about listening to the other teams’ argument or making arguments, off their blocks that is, that actually responds to what the other team said.

Here’s what I’m come to notice over the years.

Aff Tips

Defense is the new offense. Typically affs can’t win a framework debate without winning some defensive arguments that demonstrate that their interpretation of the topic is debatable. Let me say that again: the aff must win that they are somewhat debatable in order to win the debate. While it is possible to assert that all concerns for fairness or debatability are stifling to the affirmative, I rarely notice judges being persuaded by these arguments. Kritikal affs need to have and develop a relationship to the topic, whether through counter-definitions of the words in the resolution or reasons why their aff is an important part of topic literatures. But the move to take the door off the hinges and allow any aff to say whatever they want will often times be counter-intuitive to many well-established beliefs in the community. ‘T = genocide’ is often times insufficient without some defense.

There is no topical way to do our aff. This is an argument that should require some serious aff thinking of how best to articulate it. The aff should prove in more than an assertion that the standard view of the topic prevents their aff and that there’s something uniquely educational about expanding the interpretation of the topic to include it.

Neg Tips

There are two main crutches that I see operative in a bunch of neg framework debates:

First, topical version of the aff. The argument that there is a ‘topical version of the aff’ is often used as a crutch for poor impact debating. If the neg just wins that there’s a more topical version of the aff but doesn’t really spend time proving why the aff is hard to debate then I usually vote aff. Yes it is important to be inclusive and this argument should be made but it should substitute discussion of why the aff’s framework is bad for ground.

Second, fairness first. Again, while it’s important to make these arguments, the neg should probably recognize that they’re not gonna win the debate exclusively on fairness first. They will have to defend the politics of their framework argument in some fashion: fiat is a way to pay attention to government policy-making; cure apathy against the government; fiat politics are a way to get outside our shoes and respect the demands that others have to deal with, etc. For me, a lot of this debate comes down to the way the negative frames the final impact of their framework argument. For example, framing the framework impact as critical to methods of compassion or respect for able opponents is a bit different that pointing out that framework is a jurisdictional issue. The neg could argue that their framework politics pays attention to unworthy opponents, which spills over to larger forms of fairness and respect. Disempowered groups can use the politics of fairness and respect for unable opponents to strengthen their claims for political participation. Or the neg could argue that their framework arguments infer that politics has a duty to both listen and respond and that the aff wants of politics of listening only. They don’t want us to be able to respond. It’s not enough for us to simply listen to the suffering of others. Suffering demands a response.

The “fed is bad” is not really an aff argument. Often times the aff answers the negative’s framework argument by asserting, ‘well if federal government action is problematic why should we be forced to advocate it.’ Look people, every venue of action or concern has its downsides. If it’s true that there’s something inherently limited about federal policy making, usually aff’s that believe in the thought experiment of fiated action teach the many different and unique limitations or drawbacks to such thinking. Fiated aff teach us the different way agencies work, the way the government can (mis)interpret ideas and difficulties of truly progressive reforms. The aff’s assumption that the federal government is inherently a deadend assumes that when we as debaters advocate fiated action that we will come to believe when our debate days are over that nothing is more promising that federal action to cure for what ails us. Many moons ago the college community had a topic that advocating increasing federal control over Indian country (the resolution’s words not mine). I don’t know many people who walked away from the topic (and who advocated that the federal government should implement an idea) that federal control of Indian country was actually a net positive. The neg’s framework argument isn’t that the federal government is great but it is a concern for having the discussion.

Hope this little post helps with some of your thinking on the issue. Expect more from our site in the months to come.

Space is the Place

2011-02-11T13:17:00.000-08:00

This may be a little bit premature, but for those of you excited about next year's Space Exploration topic, check out these renderings of life on a space colony.

A couple of space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. Colonies housing about 10,000 people were designed. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made.

See more:http://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArt/art.html

Winners of the Longhorn Classic Novice Division Receive UTNIF Scholarship

2011-02-11T12:47:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Rikki Bleiweiss and Reece Rosenthal of The Kinkaid School in Houston, Texas. As the winners of the Novice Policy division at the 2010 Longhorn Classic they have been awarded a $250 scholarship to attend any program at the UTNIF.

"Performance Debate" - Beginning a conversation about what it is, how its done, and how to defeat it - Teddy Albiniak

2011-02-09T11:14:00.000-08:00

Few issues spark real controversy in the debate community anymore. I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who truly believes that kritiks are no longer a legitimate part of negative strategies, even if that is not really your preferred argument.

Performance arguments come close though. I have witnessed (and coached) teams who shudder at the idea of having to debate "those stupid affs." If this is you, my suspicion is that you will only spend the amount of time it takes to pull out your framework file thinking about strategy.

But, for better or worse depending on your proclivity, performance arguments are not a fading fad, but will only continue to grow in the coming years. And as they do, framework strategies will become as obsolete as the "wrong forum" argument did on the kritik. For this first blog post on performance arguments, I offer some questions that can help anchor your thinking and some helpful tips for how to handle these arguments.

What are performance arguments?

Contrary to popular belief, performance arguments are not about singing, dancing, or reading poetry. These texts may be part of the overall argument, but do not necessarily constitute it. Neither are they simply about suspending traditional "line-by-line" debate. While this might be part of some teams tactics, it is not the core of their position. In fact, there are many different types of arguments that people lump into the category of "performance."

While this is not true for all performance arguments, usually the overarching goal is to research and introduce perspectives on the topic that a more mainstream or traditional approach to the topic is not necessarily concerned with. In other words, at their core, performance arguments tend to ask:

1.What parties or ideas have a stake in the debate about resolution beyond the governments’ interest?

2. Why are those interests not currently analyzed or included in the discussion?

3. What is dangerous about their exclusion?

4. What would policy discussion look like if their perspectives were included?

There can be numerous answers to these questions.

Research methods: This literature base is concerned with how we come to prove the arguments we know. While it is certainly acceptable to turn to think tanks, mainstream newspapers, even traditional academic literature bases to explore topics of contemporary policy, there is a real possibility that the real, everyday people effected by the policy are not included in those sources. Instead, teams may choose to explore qualitative, ethnographic, or narrative based literature to explore the effects policy has on people on the ground.

*Check out Walter Fisher's "Narrative Paradigm" in Communication Monographs (1985) for some other historical background

Standpoint/perspective: This literature base suggests that traditional policy making does not encompass the interest of everyone, but rather one perspective or set of interests against another. These folks may draw from identity and cultural studies to describe how the history of policy making or its practices tend to represent the perspective of a privileged group either at the expense of or resulting in the exclusion of a traditionally marginalized group.

*Check out Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza for an introductory sample.

Aesthetics/Presentation: This literature argues that persuasion has less to do with the number of pieces of evidence one reads, and rather with the practices of body and voice that happen in the actual exchange of the debate. Instead, their are non-quantifiable ways of moving an audience to understanding and will introduce mechanisms to demonstrate this process.

* Check out Michael Shapiro's Politics of Representation for more information.

While these short blips surely do not encompass the nuances, it is merely meant to demonstrate that performance arguments are usually not just about representing, they are a kind of doing: drawing attention and focus on the relationship between research methods, power, and presentation as it is reflected and practiced in academic debate.

So, what should we do?

Three starting tips:

1. Right now, you've still got your framework arguments. Obviously, this will not be a shock to performance teams. In fact, their arguments at the onset are designed to answer this position. Since so many teams will inevitably run framework, they will have spent many hours thinking and practicing answering this argument. But, all is not lost. If framework is your bag, then I would encourage you to defend the perspective of traditional policy making with as many specific example as possible. So, if you believe that policy making is "real world." Don't just leave it at that. Describe what that real world is to you, why it is important to preserve, and why that outweighs a risk of exclusion. If you believe that traditional debate creates the best form of communication, offer some examples. The point is: do not just sit on your ideology. The more detailed your defense of traditional practice, the better off you'll be.

2. Consider what you agree with and what you disagree with. My guess is that these debates will not occur on the impact level. I think it is difficult to win that racism or patriarchy is good for example. Instead, you should ask if the affirmative offers a mechanism that effectively challenges those structures or practices. Could there be alternate ways of challenging those systems? Perhaps we ought to orient ourselves to a more traditional form of protest or organizing. Maybe we should be more radical in our strategy? Maybe we should consider a different starting point? Because the nature of these debates are still ambiguous, you have a lot more leeway to establish points of competition. Take that opportunity and redefine the stakes of the debate.

3. Since the goal of the affirmative is to enact change, their entire speeches are open for interrogation. Are their phrases, depictions, stylistic practices or approaches that could or should be challenged? Did they make a claim about a root cause? Could you identify another possible root? Disagree with notion of "roots" entirely? The affirmative has introduced a whole range of possibilities for you, neglect them at your own risk!

4. Don't get frustrated! Most teams turn to performance not because of some enduring hate for debate: they are, after all, at the tournament! Instead, they most likely find something alluring about the practice or find some solace in its content. The more frustrated you get, the more you activate the argument. If you approach the discussion with meaningful, well-thought out, and reasonable differences, you will already be ahead of the game.

These are some helpful framing tips to help guide your thinking regarding performance debates. Join us at the UTNIF this summer to get strategic and technical training not just how to beat these arguments, but how to run them as well! Feel free to post below of email me (albiniak@mail.utexas.edu) with comments, concerns, or rants.

Theory and the Politics DA: Claire McKinney takes you Inside the Smoke Filled Room

2011-02-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

The Politics Disadvantage is different than many other disadvantages in debate. Temporally, it focuses on the process of plan passage rather than plan enactment. Structurally, it requires the discussion of some external bill unrelated to the plan. And recently in high school debate, it’s probably the disadvantage you see most often. Because of its unique relation to the plan and the external world, the disad has created theoretical controversy regarding its legitimacy as well as how plan passage ought to be imagined (that is, the meaning of fiat). In this post, I want to isolate two of these controversies, explain how they are deployed on the aff and how the negative can respond to them effectively. The first is the intrinsicness perm, an older argument that has made a resurgence in popularity, and an argument about the theoretical implications of voting neg on political capital, a newer response. I will spend most of this post on intrinsic perms, because they are more common and more complicated.

1) The intrinsic perm
The intrinsic perm tests whether or not the disadvantage is intrinsic to the plan. Does the plan really result in the lost opportunity that the disad suggests? For instance, does the drawdown of troops from Okinawa require that the South Korea Free Trade Agreement not pass? The premise of this argument is that the aff need only defend the consequences of plan enactment. The aff must argue why certain tradeoffs will not result from the plan implementation, or if they did, why those tradeoffs would be good (or not as bad as foregoing the plan). The aff should not have to be prepared to defend against disadvantages that are not opportunity costs to plan implementation.
This strategy often goes by several different names in the debate. Sometimes, the judge is invoked as a “logical policymaker” who could vote for both the plan and the politics disad scenario (For the purposes of this post, I will be assuming that the politics disad is and Obama good disad; that is, some bill will pass now, plan costs Obama political capital, bill not passing causes bad things to happen.). Some say that the disad is not an opportunity cost to the aff. I think that how someone phrases the argument changes how you ought to respond to it. It is best to clarify in cross-examination whether or not it is actually a permutation or just a no link argument because a permutation may require an extra sentence as to why intrinsic perms are bad or why perms cannot be advocated.
Ultimately, I think these arguments are not all that persuasive. If the negative wins that the plan passage forces an opportunity cost for Obama (which bill to push in Congress), then talk of logical policymakers and opportunity costs are red herrings. In addition, if the links are based on agenda sequencing, focus, or a quickly closing legislative session (all distinct link argument from political capital), then the logical policymaker in the American political system would also face issues of lost opportunities. This is all to suggest that the negative, if they have a link, can argue why for someone, the choice to vote for the plan requires foregoing a vote in favor of something else on the agenda. For members of congress, this could be because the plan and the DA scenario are unpopular in their district or party, so Obama can only convince them to vote for one of them because voting for both would guarantee electoral defeat. Or it could be an issue of horse-trading (think the tax cuts deal in the 2010 lame duck session, where Obama had to give into Bush tax cuts in order to get START. The plan, if unpopular, could take the place of some other unpopular bill (like START) in the horse trade). A real rational policymaker does what she can to get the most out of compromise while giving away the least. The aff changes those calculations irrevocably. The question is not could a rational policymaker do both. The issue is would a rational policymaker do both.
The real issue of the intrinsic perm is whether or not the affirmative ought to defend the process of plan passage. We can interpret fiat to mean that the question is whether the implementation of plan passage is a good idea, not whether the process of plan passage is a good idea. The argument that the aff does not ask questions of plan passage underlies the arguments about competition for agent counterplans, consultation counterplans, and any process counterplans (such as veto-cheato). The argument usually derives from the “should” in the resolution; the question is one of the plan’s desirability and nothing more. In order to win this argument, the aff must have a robust defense of this interpretation of fiat.
The main arguments against having to defend process are as follows:
-Predictability: “Should” in the resolution means this is the most stable interpretation, which is key to research and aff offense.
-Limits: There is an unlimited number of ways to tweak the process by which a plan passes/unlimited links to process disadvantages, while there is no offense to garner a large solvency deficit or link turns from that process, which means the aff cannot generate or research sufficient offense.
-Education: focus on process destroys topic specific education because it encourages less topic specific research in favor of strategies that can be recycled for years/encourages researching superficial news analysis instead of peer-reviewed foreign policy analysis.

Negative responses:
I discussed above how I believe one ought to answer the claim that a logical policymaker could do both. Here, I will consider both theoretical reasons why the logical policymaker model is bad and why the implementation-not-process model of fiat is bad.
Problems with logical policymaker:
-Simulating the US federal government is not simulating any one person in the federal government. Durable fiat (the only real solution to inherency) requires that one fiats the actions of multiple agencies, which means there is no logical policymaker, otherwise plan would never be implemented.
- Rather, one is voting on the resolution: should the federal government as currently constituted do the plan? If it is not this government, there can be no claim about timeframe of solvency or impacts. If it is not a question of the current government passing the plan, then this makes any standard impact calculus impossible to engage in.
-Limits: Much as people accuse kritiks as involving ‘infinite’ frameworks, there are a limited, but large and unpredictable number of ways to interpret what makes someone ‘logical.’ The increasing number of debates that involved carded responses to probability versus low risk magnitude arguments should expose how many different ways one can logically consider a problem. Also, any passing glance at judge philosophies will also show how many different weighing mechanisms judges use in deciding debates. Assuming most judges think they are logical, this really presents a limits problem for the neg.
Negative responses to intrinsicness perms:
-Process is an important part of policy education; policymakers do make calculated decisions about how to approach policy change, whether it be legislation, litigation, and the endless subsets of venues or approaches to law-making bodies.
- Almost all disads and advantages have elements that are in addition to plan implementation; most notably, perception links (necessary for short-term solvency for advantages like hegemony, where the restoration of our readiness would take at least months after implementation of the plan because of the need for retraining and redeployment This is also true of relations-based advantages, where the guarantee of plan passage is what is necessary for a change in relations). If the aff can claim advantages off of non-implementation-based links, then the neg ought to be able to show how those non-implementation based issues cause bad things to happen.
-Arbitrary distinction: Any disadvantage could be spun by the aff to not be a genuine opportunity cost to the affirmative, or to be based on process and not implementation, which means all disadvantages would be illegitimate. This is the flip side of the argument right above, though the impact is slightly different. Instead of a reciprocity claim, this is a ground claim.

2) Voting Negative costs political capital
I am probably late to the party on this one, but I heard this argument for the first time in January. The argument is, as far as I can tell, that if the judge votes neg, it will show that Obama is too weak to get his agenda passed, which will cost him political capital, making the disadvantage inevitable. This is a tricky argument because it is relatively new and because it has the veneer of a logically coherent argument; if plan is perceived in horse-trading negotiations, then voting against the plan would be perceived as well. This is a no-cost argument for the affirmative to make, but I think a couple of simple negative responses can defeat it.

Negative responses:
The main problems with this argument are that it presumes that the negative has to defend something other than the status quo. The negative is not a no vote after the plan is proposed; the negative merely has to defend that how things are in the present is better than how things would be if the plan were passed. But even if the negative did have to defend a no vote on the plan in Congress, there are several reasons why the aff’s interpretation of its consequences is incorrect.
-First, a no vote would prove that Obama spent his political capital getting the scenario passed as opposed to getting the plan passed. The judge’s ballot would be more of a choice of where Obama ought to spend his political capital as opposed to a sign of the political capital’s failure. Dennis Kucinich proposes bills all the time that never are voted on. Just because a bill is proposed does not mean Obama pushes it.
-Second, a vote neg could actually increase Obama’s political capital. If the plan is really as unpopular as the link evidence says, then when it is proposed, it will scare those who oppose the plan into a less-extreme agenda item. The plan is a warning shot, as it were, that Obama can abandon in order to get more support for his centrist agenda items.

Because the original aff theory argument has no evidentiary basis, it is easily spun to support the negative’s position. When the facts are as indeterminate as this, oftentimes, judges will default to the team defending its position, rather than the team trying to forward a positive claim. As long as this argument is answered, it is difficult for the affirmative to win such a position.

These are obviously not the only theoretical arguments that are involved in the politics disad (others are bottom of the ‘docket’ or other time frame arguments and other interpretations of fiat), but I believe that the logic of these two arguments ought to help you deal with other types of theoretical objections to politics disadvantages. Thinking through these forms of arguments and thinking about how they implicate the type of negative and affirmative argumentative possibilities as well as what they assume about the negative’s relationship to the status quo will often be enough to argue against new types of theory you may encounter.

Texas Shoot Out Round Robin Results

2010-12-14T08:42:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to Chris Leonardi and Hank Stolte, the hybrid team taking first place at the 2010 Texas Shoot Out Round Robin. Thanks to all of the participants for some great debates.

1st place - Chris Leonardi and Hank Stolte - Hybrid
2nd place - Faraz Hemani and Saad Khalid - Dulles High School
3rd place - Vivek Dathla and Nikhil Bontha - The Kinkaid School

2010 Texas Shoot out - Round Robin pairings and judge assignments

2010-12-05T05:28:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone,

Below are the pairings for the 2010 Texas Shoot Out. Note - all rounds will be in the CMA. You can park in any of the legal spots close to the CMA on Sunday. On Monday, you will want to park in the parking garage on University and 27th street. Breakfast will be served at 9:30 AM in CMA 3.130 - - call me with any questions at 646-286-3734.

SUNDAY

Round 1 10AM

Westwood v Dulles – Bhatacharjee, Fitz - CMA A3.108

Hendrickson v Churchill – Gonzalez, Rocha - CMA A3.112

Hybrid v Kinkaid – Crowe, Park - CMA A3.130

Mercedes v Little rock - Martin, Sanford - CMA A5.136

Round 2 1PM

Little Rock Central v Westwood –Gonzalez, Fairchild - CMA A3.108

Dulles v Hendrickson – Crowe, Miller - CMA A3.112

Churchill v Hybrid – Makuch, Albiniak - CMA A3.130

Kinkaid v Mercedes – Clark, Koneru - CMA A5.136

Round 3 3:30

Westwood v Kinkaid – Thomas, Evans - CMA A5.136

Hendrickson v little rock cental – Clark, Cauthen - CMA A3.108

Hybrid v dulles – Johnson, Fairchild - CMA A3.112

Mercedes v Churchill – Crowe, Bhattacharjee - CMA A3.130

Round 4 6PM

Churchill v westwood – Johnson, Evans - CMA A5.136

Kinkaid v Hendrickson – Makuch, Cauthen - CMA A3.108

Little rock central v hybrid – McNeil, Koneru - CMA A3.112

Dulles v Mercedes – Liu, Albiniak - CMA A3.130

MONDAY

Round 5 9:00 AM

Westwood v Hendrickson – JD Sanford, Mckinney - CMA A3.108

Hybrid v Mercedes – Gonzalez, Reed - CMA A3.112

Dulles v Churchill – Martin, Park - CMA A3.130

Kinkaid v Little Rock Central – Thomas ,Bhattacharjee, - CMA A5.136

Round 6 11:30

Hybrid v westwood – Bhattacharjee, Albiniak - CMA A3.108

Mercedes v Hendrickson – Murray, Johnson - CMA A3.112

Kinkaid v ‘dulles – McNeil, Evans - CMA A3.130

Little rock v churchhill – Miller, Donovan - CMA A5.136

Round 7 1:30

Westwood v Mercedes – McNeil, Makuch - CMA A3.112

Hendrickson v Hybrid – Martin, Donovan - CMA A3.108

Dulles v little rock – Rocha, Fitz - CMA A5.136

Churchill v kinkaid – Miller, Murray - CMA A3.130

2010 University of Texas Round Robin Participants

2010-11-18T12:41:00.000-08:00

The University of Texas and the Texas Forensic Union will host the following Round Robin participants:

Westwood - Zofia Yellin and Jackie Chen - Judge: Chris Crowe, Jeremy Martin

Hendrickson - Hudson Davis and Maggie Solice - Judge: Risha Bhattacharjee

Hybrid - Chris Leonardi and Hank Stolte - Judge: Steven Murray

Mercedes - PJ Martinez and Leo Vela - Judge: Hector Rocha

Dulles - Faraz Hemani and Saad Khalid - Judge: Misael Gonzalez

Churchill - Adam Lipton and Max Birnbaum - Judge: JD Sanford

Kinkaid - Nikhil Bontha and Vivek Dathla - Judge: Claire McKinney

Some UTNIF announcements

2010-11-18T11:24:00.000-08:00

For all you UTNIF alums out there, you may be wondering what has happened to the old names of the differing UTNIF program offerings (Marathon, Experienced, etc) in the 2011 program offerings. We decided to change the names for the sake of clarity. Too much ambiguity about skill level, curriculum emphasis, etc in the old naming convention made for confusion on the part of students, parents and coaches. The new naming convention, is just that, a new naming convention.

The curriculum for the two UTNIF mainstays (Marathon and Experienced) remains largely the same. What was formerly referred to as "The Marathon" (a reference, I believe, to the late Scott Deatherage's oft heard reminder that debate tournaments are a marathon, not a sprint, and also to the high number of practice debates guaranteed by the curriculum) now goes by the name "The Skills Intensive." What was formerly called "the Experienced Seminar" is now known as "The Topic Research Intensive."

Students in the Topic Research Intensive are typically more experienced than the majority of those students choosing to participate in the Skills Intensive, but the major difference between the two programs is the emphasis on topic research and argument construction strategy in the Topic Research Intensive. The Skills Intensive is appropriate for students across the board - even the most experienced debater will benefit from the tremendous practice experience. The Topic Research Intensive is appropriate for debaters who understand that to succeed at the highest levels of debate competition you've got to understand the topic better than your opponent. Writing and researching your own arguments is essential. The Topic Research Intensive will teach students how to do it.

We have had in past summers a growing number of students who choose to spend the ENTIRE SUMMER in Texas at the UTNIF. Some will choose to attend the Skills Intensive in one session and the Topic Research Intensive in the other. Other students have attended two sessions of the Topic Research Intensive. Still others have chosen to enroll in the 6 week Summer Survivors program. Whatever the division, contact us if you have questions about curriculum or need guidance in choosing what is right for you.

New UTNIF Program Offering

2010-11-18T11:15:00.000-08:00

The Sophomore Select. June 24-July 14.

We are very excited to offer a new program in 2011 for rising sophomores!

Any debater entering their second year in the activity is at a crucial moment in their learning curve. Having conquered the basics, most students are hungry for success at the varsity level. It is essential for students at this stage to receive strong guidance that will help them develop good practice, speaking, and research habits. This program is designed with those needs especially in mind.

The Sophomore Select will be offered during Session 1 of the UTNIF only and will be led by Brian McBride of the University of Southern California and Nick Fiori of Damien. Students will work as a tight knit lab with McBride and Fiori to master foundational skills. Skill and tactical work will be the emphasis, but the lab also aims to ignite student interest in topic research and argument construction. Two of the best coaches from the high school and college debating world, McBride and Fiori will ensure students come away transformed into much, much, better debaters. Both instructors offer a strong background in policy and kritikal approaches to debating. Students will come out of this lab experience ahead of the pack because of the opportunity to work hard amongst their peers in an environment of constructive criticism that will encourage students' intellectual growth, while dispelling the myths that often hold young debaters back from success. Lectures by other UTNIF staff on select topics also will be offered.

The lab will have limited enrollment, acceptance by application only. Applications for this program are DUE by March 15, 2011. Applicants will receive notice of acceptance by April 1. Application to this program is free. More information on the program and the application process will be forthcoming on the UTNIF site - www.utdebatecamp.com

Making 2AR Choices

2010-10-25T09:49:00.001-07:00

Making 2AR choices - Claire McKinney

Often in debates, the 2AR snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. What I mean is that sometimes a 2NR fails to do any of the following things:

1 ) Does not do impact calculus, picks the wrong impact to heavily favor, or fails to
even extend a terminal impact (this is common when they go for a counterplan with an internal net benefit, or when the terminal impacts to both the affirmative and the negative positions are very similar like hegemony and deterrence)
2 ) Does not kick out of a turned argument well or at all.
3 ) Fails to hedge their bets by making even-if statements or comparative risk analysis (similar to impact calculus, but may have more to do with comparing warrants on uniqueness, link, or internal link questions)

As a judge, one often expects the 2AR to easily exploit these mistakes and make use of that Aff Side Bias to easily dispense with a poorly executed 2NR. Yet more often than not, the affirmative replicates the mistakes of the 2NR. I think there are three main reasons the affirmative might do this.

1 ) The 2AR is seduced into thinking that where the negative went was the most
important part of the debate.
2 ) The 2AR feels pressure to refute everything the 2NR said.
3 ) The 2AR tries to extend everything the 1AR said.

These are not mutually exclusive and all point to the problem of not thinking about the big picture and making strategic choices. Here are a few tips of how to begin to think systematically about a winning 2AR and how to capitalize on 2NR mistakes.

--The 2AR overview. Write one. Many overview naysayers think they serve little purpose, but I believe that the 2AR overview is where you isolate what you need to win and why winning it means you win the debate forces you to do two thinks that are vital in prep time. The first is that you force yourself to make a strategic decision. Will you win on a dropped turn? On a solvency deficit to the counterplan? The permutation? Because you needs to isolate THE reason you win (not three reasons), you will have to analyze what arguments you have to answer to do so, what arguments are irrelevant, and how to persuade the judge that the negative was inadequate on those positions. Second, you are reminded of the importance of impact calculus. Do this impact calculus in the top of the 2AR and you won’ t forget to do it later on the flow.

-- Less is more. Sure, you need defense on the key negative arguments, but you shouldn’ t extend ALL your defense or EVERY solvency deficit to the counterplan. You should extend the solvency deficit that is most true or is the largest and thus gets you access to the largest impact. In a debate I recently saw, the 2AR extended two solvency deficits to a counterplan, one for each advantage. However, the counterplan obviously solved one advantage and the time it took to extend the second solvency deficit made it such that the 2AR didn’ t extend a terminal impact to either advantage. If the 2AR had focused on just one solvency deficit, then there would have been a complete argument as opposed to two distinct halves of two distinct arguments.

--Evidence comparison is your friend. Even if you are behind on an issue after the 1AR, if you do evidence comparison, you can make new arguments in the comparison of the
warrants of the evidence. For instance, even if the debate had hitherto been as shallow as heg solves war versus heg doesn’ t solve war up until the 2AR, you can use the evidence as a place to argue that the 2NRs evidence just says hegemony cannot stop a conflict from beginning, but your evidence indicates that hegemony can stop the escalation of war because political leaders will avoid entangling other powers through escalation for fear of losing to a preponderance of American power. IF your evidence actually supports your warrants (and that’ s a big IF), most judges will allow this type of evidence comparison because the extension of the evidence in the 1AR made this comparison predictable. It’ s better if the warrants come out earlier, but if they don’ t, you can argue the evidence extension gave the negative ample opportunity to do their own comparison. A corollary, of course, is that if you hide new arguments in warrant comparison and your evidence DOESN’ T make the claims you say, you are very likely to lose.

-- Making new arguments is often a no-lose prospect. While your first instincts should be depth is better than breadth and the 1AR ought to set up your 2AR strategy, sometimes, especially in impact calculus, new arguments will be accepted and even welcomed.

For instance, if the 2AR is the first time you make a timeframe outweighs magnitude argument, if it is the ONLY such comparison, the judge may very well allow it because there is nothing else to guide their decisionmaking. Even if the judge doesn’ t allow the new comparison, all it did was waste 5-10 seconds and the payoff is potentially much greater than the cost. Notice that this advice is conditioned on what else happened in the debate. Impact calculus that the neg starts early and goes unrefuted will make this strategy much less likely to payoff. Exploit the failures of the 2NR to give the judge something to hang onto.

In the end, remember that the greatest strategic asset of the 2AR is that you get to ignore a lot of what the 2NR says because if you make one argument very well, that often is much better than answering all their shallow arguments with an equal number of shallow arguments. Shallow versus shallow makes for unhappy judges and coin flip decisions.Shallow versus depth makes for happy judges and much more certainty in your wins.

Congratulations to UTNIF St. Mark's participants

2010-10-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

Congratulations are in order to the College Prep team of Vinay Pai and Tatsuro Yamamura on being top seed and also on their SEMIFINALS appearance at the Heart of Texas invitational. Vinay is an '09 alum of the UTNIF and two of his coaches, Daniel Sharp and John Hines, are members of the UTNIF teaching staff.

Congratulations also to the Kinkaid team of Zach Rosenthal (UTNIF '09) and Vivek Dathla (Doubles), and also the Kinkaid team of Robert Baldwin and Nikheel Bontha (Quarters). Both teams are coached by UTNIF lab leader Claire McKinney, who also was recognized by the tournament for her stand out assistant coaching!

"Barbarians, Savages, and the Civilised" - New Security K article just in time for St. Marx...

2010-10-14T09:49:00.000-07:00

Of interest: a new interview/discussion between Michael Hardt and Brad Evans from Theory and Event about security discourse and strategies of liberal governance. Beyond this article, the entire issue should be of interest to debaters.

Two among many interesting things in this essay:
1. An answer to the answer to the K that says "there are good instances of biopolitics"

Even if the Aff is right that there are good instances of human rights discourse or of liberal social programs, many of those examples assume a domestic, internal, liberal politics. This evidence is calling into question the use of human rights justifications in the service of campaigns of warfare against an external enemy. This is not to suggest that liberal domestic human rights discourse ought be considered unproblematic. What it does suggest is that the "good" instances of liberal domestic politics cited by opponents of this argument are also threatened by the continued employment of human rights discourse in justifying externally prosecuted wars. That is, there is a trade off that takes place between the use of liberal human rights discourse in international military discourse and the possibility of good liberal reforms domestically. AT THE SAME TIME, the essay is calling into question the unwavering imperative of liberal governance strategies to govern and is drawing attention to dangers that are inherent to the rationality of liberal governance itself. So, in short: provisionally good liberal governance gets crowded out by the appropriation of liberality into war-making, and even examples of good liberal governance have questionable/dangerous imperatives.

Excerpt 1.
Evans:
"Rather than pursuing that biopolitical question directly, though, I want first to understand better how the shift in the relationship between war and sovereignty that Toni and I propose relates to your notion of liberal and humanitarian war. In a war conventionally conceived, it is sufficient for the two sovereign powers to justify their actions primarily on the basis of national interest as long as they remain within the confines of international law. Whereas those inside , in other words, are at least in principle privilege to the liberal framework of rights and representation, those outside are not. When the relationship of sovereignty shifts, however, and the distinction between inside and outside erodes, then there are no such limits of the liberal ideological and political structures. This might be a way of understanding why contemporary military actions have to be justified in terms of discourses of human rights and liberal values. And this might be related, in turn, to what many political theorists analyze as the decline of liberal values in the US political sphere at the hands of neoliberal and neoconservative logics.1 In other words, perhaps when the division declines between the inside and outside of sovereignty, on the one hand, the liberal logic must be deployed (however inadequately) to justify the use of violence over what was the outside while, on the other, liberal logics are increasingly diluted or suppressed in what was the inside."

2. observations relevant to Afghanistan Affs that transition toward counter-insurgency and away from counter-terrorism

The evidence below frames this move toward counter-insurgency in the schema of "Barbarians, Savages, and the Civilized" outlined by Foucault in _Society Must Be Defended_. Barbarians are beyond the pale; irredeemable. Savages are redeemable, open to civilizing forces. The civilized are, well, civilized. The aff represents an acknowledgment of the failure of an externally oriented eradication strategy that seeks to eliminate "barbarians" in the battle of the civilized and barbarian. The aff also is an explicit move toward A. the process of civilization of the savage/insurgent class, and, B. the employ of the savage/insurgent class in the battle against the barbarians, in which the "proof" of the savages accession to the dictates of civilization is their success in aiding in the eradication of the barbarian. In this view, the affirmative is calling for the adoption of a quasi-liberal governance strategy which has as its aim to act upon both the barbarian/terrorist, and, the savage/insurgent.

Excerpt 2:
Evans: A logical corollary of this is the mixture of the strategic fields you mention. It is no coincidence today to find renewed priority being afforded to the insurgent. The RAND Corporation for instance have for some time now been calling for a more comprehensive and nuanced strategic paradigm that incorporates counter-insurgency into the wider remit of the Global War on Terror. I am reminded at this stage of a wonderful observation Foucault makes in a few incisive pages of the Society Must Be Defended lectures in which he identifies the three key figures which make up the modern condition: Barbarians, Savages and the Civilised. Barbarians he argues are a function of sovereign power. Existing beyond the constitutional pale, although sometimes penetrating with purely destructive intent, they represent those lives which show no respect for the constitutional order, hence they have and should be afforded no moral or political value. Savages on the other hand are a function of bio-political power. Open to remedy and demanding engagement, they represent those lives which are capable of being redeemed. No great conceptual leap of imagination is required here to draw out meaningful connections between barbarians/terrorists and savages/insurgents. Indeed, in the theatres of war today one can write of that all too familiar historical tendency of waging war by getting savages to fight barbarians in order to prove their civilising credentials. Even here however the lines in the sand have been blurred. Terrorists for instance no longer occupy a place of exteriority to the political realm, but are fully included within the bio-political order. What is more, the ability to set out clear parameters between the terrorist and the insurgent has proved rather elusive. This is compounded even further by a realisation that terrorists are no longer simply intent upon wanton destruction, but have showed a willingness to actually cross over to become insurgents posing a much wider social problem. This approach is clearly evidenced in the recent United Kingdom Contest II National Security Strategy (2009). What particularly strikes about this document is the style in which these threats are presented. Terrorists are now presented in a manner which is biopolitically fitting. Like some cancerous cell, not only are they seen to be capable of damaging a vital organ within the body politic, but they now hold the potential to infect the wider bodily terrain. The significance of this sovereign/bio-political merger can be read in two ways. First, through this coming together it is possible to detect a certain reprioritisation of affairs in which the once familiar problem of the sovereign encounter can now be dealt with bio-politically. And second, given that the bio-political is now tainted by the spectre of terror, then the biopolitical becomes truly moralised in that the war to redeem savages is equally a war to expel evil.

Hardt: I find intriguing and very productive your translation of barbarian to terrorist and savage to insurgent, along with the correlate that from the standpoint of the sovereign the latter couple has the potential to be civilized or redeemed whereas the formal couple does not. It strikes me that what is at play here, in part, is two relations to the body. In the first years of the new millennium, at the inception of the “war on terror,” I recognized in much of US military theorizing a fascinating doubling and inversion regarding the body of the terrorist and the body of the US soldier. On the one side stood the horrifying, barbaric figure of the terrorist defined by not only its power to destroy others but also its acceptance of corporeal self-destruction, characterized paradigmatically by the absolute negation of the body in the act of suicide bombing. On the other side stood the body of the US soldier that, it was thought, could be kept at a safe distance from all danger by technological innovations and new military strategies associated with the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Precise missiles, drone airplanes, and other devices could aid a military strategy aimed at no soldiers lost, at least no US soldiers. So, I was interested in the way that these two figures—the barbaric body guaranteed destruction and the civilized body guaranteed preservation—arose at roughly the same time and seemed to be bound together in dialectical negation.

You are right that the insurgent body occupies an entirely different position. It does not threaten self-destruction or corporeal annihilation. The insurgent must be transformed through the mechanisms of biopower just as the savage must be redeemed and civilized. It is interesting, in fact, that at the same time that in the military and security discourses there has been a shift from the barbaric terrorist to the savage insurgent, as you say, there has been a parallel move away from the dreams of bodiless military actions and the strategic principles of the RMA. Antiinsurgency biopower is aimed at the transformable body. This gives us another level, I suppose, to the relation between war, biopower, and liberalism that you were insisting on earlier.
--
Of course, reading this evidence in conjunction with biopower o/w all will not be sufficient to win a debate. At least, it shouldn't be. The job of the negative is to show why an alternative approach/perspective on the action of the plan is superior to the approach of evaluation that the aff itself has advanced. The aff wants the judge to assess the value of the plan by looking to its prospective advantages as if they are necessary, determinate, consequences of a possible, instrumental action of the government. The negative wants the judge to assess both plan and advantages from a different vantage point. The negative wants the judge to see how it is, rhetorically/discursively, that the plan/advantage combo advanced by the Affirmative is not merely a descriptive prediction about the consequences of an instrumental action by the USFG, but also functions upon the listener/audience/judge as a prescriptive kind of statement.

What i mean is, there is a way in which the logic/rhetoric/discourse of the Affirmative puts the listener/audience/judge into a situation in which they are asked to endorse/accede to a certain "regime of truth." The consequence of acceding to that "regime of truth" is that certain, specific actions then appear as the only possible ethical actions, and therefore become in some sense inevitable. The purpose of the negative's kritik in these debates is to question the methodology by which the regime of truth of the aff was constructed, so that the rhetorical space of the debate is opened up in order to allow for the possibility of the emergence of competing ethical imperatives. The difference between the Aff and the Neg in these debates is that the Aff pretends that ethics follow from truth/evidence/fact in an unproblematic/opaque way (e.g. 'it is try or die', 'you have no other choice'). The negative, on the other hand, aims to show how the Aff's claim to truth is itself an exercise of power that ought be questioned in order to create a situation in which ethics/action can be related to in a more provisional/problematized/transparent way. The result that the negative is aiming for in advancing the argument in this way is not stasis or stale mate or absence of ethics or postponement of decision. The negative is aiming to reinvigorate the debate space's ethical potential through its successful critique of the affirmative's presentation. The choice presented by the affirmative is a false one and attempts to hide the power relations that shape its sense of ethics. At a meta-level, the function of this sort of critique is to ensure that those institutions (governments, think-tanks, corporations) that possess the most effective institutional descriptive power (in the form of studies, fact generation, policy memorandums, etc) do not as a result come to monopolize in totality the range/field of ethical possibilities. The logic of the aff, in which ethics follow from truth claims in an unproblematic way, is what hastens the advance of this monopolization of ethics.

Congratulations UTNIF Alumni on Closing Out New Trier!

2010-10-13T10:43:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to the Kinkaid School team of Zach Rosenthal and Vivek Dathla, and, the Georgetown Day School team of Joe Krakoff and Ben Levy on their FINALS appearance at the New Trier tournament! Zach and Joe are both '09 alums of the UTNIF, and the Kinkaid team is coached by UTNIF lab leader, Claire McKinney.

UTNIF lecture 2010: Kirk Evans - K affs and Framework

2010-10-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

UTNIF 2010 - Kirk Evans - Framework from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Grapevine Results

2010-09-20T10:18:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to distinguished UTNIF alumni...

Speaker Awards:
3.Cooper Shear (Heritage Hall HS) - UTNIF '9
4.Humza Tariq (Dulles TR) - UTNIF '10
11. Tanweer Rajwani (Dulles TR) - UTNIF '10

Seeding:
4. Dulles TR (Humza Tariq & Tanweer Rajwani)- UTNIF '10
5. Heritage Hall HS (Philip Holsted & Cooper Shear) - - UTNIF '9
11. Dulles HK (Faraz Hemani & Saad Khalid)- UTNIF '10
30. Westlake PD (Kevin Presley & Alexander Dzeda)- UTNIF '9/'10
32. Heritage Hall KH (Mac Kennedy & Ryan Haygood)- UTNIF '10

Octafinalists:
4. Dulles TR (Humza Tariq & Tanweer Rajwani)- UTNIF '10
11. Dulles HK (Faraz Hemani & Saad Khalid)- UTNIF '10
30. Westlake PD (Kevin Presley & Alexander Dzeda)- UTNIF '9/'10
32. Heritage Hall KH (Mac Kennedy & Ryan Haygood)- UTNIF '10

I don't know who was in finals... Joy of Tournaments results end w/ the Semi's debates.

Semifinalists/Finalists: ???
32. Heritage Hall KH (Mac Kennedy & Ryan Haygood)- UTNIF '10

Hope for the 2AR - How to win when the 1AR undercovers

2010-09-20T09:40:00.000-07:00

I recently judged a debate that went down like this:

The 1NC consists of : 2 T arguments, an Agamben K, PTX, Executive Agency CP, Case. The negative has primarily gone for the DA/CP strategy in earlier prelims, but aren't so pinned down that going for the K would be impossible. Plus, since I am judging the debate, there was probably some sense by the Aff that they at least have to take the K somewhat seriously. The 2AC answers the arguments with appropriate division of time, seriousness of response, etc. The 2NC is PTX and the Executive agency CP. The 1nr is case and the K. Based on the depth of argument in the block, it seems pretty clear that the K is not the intended 2nr choice. Nothing is developed beyond very elementary/tag line extension of the 1nc argument. Even though quite a few cards are read by the 1nr, virtually nothing is said that demonstrates that the negative has tried to think about their argument in relation to this specific Aff. The 1AR, rightly, reads this as good reason to invest a substantial amount of time dealing with PTX and the CP. The 1AR gets a little bogged down though and ends up getting to the Agamben K with 30 seconds. She blazes through her extension of the 2ac arguments including the extension of a couple of 2ac cards that were read, a perm, an extinction outweighs because it is irreversible and is a prereq to value of life arg, and... TIME.

The 2NR recognizing the 1ARs weakness goes for the K, calls for strictness on the part of the judge in 2ar extrapolations of 1ar arguments etc. The 2AR gives their speech. Much/most of it is new. Some of it is not.

I spend much of my decision trying to figure out what I can allow of the 2ar and what should be axed from the get-go. After doing that, I determine that the aff has a single argument that was not new, that could win them the debate. The "extinction outweighs" argument is the aff's only hope. I then proceed to read the Neg's impact cards looking for any kind of ethics argument, pre-req arguments, or any other sort of argument that explains to me why I ought to prioritize the alt or the neg's impact. No such evidence exists. The 1NC impact card had been tagged as such, but, in the rush to diversify the 1NC (and to shorten the amount of time spent in the 1NC on the "B" strat) the negative had never actually read an impact card that let them make the "we o/w extinction" claim. No warrant exists for why the K impact comes first, other than the extension of the tag line and the 1NC evidence that supposedly makes the claim. I voted aff.

A couple of lessons here:

1. the 1nc shell matters. complete (even if short) arguments in the 1nc can make decisions for the 2nr much easier. When you don't know which arguments were constructed as throwaways, it can result in 2nr choices like this one. Probably the right thing to do when assessing the debate tactically, but it was the wrong thing to do when assessing the debate realistically/holistically.

2. Sometimes, even if the 1AR is really really undercovering an argument, you are BETTER OFF sticking with the A strat in the 2NR. Its hard to win when there just ain't nothin' to win with. If there's no "there" there, you will be hard pressed to get any judge to decide in your favor. (That's probably not true, I'm sure there are a lot of judges who are just looking at the debate almost exclusively in terms of their perception of tactical acumen. I am not one of those judges...)

After the debate, the 2ar recognized that this was a close one and that the Aff had barely eked it out. 2AR asks me: "what should a 2ar do when there is very little to go on from the 1ar? How can the 2ar recover and counter the perception that the entirety of the speech is new?"

Here were my suggestions:

The 2ar needs to counter the impression that the 2ar is new (even though inevitably it will be somewhat new.) There is always a disconnect in EVERY debate between what is said by a debater in a given speech and what was comprehensible by a judge during that speech. This is especially true for theory arguments, CP texts, etc. But it is also true, often, for the text of the cards themselves, which were read at a faster rate, w/o pauses, etc. than the Tags were read. Due to this disconnect, there is always some degree of reconstruction of the arguments after a debate. The moments where the judge finally figures out what was said/what was being contested between the debaters vs. what the judge originally heard to be said. (These moments of disconnect, in which the 4 debaters know more clearly what is being contested than the judge, have increased in frequency (I think) with the rise of paperless debate. The debaters have a record in front of their faces of what their opponents said, while the judge still relates to the debate with their ears.) In any case, my point is that in every debate there is an internal dialogue that the judge has with herself about what was said, what is a new nuance, what was appropriately emphasized, what arguments/nuance it is reasonable to expect a burden of rejoinder from the other team on, etc. The 2ar's job -always, but especially when the 1ar was slight- is to color the judges assessment of the arguments in the debate in such a way, that the arguments the Aff needs to win can sneak back into the judge's consideration. This IS NOT the same as making blatantly new arguments in the 2ar. You may not be able to go for "the K is non-unique" in an explicit way in the 2ar if the 1ar dropped this argument. But you may be able to use another argument to get the judge to consider, in some way shape or form, whether or not the aff causes anything bad to happen that isn't already happening. This is kinda sorta a UQ question and kinda sorta a question of specificity/linearity of impact. In this case, kinda sorta is better than nothing for an aff that is searching for any way to make a comparison of impacts that is favorable to the 1ac impact over the Neg's impact. Working in the realm of smuggling in these kinda sorta considerations is the real art of the 2ar.

Specific tips on how to succeed when the 1ar is slight are:

1. begin the 2ar overview w/whatever argument was covered the best by the 1ar. pretend that it is the central question of the debate. the categories of link, impact, uq, alt, etc in someways are made artificially distinct by debaters, when in reality, they all implicate one another. Use the area of contestation that you have covered the best to emphasize the strengths in the 1AR and to begin to beg the questions of the other categories of argument by innuendo.

2. blame the negative for the 1AR's undercoverage. Make it clear that the Negative's evidence, specificity of explanation was so poor that the 1ar lightness was justified.

3. Use any hint of a new-ish explanation in the 2nr to justify new-ish answers on your own part. Listen closely for any phrase, nuance, subtle example or explanation by the 2nr that hasn't been used in the debate before. Answer that argument directly. Use the phrasing of the 2nr exactly in referencing the argument so that there is no doubt in the judges mind that you are answering the new nuance. Make comparisons that are favorable to the aff that you might have been restrained from making if you were trying to tie your speech to 1ar arguments exclusively.

4. After the overview, stick to the 1ar order exactly. Any phrases or words that the 1ar said should be repeated by the 2ar and inserted into the arguments you need to make. Even if it was just a few simple words, the repetition and connection to the words of the 2ar can make the 2ar feel like a more organic out growth of 1ar arguments.

5.Use the language of the 2ac word for word. It reminds the judge of the "substance" of the 1ar extensions. Especially if the neg block was bad about answering the specifics of the 2ac arguments, use that as a reason to justify the 1ar time allocation. Your job here is to revive 2ac answers by repeating the warrants and making it clear that even though the 1ar didn't repeat those warrants textually in the 1ar, the warrants from the 2ac should still be considered because they were present in the 1ar "by extension."

6. Any and all evidence extended by the 1AR should be gone over with a fine tooth comb by the Aff during 2AR prep. Look for words/phrases/sentences that were read in the 2AC but maybe weren't really emphasized. Look for sentences in that evidence that reintroduce into the debate "dropped" arguments. Or, at least introduce into the debate arguments that are in the same category as the dropped arguments (e.g. link answers, arguments that suggest the alt and the plan don't really compete, etc.).

7. In the 2ar read slowly and comprehensibly portions of 2ac evidence (if the ev was extended by the 1ar) that help you reintroduce comparisons that give the aff a leg up. Reading evidence in a debate comprehensibly can really change the way that a judge assesses a piece of evidence when they read it after the round. If a specific argument is in a card and everyone heard it and flowed it and it is then referred to specifically in the last rebuttal, most judges will not say "that argument wasn't the tag of the card, so i'm not going to consider it." However, if you read a piece of evidence incomprehensibly and then "extend" it by saying, "Jones 08 answers this", most judges will not try to figure out which part of Jones answers this. That said, if you've read a piece of evidence in the 2ac, the 1ar extends it, the 2nr says the 1ar didn't warrant the extension, and the 2ar says "the block never answered the warrants in the original 2ac evidence and here's what they were...and then proceeds to read the evidence slowly and clearly" The 2ar may have just succeeded in resurrecting enough argumentation to win themselves a debate that looked lost because of 1ar tactical mishaps.

Greenhill/Wake Forest congratulations

2010-09-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to all of those who did well last weekend at Greenhill and Wake Forest.

Special congratulations to these UTNIF alumni:

Greenhill
-Dulles KR (Saad Khalid UTNIF 10 & Tanweer Rajwani UTNIF 10) Doubles
-Kinkaid bb (nikhil bontha & robert Baldwin UTNIF 08) Quarters
-Kinkaid dR (vivek datla & Zach Rosenthal UTNIF 09) Doubles
-Saint Francis High Sc AP (Ish Arora & Sanjana Parikh UTNIF 10) Doubles

Wake Forest
-Georgetown Day KL (Joe Krakoff UTNIF 09 & Ben Levy) Closed out Finals
-Beacon SO (Evan Sweet UTNIF 10 and Henry Osman UTNIF 10) Doubles
-Beacon GG (Eli Gold and Jonah Garnick UTNIF 10) Doubles
-Mountain Brook DS (Russell Day and Philippa Straus UTNIF 10)Doubles

Congratulations also to UTNIF teaching staff John Hines and Daniel Sharp, whose teams College Prep PT and PY advanced to the Doubles and Octafinals respectively.

Also, congratulations to UTNIF lab leader Nick Fiori for coaching Damien GF to the semifinals!

UTNIF Video Flashback : the 1 off K strategy, UTNIF 2010

2010-09-15T15:15:00.000-07:00

UTNIF 2010 - Daniel Sharp - The 1 Off K from UTNIF on Vimeo.

Operation Awareness: GI Opposition to U.S. Military Presence

2010-08-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

Near the end of UTNIF's second session, UTNIF students had the opportunity to participate in a discussion about the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq with two veterans of those wars, Jacob George and Spencer Hindmarsh. George and Hindmarsh are members of Operation Awareness, a peace movement group comprised of veterans opposed to war.

Operation Awareness is one among several peace movement organizations made up entirely of veterans. Along with Veterans for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Vietnam Veterans Against War, Operation Awareness brings the voices and experiences of veterans to the forefront.

What follows is a very interesting discussion. The subjects range from questions about how day to day counterinsurgency operations actually work, military conditioning and its psychological toll on soldiers, the issues of wikileaks and Private Bradley Manning, to the history of GI led anti-war peace movements.

This Q and A makes for a nice companion to the interviews conducted and published in earlier posts here by John Hines of College Prep.

I can imagine a powerful aff or neg argument structured around the need to "privilege the local" in considerations of military policy as a way to decenter the abstract concepts that characterize military grand strategy. Such an approach could make good use of these interviews/transcripts.

I will post some cites and suggestions about this in a later post, but its fair to say that there is a tremendous literature base (much of it coming from feminist international relations scholars) about this very subject.

UTNIF '10 Operation Awareness pt. 1 from UTNIF on Vimeo.

UTNIF '10 Operation Awareness pt. 2 from UTNIF on Vimeo.

UTNIF '10 Operation Awareness pt. 3 from UTNIF on Vimeo.

A VIEW OF US. PART 3: KOREAN STORIES CONTINUED

2010-08-16T06:03:00.000-07:00

Today is August 15th here in Japan. For those of you who remember your history, today is the 65th anniversary of Japan’s surrender to the United States marking the end of World War II. I did not realize I planned to arrive in Okinawa on this exact date, but now find it somewhat appropriate. This date also marks 10 days since my arrival in Asia, so I figure it is time to finish my report on Korea. Towards the end of my interview with Mr. Kwon (readers of my last post will remember him as the long-time political prisoner and activist I went to a protest with) on the afternoon of August 5th; he mentioned that there are still activist groups facing prosecution for lending aid to the enemy under the National Security Law. My final interview that evening was with two individuals from the Pan Korean Alliance for Reunification who had just been released from prison but are still cleared of the charges of collaborating with the North Korean Government. Let’s begin where I left off in the previous blog, on the trail of the use of the National Security Law to prevent dissent and activism on behalf of a peaceful reunification with North Korea.

BonMinRyon’s Vision for a “Third Way”
The Pan Korean Alliance for Reunification (BonMinRyon) was founded in 1990 based upon the three principles for national reunification (independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity) that had been declared in a joint statement by both the North and South Korean governments in 1972. Sung-hee and I joined Choi Eun-a (staff member), Lee Kyung-won (secretary) and Kang In-ogg (editor) in the PKAR offices in downtown Seoul at approximately 7pm. We were all hungry so decided to have a short (one hour) interview in their offices before relocating to a restaurant for dinner. Ultimately, I wanted to talk to them about three things that perked my curiosity when I read about their organization. I wanted to hear about their recent arrest and imprisonment under the National Security Law, their opinions on the relationship between the South Korean government and South Korean people, and I wanted them to explain their vision for a reunified Korea.

According to Ms. Choi, the direct cause of their arrest can be traced back to the previous administrations that opened the way for cooperative alliances between North and South Korean activists. During the previous two administrations (Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun) their organization had been allowed regular travel to North Korea to meet with sister organizations in order to facilitate peaceful reunification. In 2008 South Korea elected Lee Myung-bak as president and the country has since taken a decidedly militant tone towards the north. President Lee’s administration began to claim that the PKAR was getting their orders from North Korea. The government essentially argued that since the PKAR agrees with the North Korean government that there should be a peace agreement between the two countries and a subsequent withdrawal of the US military from the peninsula, they must clearly be collaborating and helping the North. Ms. Choi and Mr. Lee are on release at this point based upon a motion by their attorneys arguing that the prosecution violated their constitutional rights; it will be another year before they find out how the court rules on the use of the evidence gathered by the prosecution via tapping the phones and surreptitiously reading emails of PKAR members. After they explain their current legal situation I decide to shift the conversation to some contemporary political issues.

My question: Does the current Cheonan incident make your job more difficult? (Cheonan is the name of the South Korean ship apparently sunk by a North Korean torpedo some months ago)

Mr. Lee: Many South Korean citizens are suspicious of the conclusions offered by the South Korean government’s investigation. If the people were really convinced this were an act of North Korean aggression they would be rushing out to stock up on noodles right now. Instead, they appear to be more afraid of the implications of the current joint military exercises involving the US and South Korean militaries—these actions are much more likely to increase the risk of war on the peninsula. The Cheonan incident also gives the South Korean government more excuses to suppress North Korea.

My question: To what degree does the general population of South Korea believe the accuracy of the government’s conclusions?

Mr. Lee: Not very much and the government even admits so. On July 7th the minister of National Defense testified to the National Assembly that she was afraid too many citizens doubted the government’s version of the incident. This is probably also because of an overarching lack of support among the people for the current version of the US/ROK military relationship. In the 2003 final report issued on the question of modernizing the military alliance in order to support the US military’s goal of strategic flexibility, the government admits the greatest threat to the stability of the alliance was a rising anti-American sentiment among the consciousness of the people of South Korea. The government also noted a weakening of hostility towards North Korea. For these reasons the US must oppose improved relations between North and South Korea since this will jeopardize the future goals of the alliance.

My question: In your statement of principles you state that “it is important that the two different political and socio-economic systems now existing on Korean soil be allowed to continue their way, competing and cooperating with each other, for an ultimate evolution into one.” Could you perhaps give some explanation or greater clarification as to how you see this taking place?

Ms. Choi: It’s called a “creative third way.” We need a new method. For example the German reunification would not be an example of a successful merging of two distinct systems. (Because basically just the West German approach was adopted throughout the country) We want a system where the two different approaches merge and co-exist with each other. Federated unification is really the idea.

Mr. Lee: We first need to acknowledge that both sides are human beings proud of their own national histories; only once we first acknowledge this can we move forwards towards peaceful unification. If we can’t do this, the only alternative is continued war.
Ms. Choi: The basis for ending the conflict has already been established by the Joint Statement of Principles. If you look at the statement, there is a key phrase where both governments acknowledge the importance of accepting our differences and using difference as a starting point. It also states that on this basis of two different Korean communities we must work from a unified federated system for unification.

As I said initially, we decided to keep this meeting short since the day had been long for all involved. We concluded the interview by discussing the role South Korea should play in helping to reduce tensions between the United States and North Korea. Both Ms. Choi and Mr. Lee agreed that a key first step towards peaceful reunification of the Korean people is an improved relationship between North Korea and the United States. They also argued that since the possession of nuclear weapons by North Korea is at the heart of this issue, the United States and North Korea must work in a bilateral way to resolve this conflict.

Ms. Choi explains: The essence of the issue is that this is a conflict between the US and the DPRK. Even though the South Korean government cannot intervene between the two; it can support a better relationship by emphasizing its own policy goal of peaceful reunification. Specifically, the ROK could encourage an honest effort towards inter-Korean dialogue. Such an approach towards dialogue with the North would also encourage a more positive relationship between North Korea and the United States. Kim Dae-jung’s sunshine policy (The “Sunshine Policy” refers to Kim’s systematic approach to “warm” relations between the North and the South) was a good example of how successful this approach could be. For example, after the June 15th statement the Vice Prime-Minister of North Korea was invited to visit the United States and Madeline Albright was invited to North Korea.

We concluded our interview and went down the street to eat some delicious (perhaps a bit too spicy for me) Korean food. Mr. Lee was kind enough to introduce me to the Korean liquor known as “Soju”, a very strong yet somewhat fruity flavored alcohol. Overall the first day of my trip was thoroughly exhausting but as I near the end of my journey that first day in South Korea continues to stand out as the single most educational and eye-opening day of my trip.

Two Little Girls and the White Cranes
The next morning Sung-hee meets me early once again as we have another busy day planned. This day (August 6th) we plan to visit villages that are being (or have already been) displaced by the South Korean government in order to make room for the expansion of US Military facilities in South Korea. Our first stop is the village of Ohyun-ri in the vicinity of Mugeonri in the Kyeonggi Province. The area of Mugeonri has been a key training ground for both the US and South Korean militaries since the 1970s. Over the course of three decades the training field has gradually expanded until in 2007 the South Korean government decided to completely remove all villagers in the area so that the United States can more fully train their forces at the battalion level consistent with the principle of strategic flexibility. Troops based in Guam, Okinawa and the US come here for training.

As we arrive to meet our guides for the day I am startled by the sound of bombs exploding in the distance. Of course I knew I was going to a training field, but I guess it took the actual sound of explosions for the full force of what it means to live next to a military training facility to hit me. Eventually the sound of explosions ends during the course of our tour, but I definitely found the sound unsettling, I could not even imagine how difficult it must be to live under these conditions on a continuing basis. Our guides Joo Byung-joo (village chairman) and Lee Jae-hoo (chairman of the committee against expansion of the training field) meet us at the bus stop and begin to take us on a tour of the area in Mr. Joo’s van. They begin by explaining that the original village is almost completely removed at this point, and the remaining villagers who have been holding out against relocation have recently learned that the will inevitably lose their battle against the expansion of the training field. The legal principle of imminent domain has been used by the National Defense Department to force the remaining 200 villagers and 100 households out of the area.

Mr Lee explains the first firing range we visit is currently for target practice by tanks and soldiers launching rocket-propelled grenades. They practice by shooting their munitions over the mountains to land and explode in the unoccupied jungle in the distance. This field housed a school where both our guides once played and learned, but there is no longer any school in the area for the few remaining children.
The only residents of the field are a dwindling flock of white cranes, an important national symbol to the Koreans. Our guides spend a lot of time talking about the threat posed to the cranes since the cranes’ habitat relies upon cultivation of rice fields. As rice fields are destroyed to make way for bases and training grounds the cranes lose their home.

Our visit concludes by a visit to an important memorial site. As some of you may already be aware, this is also the village where two little girls where killed in a traffic accident eight years ago involving two US Military armored vehicles. The vehicles where approaching each other driving in opposite directions and rather than stopping to let one or the other pass they tried to pass at the same time, taking up not only the entire roadway but also the sidewalk where two 15 year old girls were walking. The girls found themselves trapped with no avenue for escape since the area of road they were passing has a large retaining wall on their side of the street. Local activists claim the soldiers saw the girls and decided not to stop anyway. The soldiers were never tried in South Korean court and since they were on duty the US military court found no fault with the soldiers. The US military has since built a memorial at the site, but the local villagers apparently despise the memorial because they would rather have built their own memorial to honor these two lost souls. If one looks closely at the inscription explaining that the officers and soldiers of the 2nd Infantry division built the memorial, they’ll notice a vandal has attempted to scratch the division’s name off the monument.

A Plea to American High School Students from the Elders of Daechu-I
Imagine waking up one morning to the sound of helicopters filling the sky over your village. You exit your home to see soldiers rappelling down from the helicopters in what appears to you to be full combat gear. Next imagine that these soldiers then proceed to construct a large impenetrable fence around the rice paddies that had been your family’s primary means of support and way of life for generations and generations. Such is the sad story related to me during our meeting in the next village visited.

After leaving Mugeonri we traveled to the city of Pyeongtek, about an hour south of Seoul by train. There are two major US bases in the area, Osan Air Base and Anjeong-ri Base. Under the new ‘strategic flexibility’ principle, Osan is slated to be the primary base of the massive US presence in Korea. The site was originally a Japanese base from prior to World War II, and now the US has promised to build a base there to last 100 years.

We go to visit the newly constructed village of Nowar-I, but the village head is fighting to rename the village to the name of their community’s original village-Daechu-I. The “village” looks more like a recently build American tract development. Villagers that were once farmers have now become suburban “homeowners” with mortgages. Unfortunately, they have lost their primary means of support. Now each household is given one 6 month a year appointment to work in the city sanitation department cleaning roads.

We meet in the newly constructed home of village headman Shin Jong-wok. He is reticent to talk about the struggle that culminated in the entire village being forcibly evicted and relocated to an apartment complex three years ago before finally being relocated to its current location. Mr. Shin has invited three elders whom he says were instrumental in the struggle to speak with me. He says he invited many others, but most chose not to talk to me since the memory of their forcible eviction is still too painful. Sung-hee and I sit down with the elders; Mr. Song Jae-guk does the majority of the talking for the group.

Mr. Song: I just wanted to save our village. I’m not sure if the US military is here to protect us or not, but I am angry because they took our land. We were not properly compensated and the US and Republic of Korea militaries treated us like “small fries.” This is why we are still so angry. Our opinions were never considered in the negotiations. In fact, we were never consulted; instead we were just told we had to move and when we resisted we were forcibly relocated to a temporary space for three years before being brought to this final location. If the US government had taken the time to speak to us and listen to us we would not be so angry at being relocated. Another thing we are upset with the government over is that during the relocation process they easily could have let us stay in our village for the three years it took them to get this village ready. The US military decided they wanted our village and the decision was made without any discussion with us. I think they did not talk to us because they were afraid we would refuse to move. We also feel betrayed by our government because they were more worried about their relationship with the United States than being responsible to their own people. I don’t really have much else to say, but I do have a request for the American teenagers. The US is a powerful country, and we are not sure if the US military is here to protect their own interests or us. But, there should be respect shown to your alliance country. This respect must come from the heart, only then can there be no hostility. Please treat us as your brothers. Please treat the world as your brothers. There should be no difference between you and me. I think both countries should peacefully co-exist and am saddened it is not going so well.

Thus my second day of travel has been completed. Friday was not nearly as hectic and fast paced as the day before, but by the end of the day I’m once again exhausted and looking forward to returning to my hostel. The next morning will be a very early departure since we will be flying to Jeju Island at 7:30AM.

Jeju Island: The Uprising and Planned Naval Base.
The final leg of my journey in Korea took me to Jeju Island. Korean’s consider Jeju to be their own version of Hawaii; an island paradise most newlyweds visit on their honeymoon. From the descriptions of this gorgeous island one reads in travel brochures, they would never know the sad and tragic history hidden here, much less the South Korean and US Governments’ current plan for the island. I’ll begin the final portion of this blog entry with a brief history lesson.

“The Jeju April 3 Incident” refers to a series of events that lasted for 7 years spanning the US military government period, the founding of the Republic of Korea and the end of the Korean War. The casualties involved with this incident are exceeded only by the death toll of the Korean War itself. In 1945, after the liberation of Korea, public sentiment on Jeju Island was restless about the political direction of the US Military Government in Korea. The spark for the incident is often identified as an event on March 1, 1947. Six Jeju residents were shot dead by the National Police while demonstrating against rule by the American Military Government in Korea. The citizens of the island responded with a general strike that even involved local government officials. In response the US Military Government deployed the National Police and the Northwest Youth Organization (a right-wing political organization modeled after the Hitler Youth of Nazi Germany). These two entities attempted to quell the uprising by unleashing torture and political terror upon the local population. Finally, members of the Jeju branch of the South Korean Labor Party initiated an uprising to protest the military repression and the announcement of an election to establish a separate South Korean government. The people of Jeju themselves responded by boycotting the elections en masse which led to the nullification of the May 10th general election results.

Despite the efforts of the Jeju Islanders to oppose the establishment of an independent South Korean Government, the Republic of Korea came into existence on August 15, 1948. Following the establishment of the ROK, the South Korean government intensified its military presence on the island with the support of the US Military. On November 17, 1948, the ROK declared martial law on Jeju Island. This led to intensive military operations designed to further suppress political resistance on Jeju. In a particularly shocking move, the newly created South Korean Military declared all areas further than 50km from the coast a “free fire zone.” They ultimately deployed a scorched earth policy burning down almost the entire island in order to drive out the remaining resistance on the island. If citizens of Jeju were found within the free fire zone, they would be killed and tortured regardless of age, gender or political affiliation. Accounts of how many people were killed are difficult to come by since the South Korean government suppressed all attempts to even talk about the Jeju April 3 incident until 1987. Official estimates of the death toll from this incident range anywhere from the early conservative ROK estimates of 15,000 to upwards of 60, 000 citizen deaths.

I relate this history to give context to the current plans to build a naval base on the island. With this decision, the political history of Jeju Island as a holdout against US Military rule and Korea and the decision to partition Korea has come full circle. The “red-island” (name given to Jeju by US military propaganda in 1947) will now become a key strategic location for the South Korean and American militaries to practice the principle of strategic flexibility.

A simple glance at this map demonstrates the ultimate strategic goal for building a military base on this island. I’ll give the reader a hint; it’s not for protection against North Korea. In Jeju Sung-hee and I join up with members of SPARK who have come to the island in order to see and hear first hand about the current plans for the military base. A group of Korean-Americans on a cultural exploration trip also joins in our expedition.

Local artist and activist Mr. Koh Kwoh-I was our driver and tour guide around the island that afternoon. Mr. Koh took us to three different sites in order to help us grasp the impact the proposed naval base would have on the local population. First we go to the reservoir the villagers rely upon for their drinking water. Jeju Island is singularly bereft of rivers, but they do have a few streams that actually start from underground aquifers. The reservoir we visit is the only site of clean and fresh drinking water for the villagers. Once the base is built, it is expected by the villagers they will lose access to the clean and healthy water provided by this natural resource. Next we visit the site on the coast that represents the northernmost limits of the proposed base. The beautiful volcanic rocks we stood on that day will have to be covered over with concrete in order to build the base. Finally, we visit a protest tent at the southernmost edge of the proposed site.

Mr. Koh explains his objections to the proposed base: The ROK government tells us this base is not intended for use by the US military, but given that they plan to have the base ready by 2014 I am suspicious of this claim. 2014 is also the date the US military has promised to remove troops from Okinawa by. Also, the Status of Forces Agreement (in military speak this is called a “SOFA”; essentially an agreement between the United States and South Korea which outlines the nature of US military presence in the country) says that the United States does not even need to ask South Korea’s permission to use bases owned and operated by the South Korean military. Therefore, it is inevitable that this base will become a US military base. Jeju Island should remain an “Island of Peace” (the Roh Moo-hyun government designated Jeju Isand and “International Island of Peace” in 2002 as part of an apology for the April 3 Incident) and serve as a site for peace and stability in North East Asia, but if a base is built here we will instead be in the eye of the storm. The closest naval port to Jeju is not Pyongyang in North Korea, but instead is Shanghai. The goal of the base is clearly to wage war against China, not to protect us from the North Koreans. Clearly, China would not look favorably upon the building of this naval base. If tensions in North East Asia are heightened the world will become destabilized and potentially cause World War III. The only people who benefit from such a situation is the Military Industrial Complex. I personally feel that is why our struggle here is so important; if we do not fight this base the safety of the world for the next 100 years will be jeopardized.

After Mr. Koh’s speech we leave the protest tent and head to the village cultural center for a shared meal. The agenda for the rest of the evening is a meeting with the Mayor of Geongjeong (the village where the base will be built). Mayor Kang Dong-kyun gives a speech explaining the history of the island’s struggle against the base and the current status of their fight. I’ve run out of space to completely reproduce his speech here, so instead I will end this post with his exhortation to us. If you’d like to read more from Mayor Kang, you can read another speech of his here.

Mayor Kang: In conclusion, I have one request for you. Tens of thousands of people have visited our village over the past few years but they always go home and forget about our struggle here. Please go home and talk to people about our story. Please remember our struggle as a small village trying simply to preserve our way of life.

Thus ends my journey in Korea. I am now writing from my hotel room in Okinawa and hope to have plenty more stories to tell about my time in Asia the next time I get a chance to post to the blog. Thanks for reading, and hopefully these stories have inspired you in the same way my encounters with the people in these stories have inspired me.

A VIEW OF US. PART 2: KOREAN STORIES

2010-08-10T07:11:00.000-07:00

While I had the best of intentions to blog on a more regular basis while in Korea, the combination of jetlag, humidity and the sheer pace of meetings and events conspired against me. I have now made it safely to Taipei and am finally getting some time to rest and reflect upon my encounters in Korea. At the start, I should say my encounters were nothing short of mind-blowing and heart-rending. The stories I return with from Korea have a broad range, all of them sad. There’s the former North Korean soldier who’s been a political prisoner trapped in the South since 1962 with no word or contact from his family for nearly four decades. There’s the mother who worries that her children will carry traumatic memories with them for the rest of their lives from the day the South Korean military forcibly evicted them from their homes in order to make way for the expansion of a US military base. There’s the artist and activist on Jeju Island fighting the building of a US naval base in his village who can’t understand how US citizens continue to support militaristic policies that place the lives of his whole community in jeopardy. Due to the immense amount of information I have collected, I will only relate two of the interviews from my first day in Korea in this entry. They were by far the most extensive and exhaustive. Before I begin though, I’d like to take a moment to discuss process and method.

Specifically, it is important to acknowledge and understand the act of translation from the outset. Other than Professor Kang, none of my subjects spoke English just as I do not speak Korean. Each of my interviews were arranged and translated by a Korean activist and blogger named Choi Sung-Hee. Without her tireless dedication to this project, this endeavor would never have been possible. The testimony I present below has been gathered through an arduous translation process. I would ask questions, Sung-Hee would then translate the questions for our interviewee and then translate their responses back to me. Obviously, no act of translation will ever completely and accurately capture the exact meaning and tenor of the message the subject wished to convey. Therefore the words below are the combined effort of Sung-Hee, the interviewees, and me to bring you stories and descriptions we all felt must be heard and understood by American high school students specifically and Americans citizens in general. Every person interviewed was informed of the nature of my fellowship, and that our goal was to get these stories into the hands of high school students debating whether or not to decrease US military presence in Asia. Without further ado, I’ll begin with the first story.

THE TRAGEDY OF THE LOVELY COUPLE.

August 5^th began with Sung-Hee and me meeting and interviewing Professor Kang Jung-Koo of Dong-Guk University. Professor Kang will soon retire from the Department of Sociology where his research interests include Korean reunification and contemporary Korean history. Professor Kang is also the director of the Research Institute for Peace and Reunification of Korea, and is affiliated with an activist organization called SPARK (“Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea”). The interview was conducted at the SPARK offices in Seoul and lasted just under two hours. Professor Kang is a very controversial figure in South Korea whose statements regarding the Korean War and reunification of Korea have landed him in court for violating South Korea’s National Security Law. Our interview begins with him explaining why the South Korean Government has prosecuted him.

Professor Kang: In the year 2005 which marked both the 60^th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan and the 60^th anniversary of a foreign military presence by the United States and thus our forced division, I began arguing that we should celebrate this 60^th anniversary with a withdrawal of foreign military forces from South Korea. Also, during this time I wrote an article on the Internet about the General MacArthur statue in Incheon where I argued it was time to get rid of that statue because he was at the forefront of our country’s division. In fact, he advocated dropping as many as 26 Atomic bombs on North Korea; therefore we should not continue to honor his memory with this statue. I have also been very publicly critical of the US military’s actions during the Korean War. For all of these reasons I am now being prosecuted for violating our National Security Law.

My main argument is that if there had been no intervention by the US into the internal affairs of liberated Korea at the end of World War II, Korea would never have been divided and we would not have had to suffer the tragedy of the Korean War. IF the US did not intervene in the Korean War, the war would have ended in a month without the killing of as many as 3 million Koreans and 1 million Chinese. IF there had been no intervention in 1950 during the first period of the Korean War, we would not have suffered such a tragedy. The Korean War was a war of reunification and would have ended quickly and resulted in a unified Korea.

The professor explains to me that his case has gone all the way to the South Korean Supreme Court and he has received a suspended sentence of two years in jail for advancing this argument in his academic writings and public advocacies. He is currently awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court to discover whether or not he will serve prison time for arguing that the US military should never have intervened in the internal affairs of Korea. At this point I ask him to elaborate and explain the historical hypothetical he has advanced.

Professor Kang: The US is 90% responsible for the division of Korea. If there had been no forced division there would never have been a civil war. By 1950 both the US and Russian militaries had left Korea (the US military left in June 1949, and Russia’s military left in December 1948). On July 1^st, 1950 the US military returned to Korea in order to intervene in our civil war. Therefore the civil war is a product of interference by foreign powers.

Even though Korea has been divided for over 65 years, I think most Koreans (both North and South) want a re-unified Nation. We have the same identity. Even though there are many differences between South and North in the way of culture, ways of living and thinking we still have a shared identity and desire to be reunited. Prior to our forced division, we had been a united country since the 7^th century, that’s over 1400 years as a single country and people.

The story of the “lovely couple” can be used here to understand Korea’s current struggle. When a husband and wife are married, they are “ONE,” but in this story the neighborhood gangster intervened and forced them to be divorced (the US is of course this neighborhood gangster). The majority of Koreans want to be reunited as a “lovely couple” again through peaceful means.

My question: “Can you elaborate on your writings about the US military government in Korea collaborating with pro-Japanese Koreans after World War II? Specifically, how do you think the US military occupation of Korea resembles the Japanese occupation of Korea prior to World War II?”

Professor Kang: If there had been no intervention, the liberated Korea would have cleaned up the pro-Japanese national traitors. In 1946 North Korea acted to root out the pro-Japanese influence in their government and society in order to counteract the legacy of Japanese Imperialism. Therefore, the ruling party of North Korea has no legacy of Japanese imperialism and they are able to maintain self-reliance. This rejection of US imperialism for the last 65 years must be understood as a continuation of the struggle against Japanese imperialism.

On the contrary, in the South there is an opposite history. When the US entered Korea, they had no friends on the Peninsula that would help them administer their military occupation. When the US wanted South Korea to take a Capitalist route rather than a Socialist route, most of South Korea wanted to have a Socialist system rather than a Capitalist system. In July 1946 the US Military Government in Korea conducted a survey of South Koreans and discovered that 71% of respondents wanted a Socialist system, 7% wanted a Communist system, and only 14% wanted a Capitalist system. If the survey had been conducted in 1945, before the US Military Government in Korea made it clear they were opposed to any form of Communist of Socialist system, I would say that almost 90% of Korean people (both North and South) wanted a Socialist system rather than a capitalist system. That is why the US could not find friends in either the North or the South.

The US Military Government needed pro-Japanese national traitors to cooperate with them to help institute a pro-Capitalist regime. For the pro-Japanese, to be friends with the US was the only way to keep their power and status in Korean society. Therefore there emerged a very close alliance between the US military occupation and the pro-Japanese national traitors. This is the reason we had so many small on-going wars (referred to as people’s uprisings) starting in October 1946 and leading up to the Korean War in 1950. In 1946 alone more than 10,000 Koreans were killed by the US occupying forces. These small wars lasted from 1946 to 1950, and because of these wars almost 100,000 Koreans lost their lives.

Also important to understand is that the Korean War was not a “war of aggression.” A “war of aggression” is between two separate sovereign countries, but the North and the South are not separate sovereign countries—we are one country, one nation with two different governments. Therefore, this is a civil war. It is true that North Korea mobilized their military and invaded South Korea. They believed the war would end in one or two months without such tragedy. This was an internal conflict; there was no reason for neighbors to intervene in the internal affairs of the “lovely couple.” As I explained we are like a married couple that was forced by the neighborhood gangster to divorce, so it is natural for us to get reunited after the neighborhood gangster has left.

My question: “So Professor Kang, what can American high school students do in order to facilitate the process of allowing this ‘lovely couple’ to be reunited?”

Professor Kang: Most Americans do not know the real story of our country’s division and the ensuing Korean War. For example, in 2002 I met Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and we talked for about 90 minutes. He later wrote some articles about South Korea and the North Korean nuclear crisis and I was very disappointed to notice that he didn’t appear to know anything about the real story of what is actually going on between North Korea and South Korea. Therefore, we must start by getting to the Real Story of our country’s division, the tragedy of the Korean War, and of the inevitability of North Korea’s development of nuclear powers in order to protect itself against attacks from the United States. In the history of crises on the Korean peninsula since the end of the Korean War, out of 11 crises all but 2 were initiated by United States actions and belligerence towards North Korea. In the face of the US military aggression what can North Korea do? They do not have the money to cope with South Korean and United States military spending; therefore the most economic way to defend themselves is to develop nuclear bombs. Only a nuclear bomb can guarantee North Korea’s security in such a situation. When North Korea first announced the test of their nuclear weapons, the official announcement of North Korea stated that when the hostile policies of the United States towards North Korea cease they would be willing to give up their nuclear weapons.

The first step is to get American citizens to know all these true details of US involvement in Korea. If they know they will realize there is no reason for the US military to be here in the Korean peninsula. The Korean peninsula is not safe because of US military presence; instead it is “the most dangerous place in the world” because of the US military presence. So the conclusion is clear, the first step is to get the US military out of Korea. Then, we (North and South) can refuse the offensive military orientation towards each other and transition towards defensive oriented military systems and we can begin to work towards peaceful reunification and cooperation between North and South.

THREE PRISONERS OF CONSCIENCE

At the conclusion of my interview with Professor Kang, Sung-Hee and I quickly rush off in order to make our lunchtime meeting with Mr. Kwon Oh-Hun. Mr. Kwon is a former political prisoner (prisoner of conscience) and has been a reunification activist since 1964. He is the chairperson of the Supporting Committee for Prisoners of Conscience and the Co-Chairperson of MINKAHYUP Human Rights Group. Our goal is to have lunch with Mr. Kwon before joining him at the weekly MINKAHYUP protest in Tapgol (Pagoda) Park. I must admit at this point my mind is spinning in a million different directions after meeting with Professor Kang, but one question above all is burning in my mind when I meet him. Ultimately this interview spans seven hours and three different locations. Below I have reproduced a small fraction of the transcript of our meeting.

My question: “How has the South Korean government utilized the National Security Law to suppress dissent?”

Mr. Kwon: The official National Security Law was enacted in 1948, but it was preceded by the Japanese enactment of the “Security Maintenance Law” in 1929. Both laws had the same basic goal—to suppress dissent. On September 8, 1945 the United States came here to disarm the Japanese military, but ultimately turned out to be an occupying army as well. Koreans were told that resistance to the US military order would be met with death. The National Security Law of 1948 was passed in order to help preserve US military control.

One of the first acts of the South Korean government after its creation on August 15, 1948 was to pass the National Security Law on October 1^st, 1948. At the time the separate South Korean government was established there was substantial public opposition to the creation of separate governments; this partition was only possible with the help of the US military. On April 3, 1948 the first organized and mass resistance to the separate South Korean government occurred with the Cheju Uprising [readers should take note that Cheju Island has been re-named Jeju Island]. The South Korean military was sent to the island to suppress the movement but the military resisted the order (this refusal is known as the Yeo-soon uprising). Only by the US military stepping in was the Cheju uprising suppressed [watch for my upcoming blog regarding the US military’s shocking involvement in suppressing this uprising].

In order to make the creation of the separate South Korean government successful the National Security Law was needed to prevent resistance and ensure the permanent division of Korea. Under the US dominated South Korean government the Japanese imperialists had retained their positions in the new government and suggested the use of the same law they had previously used to control dissent. The Japanese “Security Maintenance Law” of 1929 had three main goals: 1. Control over ideas 2. Suppress the local independence movement 3. Suppress freedom of expression. The first goal was the most important because it was via this law that the Japanese and later the United States and South Korea were able to suppress the growing socialist movement in Korea. One of the main differences between South Korea and North Korea at this point in time is that in North Korea the pro-Japanese collaborators were purged, but in South Korea the US military protected and promoted the pro-Japanese collaborators and their institutions of control.

My question: “Could you give me some specific examples of how the National Security Law has been used since its enactment in 1948?”

Mr. Kwon: The first victims of the law where the legislators in the South Korean government who voted against the law. When the South Korean National Assembly was first created the progressives had refused to participate, yet even without such participation about 37 members who were center-right nationalists still opposed the law even though they supported the partition of Korea. There were four reasons for their refusal to support the law: 1. It could be used to control the freedom of ideas 2. It would make the division of Korea permanent 3. It could be used to oppress political opponents 4. The law could be interpreted arbitrarily and used to violate human rights. Because of their opposition to the law charges were brought against these 37 members of the National Assembly accusing them of being spies. This event in our history is now referred to as the “Incident of the National Assembly Spies.”

The second victims of the National Security Law were the progressive political parties and the socialist organizations. Within the first year of enactment of the National Security Law 118,00 people were arrested and 132 political parties and civil organizations (including media organizations such as newspapers etc…) were dispersed utilizing the law. Due to this repression many of South Korea’s progressives, activists and artists fled to the North during this time. Many were convicted and sentenced to death during this purge, but since we are running out of time I can only relate one specific example. Cho Bong-Am, chairperson of the Progressive Party, called for peaceful reunification with the North. Syngman Rhee preferred absorption of North Korea into his regime and therefore had Cho arrested and executed on July 30, 1959.

At this point in the interview we are forced to pause for a couple hours so Mr. Kwon can participate in a weekly political protest wherein activists from a group known as MINKAHYUP rally in support of the release of all remaining political prisoners and the repeal of the National Security Law.

After the rally, we reconvene our interview about an hour away from downtown Seoul in a quiet neighborhood in Incheon. We continue our discussion in a house used over the years by recently released political prisoners until they are able to make their way back to North Korea. Over the next hour and a half Mr. Kwon meticulously outlines the history of the South Korean government’s active oppression of dissent and opposition by use of the National Security Law. The litany is exhausting and eye opening.

Mr. Kwon: There is the “April 19^th Uprising” in 1960 which started with students protesting a fraudulent election designed to ensure Syngman Rhee the lifetime presidency of South Korea. Syngman Rhee was unable to maintain support due to this uprising but the South Korean military intervened via a coup to reign in the movement. Right before the coup the aspirations of the progressive movement was very high and many thought peaceful reunification would be the likely outcome of the uprising. After the coup, the National Security Law was again invoked resulting in 500 people being arrested, 200 being tried and convicted and 7 or 8 people being executed. One of the executed was Joo Yong-Soo, chairperson of the Korean Social Party Organizing Committee and publisher of the “People’s Daily Newspaper.” It has recently come to light that the outcome of his trial was actually a “not-guilty” verdict but he was executed regardless. Additionally, the chairperson for the Socialist Party and a number of teachers advocating democratic social change were also executed.

For the sake of time and space, I’m not able to relate the full litany of incidents and abuses Mr. Kwon detailed that afternoon. Hopefully, I will be able in the coming weeks to continue transcribing the list of incidents and publish the full interview here. Instead, at this time I’d like to skip ahead to some slightly more recent history.

My question: “Mr. Kwon, up to this point we have talked exclusively about the time of South Korea’s history that is fairly universally regarded as a dictatorship. How does the current government since the end of the dictatorship utilize the National Security Law to prevent dissent?”

Mr. Kwon: I’d like to point out two things in response to your question: 1. The military dictatorship continues to this day. The president elected in 1987 was a former military general and even when we have had civilians elected as President they still collaborated with military leaders. 2. The National Security Law was revised in 1991 but is still used to suppress activists. For example, recent progressive movements that advocate for peaceful reunification have been prosecuted as organizations lending support to the enemy.

During the course of our discussion two men have joined our interview. My host explains both are former political prisoners (a term he uses interchangeably with “prisoners of conscience”) who would like to have a chance to speak to me about their experiences.

First is Mr. Park Hee-Sung. Born in 1935 in Pyongyang province, Mr. Park has not seen his wife or children who still reside in North Korea since 1962 and in fact does not even know if they are still alive. He came to South Korea in 1959 to assist South Korean activists to escape to the North in order to avoid persecution by the Rhee government. After a two hour naval battle in which he suffered numerous injuries he was captured and placed in a South Korean prison. He recounts to me some of his horrifying experiences in prison that range from being able to hear fellow inmates being executed to being told he too could easily be killed if his guards so decided. He was released in 1989 under a general amnesty and has been waiting for the South Korean government to allow him to go home ever since. His only wish at this late stage in his life is to go home to be hugged by his homeland and see his family one last time before he dies.

The other former prisoner is Mr. Kim Young-Sik. At this point we have run out of time for our interview so Mr. Kim takes a brief moment to angrily curse the policies of the United States government towards Korea as a policy wherein the most powerful country on Earth suffocates the weak and helpless. He reasserts an argument I end up hearing over and over while in Korea: If the US had never intervened in the internal affairs of Korea by collaborating with Japanese imperialists there would have been no division, no war and no tragedy. He states that it’s particularly terrible that the US gave power in South Korea to the people most hated by the Korean population.

Sung-Hee and I wish our hosts good-bye as rush hour sets in. We board the subway back to Seoul where one final meeting with Choi Eun-A, Lee Kyung-Won and Kang In-Ogg of the Pan Korean Alliance for Reunification. Ms. Choi and Mr. Lee have both recently been released from prison after being brought up on charges for violating the National Security Law. They have not yet been vindicated though, they were only released because their attorneys where able to prove that their human rights were violated because the prosecution has been taping their phones and reading their emails.

As I promised at the beginning, this entry only covers my first two meetings on August 5^th. The day has ended here in Taipei and I want to get to the night market for a late night snack before I begin to pack for my trip to Beijing tomorrow. Check back in the next day or two for the continuation of my interviews in Korea.

Urban Debate Champions Visit the Oval Office

2010-08-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Kevin Hirn and UTNIF staff member Misael Gonzalez! (Misael is also an alum of the UTNIF 6 week program, the Summer Survivors.) A great accomplishment for two outstanding young debaters.

Here is what Leonard Gail of the NAUDL board of directors had to say:

The President hosts the Chase Urban Debate National Champions and Top Speakers

On Thursday, July 22, President Obama welcomed to the Oval Office Misael Gonzalez and Kevin Hirn from Whitney Young High School in Chicago, Shagun Kukreja from University High School in New Jersey, and Michael Barlow from Grady High School in Atlanta. Misael and Kevin are the 2010 Urban Debate National Champions. Kevin, Shagun, and Michael were the top three individual speakers at the Chase Urban Debate National Championship in April. With Misael and Kevin was Chicago Debate League Executive Director Les Lynn. Shagun was joined by Marcia Brown, a Board member of the Jersey Urban Debate League. James Roland, Director of Programs for the National Debate Project and NAUDL Board member, accompanied Michael Barlow from the Atlanta UDL.

Like thousands of urban debaters across the country, these four student champions are proving that when the playing field is level, our debaters have the potential to achieve great things, and even to find themselves in the Oval Office—today as visitors, but perhaps tomorrow as hosts.

In addition to meeting President Obama, the students toured the nation’s capital and met with lawmakers including Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, and over 10 Senators and Representatives.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan speaks to UDL representatives including Shagun Kukreja, Kevin Hirn, Michael Barlow, Sylvia Nelson Jordon (Chicago Public Schools), Eric Tucker (NAUDL), and Linda Listrom (incoming NAUDL Executive Director)

Seeing former debaters who have become influential leaders of our nation inspired Shagun Kukreja. She told an audience of government and civic leaders, “Looking out at all of you who were once where I am today - a high school debater - I see my future in your eyes.”

This visit reminds us just how far the Urban Debate Network has come. Nearly four years ago, the NAUDL undertook an ambitious Expansion Plan backed by debate supporters like you. Since then we have launched or revitalized 10 Urban Debate Leagues serving over 145 schools. This fall, 2,100 additional students will have the opportunity to debate – a prospect they would not have otherwise had.

We invite you browse photos from the students’ entire visit.

The NAUDL Board would like to thank Northwestern University debate legend Michael Gottlieb and the NAUDL staff for making the visit possible. While there are no guarantees in this rarefied air, the NAUDL will work to make such a trip for Urban Debate standouts an annual event.

Join us in congratulating these students and the UDLs from which they hail. We look forward to sharing more news with you soon about the future of urban debate.

Leonard A. Gail
On behalf of the NAUDL Board of Directors

A view of US: Critical Ethnographic perspectives on American Military presence in East Asia by John Hines-part 1

2010-08-01T15:24:00.000-07:00

Another summer at UTNIF has sadly come to a close. Overall, I’m confident the workshop was an outstanding experience for all. The students turned out a stunning list of arguments. Our list of critiques includes arguments grounded in theories of a diverse group of thinkers such as Schmitt, Bataille, Shapiro, Agamben, and Foucalt. We completed a variety of innovative disadvantages such as Prompt Global Strike, the Senkaku Islands disadvantage and Global Anti-base Movements. The Affirmatives include cases to end the Counter Insurgency strategy in Afghanistan, close Futenma Air Station in Okinawa, permanently end the policy of secret detention and torture, and even a “whole res” case to withdraw all US military and police presence from every topic country. Wow! Most of us will now return home and begin preparation for the first day of school, and the first tournaments of the year. As most of my lab students have heard during the course of the summer, I have slightly different plans.

Thanks to a generous research fellowship that Fund for Teachers and The Marcus Foster Education Fund awarded me, I am now preparing to travel to East Asia to conduct primary research on this year’s high school debate topic. Starting August 3, I will travel to Korea to meet and interview local activists who advocate Korean reunification and oppose the construction and expansion of US military bases. This encounter will be followed up by similar research projects in Taipei and Beijing before concluding my trip with a visit to activists in Henoko Bay, Okinawa (anyone who debated a Futenma AFF this summer should be well aware of where I’m talking about). Two primary questions will animate my research: What are local perceptions of American military and economic involvement in East Asia? What local stories and perspectives have been subverted in the overarching narrative of US military and economic dominance in Asia? One of my primary goals with this project is to connect the stories and lives of people who actually live near US bases and experience the day-to-day impact of US military presence to our traditional approach towards evidence. Such an approach would allow us to compare the value of emphasizing secondary over primary topic research.

Why did I apply for the fellowship?

As an educator I’ve never encountered a more empowering pedagogical tool than competitive debate. Debate doesn’t simply expect some form of critical thinking to occur but requires of its practitioners an actively engaged critical mind. With this fellowship my hope is to chart a unique approach to topic research and argument construction. By collecting pictures, stories, video and interviews rather than simply relying upon extant publications available in our local libraries or the internet, I hope to inspire debaters to look beyond traditional explanations and analyses which rely upon a cold and calculating utilitarian logic. I wish to humanize our research and debate practice by giving our subjects a face and a voice.

Academic debate traditionally views itself as a rhetorical game, where students learn the intricacies of public policy and persuasion. Until recently, debaters and coaches never viewed the act of debating as anything other than purely rhetorical. The explosion of performance (hip-hop, storytelling, plays, personal narratives, performance art, etc.) in debate rounds over the past decade signals a shifting understanding of the activity. Proponents of the performance turn in academic debate argue that debate has always been implicitly focused upon performance despite the lack of an explicit acknowledgement of these methodological foundations. For example, high school students spend thousands of dollars each summer attending college workshops where they are drilled in appropriate performance techniques. The existence of speaking drills, speaker points and the cross-examination period itself attest to the ultimately performative nature of the activity (the ballot asks an inherently performative question of the judge with the phrase “the better debating was done by”).

Essentially, the “Performance Turn” in debate calls into question traditional notions of objectivity in research. It is therefore my intention to offer research conducted utilizing the methodology of critical ethnography to debaters interested in pursuing performance argumentation techniques.

What is critical ethnography?

According to D. Soyini Madison:

“Critical ethnography begins with an ethical responsibility to address processes of unfairness or injustice within a particular lived domain. By ‘ethical responsibility,’ I mean a compelling sense of duty and commitment based on moral principles of human freedom and well-being, and hence a compassion for the suffering of living beings. The conditions of existence within a particular context are not as they could be for specific subjects; as a result, the researcher feels a moral obligation to make a contribution toward changing those conditions toward greater freedom and equity. The critical ethnographer also takes us beneath surface appearances, disrupts the status quo, and unsettles both neutrality and taken-for-granted assumptions by bringing to light underlying and obscure operations of power and control. Therefore, the critical ethnographer moves from ‘what is’ to ‘what could be’ (Carspecken, 1996; Denzin, 2001; Noblit, Flores & Murillo, 2004; Thomas, 1993). Because the critical ethnographer is committed to the art and craft of fieldwork, empirical methodologies become the foundation for inquiry, and it is here “on the ground” of Others that the researcher encounters social conditions that become the point of departure for research (Thomas, 1993).“

Madison continues with the suggestion that critical ethnographers be guided by the following methodological questions:

“1. How do we reflect upon and evaluate our own purpose, intentions, and frames of analysis as researchers?

2. How do we predict consequences or evaluate our own potential to do harm?

3. How do we create and maintain a dialogue of collaboration in our research projects between ourselves and Others?

4. How is the specificity of the local story relevant to the broader meanings and operations of the human condition?

5. How—in what location and through what intervention—will our work make the greatest contribution to equity, freedom, and justice?”

-Critical Ethnography: Method, Ethics, and Performance (2005)

Who am I?

One of the elements of critical ethnography I find most compelling is its directive that the researcher cannot forget who they are and what experiences they bring to the table. It is important that I honor my personal history and knowledge I have accumulated which contribute to my research endeavor. I’ve been involved in debate as a competitor and coach since I began debating in middle school in 1988. As a college debater I amassed a respectable record of appearances in late outrounds at numerous national tournaments in addition to three invitations to the National Debate Tournament. In my senior year I made the difficult decision to end my career in the fall in order to focus on community activism in the wake of September 11^th. As a graduate student in Communication Studies at the University of North Texas (M.A. 2005), I became interested in how Rhetorical Studies and Performance Theory scholars addressed questions of voice and power within their research. I explored a research method termed [Performance Ethnography]. Utilizing this research method I traveled to Cuba, Jamaica and Mexico in order to conduct critical ethnographic research on the maintenance of traditional religious beliefs within modern cultures of performance. This current fellowship is an opportunity for me to continue my exploration of ethnography as research method and critical analysis tool.

In conclusion I’d like to thank the UTNIF for graciously allowing me to utilize their blog in order to post my reflections and research, The College Preparatory School for assistance in acquiring this grant, and Bruce Gagnon of Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space for arranging my introduction to the activist community in Korea and Japan. This post is the first in a series of entries charting my journey. Check back here regularly over the next thee weeks as I post journal entries offering observations on the research process, pictures of my trip and most importantly videos of my interviews. Ultimately, the goal of this blog is to provide debaters with a highly unique form of research on a very exciting and important debate topic.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have specific questions you would like me to address in my research and interviews!

Wikileaks publishes Afghan War Data that has been kept from the public

2010-07-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

90,000 documents released by wikileaks.org have revealed information about the war in Afghanistan that U.S. officials would have rather remained secret. As journalists and activists sift through these documents, more controversy over the conduct of the Afghanistan war is sure to follow. As the New York Times put it: View is Bleaker Than Official Portrayal of War in Afghanistan.

Wikileaks, first launched in 2007, remained mostly off the radar for the general public until sparking a controversy in April of 2010 over civilian casualties in the Iraq war. By releasing a classified U.S. military video showing a U.S. helicopter attack in which 12 were killed, including two Reuters journalists, wikileaks inspired a new round of criticism of U.S. military presence in Iraq.

D Sharp's Topic Lecture on Kuwait at the UTNIF

2010-07-02T18:50:00.001-07:00

Jane Munksgaard's Topic Lecture on North Korea at the UTNIF

2010-07-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

Jane Munksgaard

2010-07-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

John Hines and Afghanistan at the UTNIF

2010-07-02T18:47:00.002-07:00

Ricky Garner and Debating Turkey at the UTNIF

2010-07-02T18:47:00.001-07:00

Nick Fiori and Japan at the UTNIF

2010-07-02T18:46:00.001-07:00

Kirk Evans Talks Iraq

2010-07-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

Night time lectures with Laurance Paul Strait

2010-06-29T13:16:00.000-07:00

When students come back to the dorm and still have debate questions, LPS (Doctoral Candidate - USC Annenberg School for Communication) is there to answer! Outside his door is a list of topics that any student can request. Whether it’s rebuttal redos or writing 2AC/1AR blocks, LPS will be there to help you after the day is done.

Here is an example of one of his evening seminars:

Judge Adaptation – Optional Evening Seminar

10:40 PM, 15th Floor Lounge

Please feel free to come, or not come. You may arrive late and/or leave early if you wish. This will not be a traditional lecture; rather, it will be more of a guided discussion. Topics include:
-what are the different types of judges?
-what are the most important things to know about a judge?
-how to adapt to each type of judge
-how to read a judge philosophy

We will examine the judge philosophies of several of the faculty, and discuss how to adapt to each.

Don't forget to propose topics to me for future evening seminars. The next seminar will cover advanced theory issues, and the next after that will cover various philosophical traditions and their utility in debating kritiks on either side.

Critical Theory Versus Peacebuilding

2010-06-28T13:37:00.000-07:00

For your consideration: a couple of interesting cards we’ve found that support an anti-imperialism-based affirmative.

First, the problem-solving approach of current peace building efforts takes the world as they find it. The neg’s appeal to pragmatism inhibits a larger reconstructive agenda that challenges current notions of common sense and prioritizes the listening to the dispossessed.

BELLAMY, Pf of Peace & Conflict Studies @ Queensland and WILLIAMS, Pf of Security Studies @ Birmingham, 2004 (Alex J. and Paul, International Peacekeeping, Spring, Vol.11, No.1, Spring)

Problem solving theory takes the world as it finds it and aims to make the relationships and institutions found therein work smoothly by dealing with particular sources of trouble. As we discuss in greater detail in the concluding essay, such theories are far from socially or politically redundant but must be seen as limited in their perspective and as identifying and dealing with problems in a particular manner. In this collection, several contributors argue that the theory and practice of peace operations and conflict resolution have been shaped by a problem-solving epistemology. This has resulted in managerialist solutions based upon the prevailing definitions of common sense that privilege particular types of knowledge and experiences as relevant, and draw spatial and temporal limits around the remit of peace operations. Although such approaches may mitigate particular violent conflicts they do not challenge or seriously reflect upon the global structures that contribute to human suffering and, sometimes, violent conflict in the first place. Moreover, problem-solving approaches define certain forms of action as relevant, identify particular lines of causality and render certain practices legitimate at the expense of others.

Critical theory on the other hand aims to reflect upon the characteristics and structures of the prevailing world order and asks how that order came about. Critical knowledge calls into question existing institutions and social power relations by enquiring into their origins and how and whether they might be in the process of changing. In relation to peace operations, a critical approach seeks to investigate who benefits from certain types of practices, what linkages exist between local actors and global structures, and why certain voices and experiences are marginalized in policy debates.24

But critical theory is not solely concerned with developing critiques of past and present thought and action. It is also fundamentally concerned with proposing reconstructive agendas based on possibilities immanent within the current global order. The first step in any reconstructive agenda, however, is to challenge prevailing conceptions of common sense and listen to what Edward Said called ‘the poor, the disadvantaged, the voiceless, the unrepresented, the powerless’.25 Reflecting upon the epistemological assumptions behind current peace operations is thus a necessary part of thinking anew.

Second, condition CPs are a form of the neoliberalist urge to engineer. We need to accept the defeat of peacebuilding.

PUGH, Director of the Plymouth International Studies Centre, 2000
(Michael C., Regeneration of War-Torn Societies)

Clearly, however, a conceptual emphasis on process may neglect outcomes. Events may inexplicably overturn peacebuilding, or reveal the transformation as cosmetic. Indeed, processes of democratisation, for example, can contribute to the outbreak of violent conflict.1 And, as Wayne Nafziger and others suggest, the resources brought to bear on regeneration can restore the kind of neo-liberal development policies that perhaps contributed to the conflict in the first place.2 The difficulty is that judging outcomes is bound to be elusive, since 'success' can be neither absolute nor readily measured. Benchmarks, such as 'fulfilling a mandate', are subject to interpretation and the quality of success is more often a matter of propaganda than substance. From a historical perspective, it is even doubtful whether one can determine a meaningful timescale to judge outcomes, as suggested by the question: 'was the Bolshevik Revolution a success?'. The more meaningful difficulty may be in recognising flaws in peacebuilding and adjusting policies accordingly – including, perhaps, accepting defeat. In practice, actors are inclined, quite reasonably, to test indicators on an incremental and comparative basis: 'have incidents of political violence declined since last week/year?', 'how many people accept what we are doing?' and so forth. Another problem, then, is for participants to gain some idea of the strategic picture and to avoid getting hooked into short-term, sectoral projects divorced from, and perhaps counteracting, other peacebuilding efforts. Interaction at the grassroots cannot replace top-down initiatives since, as Peirce and Stubbs argue in chapter 9, international agencies can more readily exert strategic influence at national and international levels. However, issues of benchmarking, impact assessment and disparate projects are not the only, or even major, dilemmas to be recognised.

The conceptual baggage of peacebuilding has included the assumption that external actors wield the power and moral authority to bring about the peaceful change that communities have so signally failed to do. Indeed, for local actors, the resort to violence was certainly regarded as an essential process to secure a change in their destiny. If international diplomacy had failed to prevent the onset of conflict, then, so the presumption follows, external actors should at least make concerted efforts to pick up the pieces and regenerate societies in ways that will inhibit relapses into violence. These hubristic assumptions are not sufficient, however, to endow external actors with superior techniques for dealing with peaceful change. Nor does the evident destruction and dislocation they confront represent a tabula rasa on which external scribes can write a peaceful future. External involvement in peacebuilding seems to figure, however, as an 'urge to engineer', whether at international or community levels. It is based on technical fixes in the form of disarmament, law and order programmes, 'hard' reconstruction projects, refugee returns and elections. Such an approach is less concerned to interact with local norms and hegemonic relationships at the grassroots, than to produce inventories of measurable outputs or, at a strategic level, to make way for integration of war-torn societies in the world economy. It promotes a pattern of development that is determined by dominant democratic and neo-liberal, capitalist ideology.3

A veritable industry involving international institutions, regional organisations and NGOs for integrating lives and livelihoods in societies emerging from civil war into relative peace has evolved. This is not necessarily a manifestation of direct control. On the contrary, state policy-makers that accept the responsibilities of intervention are reluctant to get trapped in recurrent cycles of violence and foreign commitment of the kind that bedevilled Somalia and Angola. Nor has the institutionalisation of peacebuilding been other than sporadic. It grew reactively from the enterprises and debates that marked an evolution of aid intervention and peacekeeping in the 1990s.

Humanitarian aid and military peacekeeping were not enough. They did not address the root causes of conflict or secure social development beyond emergencies.

Debate Synergy at UTNIF Session 2

2010-06-25T09:12:00.000-07:00

The crunch is inevitable, but will the transition to paperless debating be smooth?

Texas debater and inventor of the paperless debating application Debate Synergy, Alex Gulakov, will be giving tutorials on paperless debating and how to manage workflows.

Alex's Bio:

Alex Gulakov hopes to add technological proficiency to the pedagogical values of debate through Debate Synergy, his software for research and for paperless debate. He has given lectures at a number of schools and camps on how computer proficiency simplifies the debate preparation process. He recently helped coach St. Mark’s to TOC finals, after being coached by St. Mark’s to NDCA semi-finals in the prior season. He currently debates for Texas. You can reach him at alexgulakov@gmail.com for debate or technology questions.

UTNIF '10 Starter Pack Session 1

2010-06-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

3 Affs/Neg strategies for the UTNIF.

Afghanistan Aff/Neg

Japan Aff/Neg

Nuclear Presence Aff/Neg

Deprogramming the Cult of Realism Part III: Continuing The Strategic Diagnosis

2010-06-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Claire McKinney

Scenario 2: Terrorism Affirmatives
So your aff claims to avert terrorism in some way. Unlike last year, where people could claim not to stop terrorism, but rather could diminish its impact through public health measures, this year, the aff can either claim to remove a target for terrorism (which, while true, is probably going to be less likely- terrorists striking US troops doesn’t carry near the risk of a massive retaliation as an attack on US soil) or can claim to remove the reason for terrorism: the presence of US troops that degrade the territorial sovereignty or religious sanctity of a particular region. The relationship between realism and terrorism is a little more complicated than the relationship between realism and multinational institutions. There are several reasons for this. First, realism is a theory of state interaction and thus does not have a theory of terrorism or how to stop it. Realism’s state-centrism is either the result of or precludes the consideration of non-state actors having any definitive effect on the international system. This does not preclude the influence of terrorists in the state’s calculation to engage in violence, but it does mean that a theory of realism has nothing to say about terrorists. This is good for the aff who reads realism to answer the kritik, insofar as you do not have the same problems as the alliance-centric advantages. However, the presence of terrorism could undermine the claim that the world is realist, which would severely compromise realism as offense against the kritik.
There are two primary reasons the rise of international terrorism challenges the assumptions of realism. The first is the constitution of balance of power. According to realism, a state’s material properties determine its absolute power in the system. Material properties include economic success, military materiel including troops and weapons, and amount of territory. States, according to realism, will not initiate a war with a state that has more relative power than it has, because it is almost assured to lose and thus greatly increases the risk of its death. The problem with terrorism is that if it is a pervasive phenomenon, this calculation no longer holds and there is no promise of international security. Terrorists are never materially superior to its state targets. Traditional means of risk calculation make no sense against terrorist because there is no fear of state death and in some circumstances, notably, suicide terrorism, no fear of individual death. Furthermore, the weakest states in the system now become the most threatening because the weakest states are often the ones who cannot exercise sovereign control, which allows for terrorist cells to operate with immunity. Realism cannot explain these developments nor create predictions of how states will act given these conditions. The presence of terrorism means realism is neither inevitable nor an accurate theory of the world.
Second, and this is hinted at above, terrorists are often irrational actors. Suicide terrorism is irrational because someone annihilates the possibility of enjoying any of the benefits accrued by one’s actions. Let me note here that rationalism in this sense and in realism is economic rationalism, that is, based on rational choice theory. Rational choice theory makes very thin assumptions about individuals: they are utility maximizers (that is, they engage in cost-benefit analysis in order determine their action) and they have ordered and fixed preferences (that is, they prefer A to B to C, and will always prefer that as long as conditions remain the same). While in one sense, suicide terrorists could be rational (they believe they will receive a reward in the afterlife that they would not receive without martyrdom that outweighs the amount of life they forego by killing themselves), in a material sense, they are irrational because their political achievements on earth will never be enjoyed by them. Just as a state did not fear state death would absolutely disturb the predictions of realism, so to does an irrational non-state actor absolutely destroy the ability of a state to act qua other states based on the assumption of rationality. This is why the war in Afghanistan is so intractable. It is absolutely irrational, under realism, for the United States to stay in Afghanistan; the risk of the state being a threat to the US is near zero. However, because there are irrational non-state actors within Afghanistan that could use a failed state to cover illegal activities, the United States must stay to protect its security.
A famous footnote in Meershemier’s The Tragedy of Great Power Politics summarizes the improbability for realism to actually explain or predict action within the system of international relations which is magnified by the presence of terrorism. From Meersheimer: “My theory ultimately argues that great powers behave offensively toward each other because that is the best way for them to guarantee their security in an anarchic world. The assumption here, however, is that there are many reasons besides security for why a state might behave aggressively toward another state. In fact, it is uncertainty about whether those non-security causes of war are at play, or might come into play, that pushes great powers to worry about their survival and thus act offensively. Security concerns alone cannot cause great powers to act aggressively. The possibility that at least one state might be motivated by non-security calculations is a necessary condition for offensive realism, as well as any structural theory of international politics that predicts security competition.” (414, emphasis mine) That is, the fact the some state is not motivated by security (and thus is ultimately irrational because it threatens it sown existence) is necessary for the theory to work. To state it more theoretically, the theory relies both on its assumptions to be true and not true in order to function. This means that realism, as an answer to the kritik, merely confirms that the world cannot be predicted or controlled by rational intervention.
Finally, a word about retaliation. Even if a terrorist attack were nuclear, chemical, or biological, presuming that the attack itself did not cause extinction or the destruction of the United States’ entire population, anything but conventional retaliation would probably be irrational under realism. A nuclear attack on Afghanistan would not destroy the material capability of Al Qaeda because Al Qaeda is not territorially bound. And a nuclear attack anywhere in the earth would probably cause massive balancing against the United States, which would overall diminish its relative power in the international system, which would destroy its regional hegemony.

Now that there is some sense as to why realism does not play well with your advantages, you are probably wondering what effect it has against the kritik. I will lay out the most common was (I think) of answering the kritik and how realism diminishes the capacity of either one as a winning strategy.

The Perm

The perm has definitely become an ascendant strategy in answer the kritik nowadays. The reason why is complex, but there are a few features of how people think of the kritik currently that make the perm so viable. First, kritik debates have caved into the notion that they need an alternative that does something besides engage in criticism. This is good for the aff because as soon as the negative takes a positive stance about reconstructing the world, the affirmative can make arguments as to why its action is compatible with those positive visions of the world that, ostensibly, resolve the link debate. On this year’s topic, where the aff’s action is essentially negative (remove military or police presence), the affirmative can very easily recast its action as a reversal of the sort of adventurism the negative’s kritik assumes. Second, kritik debaters are often less versed in the specifics of the aff’s scenarios and the intricacies of international relations and American Foreign Policy. This means that the aff can often articulate a net benefit to the permutation (but in THIS case, we HAVE to ACT!) better than the negative can articulate a specific link with an impact to the aff’s specific mechanism (sure, constructions of terrorism are bad, but Al Qaeda is real, right?). Third, kritik debaters have become willing to spot the affirmative their impacts and fiat, which means that the perm has this weird status as combining a theoretical worldview (the kritik) with a possibly incompatible policy action (the aff), but the two worlds never seem to interact in any robust sense. Even if none of these conditions hold in any given round, many affs are still likely to see the perm as their preferred first option. But if you read realism, you have made the negative’s job in winning the perm extremely easy.
First, realism generates philosophical mutual exclusivity. While the aff might subscribe to a worldview that is incompatible with the kritik, that must be proven by the negative. Most affirmatives speak about the world without making their assumptions explicit. This benefits the affirmative that wants to permute because their 1AC could be compatible with many different assumptions about how the world works. But as soon as the affirmative reads realism, they have destroyed this strategic ambiguity. Now, in the world where the aff read realism, all the negative has to prove is that realism is incompatible with the kritik. They can concede that the aff is realist and then win realism can’t coexist with the alternative. The pragmatics of the plan become of secondary importance in this scenario. Furthermore, the above discussion about how realism disproves the aff’s impact claims also means that the negative can create a strategic double bind for the aff; either the aff is realist, which means it cannot solve its advantages (defense, I know, but it’s an important defensive argument when weighing the K versus the advantages), or it is realist, in which case, the aff links (offense).
Second, if the affirmative reads realism, the negative no longer has to win specific links to the aff. If the negative wins that realism makes bad predictions about the world and believing in realism leads to more violence, then you have given the negative grounds to win a new kritik that implicates all the rest of your answers to the kritik. If the aff also reads predictions good, now the negative can say that realism deforms prediction such that we get the Iraq War. If you say threats are real, the negative can say that the only real threat to the US under realism is a rising power and the only rising power is China, so you don’t have any advantages; furthermore, the historically most often way to deal with a rising power is preemptive war, so your impact is inevitable. And if you say realism is inevitable, this becomes a new link to the kritik because you are so indebted to a single ontological and epistemological viewpoint that you foreclose any alternatives, which is why rejecting the aff is a prerequisite for any alternatives to form.
There is a scenario where you would want to read realism, and that is if you just planning to impact turn the kritik, in which case, granting the aff new links is not a problem. If this is your strategy, realism can be a handy tool. If not, it is more of a liability than an aid.
The Fourth and last post in this series will discuss possible alternative theories of international relations that do a better job of conforming with the 1AC and a permutation-based strategy against the kritik.

Deprogramming the Cult of Realism Part II The Strategic Diagnosis

2010-06-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

Claire McKinney

As already alluded to in the introduction of the first blog post, the problem with using realism to answer the kritik is that while it does, and often successfully, undermine the foundational assumptions of the kritik, it does the same thing to the affirmative and makes other offense against the kritik untenable. In this post, I’ll outline a couple scenarios where it undermines the affirmative, then a scenario where it undermines the capacity to answer the kritik strategically. Again, this is not to suggest that no affirmative should ever read realism good. There are scenarios where the affirmative is realist (such as an off-shore balancing affirmative focused on averting great power war) where realism is a strategic and offensive strategy against the security kritik. The purpose of this post is to disabuse debaters of the notion that just because the affirmative talks about war, the best strategy to answer the security kritik is realism. In most instances, this is actually a bad strategy.

Scenario 1: Security Alliance Affirmatives
As discussed in the first blog post, any affirmative that argues something about why the collapse of a security alliance, such as NATO or JASA, not to mention the collapse of any other international institution, such as the UN, WTO, trade pacts, etc, causes global nuclear annihilation is making claims contrary to realism’s position. Realism is highly individualist in that it argues that states are not constructed by outside forces but rather are independent actors who are behaviorally constrained by the structural form of international relations but are not constitutively changed by the form of international relations. To simplify, for offensive realists, security institutions are created and maintained because states, materially pre-determined actors, find it in their interest to do so. However, as soon as their interests dictate that these alliances are constraining, rather than maximizing their power, they will abandon the alliance. The alliance itself has no effect on the material determinants of a state’s power.
This means two things for your security alliance advantage. Either A) both states understand that the collapse of the security alliance would diminish their power, in which case, the danger to the alliance is a chimera (Witness, for instance, the political career of Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who broke his campaign promise to move the Okinawa base. Hatoyama campaigned on a strong condemnation of the military relationship with the United States, but in the end refused to take any material action to endanger that relationship. This could be read by realists as a confirmation that maintaining a military alliance with the US is more important to Japan than mollifying domestic political pressure because Japan can only maximize its power by maintaining its alliance with the United States). Or B) The security alliance has outgrown its utility for at least one power, and so because states are individualist and act in order to maximize their power, they will leave the alliance regardless. This is probably truest for the United States in most of these alliances. But, and this is important, because the United States is a hegemon and because the international sphere is an anarchic, the alliance has no effect on constraining United States action in the first place. One could probably make a stronger claim that security alliances have no effect on constraining other states either because what they are really constrained by is fear of being taken over by the regional hegemon. Regardless, the security alliance’s survival probably has little to nothing to do with your affirmative. Either there is no impact or you don’t solve because of realism.
---

More of the "Strategic Diagnosis" will appear tomorrow...

Still Accepting Applications

2010-06-07T11:18:00.000-07:00

Its not too late! We are still accepting applications for CX Marathon Session 1 and 2 and CX Experienced Session 1 and 2. Get your application soon in to reserve your space.

Deprogramming the Cult of Realism Part I The Practical Diagnosis

2010-06-05T09:00:00.001-07:00

(Pope JP2, MJ, Magnum PI courtesy of Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum)

Claire McKinney -

So in 2010, debaters are returning to consideration of America’s place in the world. And, for the first time in many years, the focus is on the United States’ military posture vis a vis the world. The first critical argument on everyone’s mind will of course be the Security Kritik. And every aff’s first response will be to grab 4 or 5 realism cards.

What affirmatives think they accomplish when answering the security kritik with realism is that they have explained the world in such a way to make the kritik untrue and the alternative impossible. Realism begins with the assumption that world is material; the way we speak about the world has no effect on how the world functions because of two “facts”: 1) Actors in the world have an immutable nature (rational and motivated by fear) and 2) Actors act in predictable ways based on their material capabilities. Because humans, and thus human creations, states, are inherently rational and motivated primarily by fear, then there is no use criticizing what cannot be changed based on this worldview. Thus, the only option is to cope with the world as it is rather than trying to transform it. States will always try and secure their interests through the threat of force because they fear their own death (state death, in the realist literature, is either a complete loss of sovereignty or a loss of territorial integrity. Thus, Germany from 1945-1989 is an example of state death, as is Czechoslovakia 1936-1945.). What this allows the affirmative to do is challenge several premises of the kritik: 1) The world is socially constructed 2) The idea of security produces proliferating insecurity, which requires the ever-escalating use of force 3) If we think about the world differently, we can change the cycle of state violence.

The problem with using realism in this way is that it artificially constrains the type of affirmatives you can advocate and the other types of offense you could generate against the kritik. Because realism is a systematized way of seeing the world, you cannot proffer other contrary ways of seeing the world alongside it. This does not mean that teams are not successful reading mutually contradictory evidence (such as reading a Soft Power advantage which assumes ideas are critical in balance of power alongside realism, which argues that ideas are mostly irrelevant.). What it means is that those teams will be outfoxed by negatives that know more about realism than they do. Basically, reading realism gives the negative an advantage because if they can prove the aff is not realist, then those cards become wasted 2AC time.

Using realism to answer the Security Kritik (and every other kritik, whether it applies or not) is a relic from a different era in debate when impact-turning the kritik was an ascendant strategy. Now, as the perm becomes more important as a tool, realism should have lost its sheen. Yet it hasn’t, which is puzzling as a debate strategy. But the move to realism is even more puzzling given this year’s topic; realism may actually put the aff at a disadvantage. Why?

1) If the World is realist, we don’t need the Aff.
2) Most affirmatives on this topic are most likely not realist (or at least, not offensively realist).
3) Realism hamstrings your ability to make better permutation arguments persuasively.
4) There are better, truer theories of international relations that will put the aff at a competitive advantage.

1) If the World is realist, we don’t need the affirmative. You might find this to be a silly argument, but it is actually one of the persistent charges about realism in the academic world. Realism purports to be a descriptive theory about how the world works, but realist theorists find it necessary to make normative policy suggestions.

Affirmatives on this topic are most likely not realist. Why? Well, because this year’s topic, in terms of hegemony, will most likely rely on some form of alliance argument to argue why a withdrawal of troops and bases will not destroy United States Hegemony. Let’s take Meersheimer as an example. . John Meersheimer’s realism has the following 5 assumptions:

1) The international sphere is anarchic (no international law).
2) States are unitary actors (no domestic politics govern state international relations)
3) States are rational (they act in their own self-interest)
4) States have offensive military capabilities
5) States are uncertain of other states’ intentions.

If these assumptions are true, then there is no reason to say that a state needs to change their current Grand Strategy. They cannot change the structure of the international realm and are already acting rationally within it. Why do we need normative suggestions if states are already acting rationally? To argue that the current United States Grand strategy is irrational (eg will cause nuclear war) violates the assumptions of realism, and therefore means that our theory of the world is wrong.

2) Most affirmatives on this topic are most likely not realist (or at least, not offensively realist).
I can imagine two opitions for most affs, one non-realism and one realist.
Option 1: Security Alliances
Japan, Iraq, and Afghanistan all have obvious alliance advantages: Japanese-American Security Alliance (JASA) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are both implicated by United States Grand Strategy. Some articles suggest that JASA is under stress by domestic Japanese opposition to US bases in Japan and NATO has recently taken command of almost all US forces in Afghanistan. Thus, it is highly possible many affs will claim to revitalize these organizations specifically or multilateralism more generally. If this is the case, THE AFF ISN’T REALIST.

Realism undermines the idea that alliances can be at all useful or binding on states because of its assumptions about state action. Realist theories of international relations rely on several assumptions of state action

The aff’s impact claims of alliances being good violate the first, third, and fifth assumptions because they presume that the alliance structure has some exogenous effect on state interaction that constitutes some sort of law, binding states in obligation to one another. The United States, as a hegemon, actually has very little interest in maintaining any alliance structure if it diminishes its unitary hegemonic power. This security institutionalism is more closely allied with a school of thought called Liberal Institutionalism than with Structural Realism. Structural realists would argue that cooperation is the function of the balance of power and that institutions such as alliances are neutral in their effect on cooperation. There is no incentive for a state not to cheat their institution if realism is true.

Now you might say my aff is JASA Bad, or NATO bad or Afghanistan Instability Good! Of course, if your affirmative shares the assumptions of realism, you should not feel compelled to abandon realist theoretical assumptions or justifications. However, if your aff is JASA good, NATO good, unilateralism bad, etc., then you have a theoretical and a strategic problem on your hands.

Option 2: Off Shore Balancing
Kuwait, Turkey, and South Korea affs all have less to do with existing security institutions and have more to do with transforming the United States’ Grand Strategy from Power Projection to Off-Shore Balancing. Off-shore balancing is a strategy that relies on allies to constrain rising states regionally as opposed to maintaining bases oneself globally. This is a move within realist thought, and thus is the time when using realism to answer the security kritik makes sense theoretically, although perhaps not strategically.

Those are the theoretical issues with Realism, but there are strategic issues as well. Part II will consider those strategic issues.

Who is this man and why is he looking at me with those steely blue eyes?

2010-06-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

Worst Case discussion at the 3nr.

There's a good discussion going on over at the 3NR over how best to answer "predictions good" claims on the Negative. Scotty says that the "predictions fail" arguments negative's usually read, like the monkey's throwing darts cards, aren't good enough because they aren't offensive. For me, the predictions fail cards don't HAVE to be offensive if they succeed in delegitimizing the methodology upon which the Affirmative rests, but I guess that's why I'm just a stock issues judge in disguise. I happen to think its the affirmative's burden to prove that their predictions of an impending harm as well as their predictions of the beneficial "solvent" effects of the plan are actually likely on the basis of some sort of data/scientific/social scientific grounds. That ain't K-centric, its just taking policy debate into the realm of the logical. In any case, Scotty's advice is good nonetheless. Having an OFFENSIVE argument against worst case scenarios would be a boon to debaters questioning the Aff's predictions. Check out the post and the discussion below it. Here is a bit of the card, written by the man in the picture above this post, that Scotty cites as moving in the right direction:

Frank Furedi, a sociology professor at the University of Kent, writes: "Worst-case thinking encourages society to adopt fear as one of the dominant principles around which the public, the government and institutions should organize their life. It institutionalizes insecurity and fosters a mood of confusion and powerlessness. Through popularizing the belief that worst cases are normal, it incites people to feel defenseless and vulnerable to a wide range of future threats."

Even worse, it plays directly into the hands of terrorists, creating a population that is easily terrorized -- even by failed terrorist attacks like the Christmas Day underwear bomber and the Times Square SUV bomber.

When someone is proposing a change, the onus should be on them to justify it over the status quo. But worst-case thinking is a way of looking at the world that exaggerates the rare and unusual and gives the rare much more credence than it deserves.

Report from the bowels of the Marathon foundry...

2010-06-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, the UTNIF Marathon Division, the one of a kind curriculum that provides students with rigorous work in actual debates from Day 1, takes a lot of preparation on the part of the UTNIF teaching staff. Students in the division are given 3 Affirmatives, each with a different type of Negative strategy that answers it. From the very first day students are immersed in in-depth debates about the topic. Students are always curious about what the Aff's in the Marathon division will be, so we've decided to offer a little preview here. The affs/negs are still in the process of being written, but it looks like one of them will move troops who are stationed in Okinawa at Futenma base, to Guam. There is a lot of controversy in Japan right now because a new base being built in Okinawa to hold the remaining troops there, has had seriously damaging environmental consequences. Another issue is that the people of Okinawa are opposed to the US presence on the island. The advantages will be centered around the environment and US Japan relations based on domestic support from Okinawa.