Masket: The problem with campus debate – The Denver Post

We need to talk about campus debate. I put that term in quotes because it has become so tortured that the terms actual meaning is hard to discern. But many people seem to link it closely to college learning, and this is a real problem.

In a recent New York Times piece, Emma Camp, a student at the University of Virginia, complains that she came to college seeking classrooms full of energetic debate where students could say what we really think, but instead found ideological conformity and self-censorship. There are lots of issues here to discuss (Self-censorship is a very important skill! State legislatures are actually banning universities from discussing racism!), but I want to focus on what energetic debate actually means.

Theres a great misperception in discussions about higher education that somehow college campuses are a site for robust debate between competing ideas and that this is the essence of university education. Some of this misperception has been fostered by interest groups like the Steamboat Institute, which pushes for debates to bring conservative ideals onto campus. But more generally, there are op/eds like the recent Times one that simply suggest that universities are places where people just argue all day over ideas in the public square and the best ideas survive.

Debate is a skill, not knowledge. It is sometimes used in the classroom along with many other techniques designed to teach, but it only works well within some set of parameters, and steeped in class material. Generally, what we want in a classroom is discussion, rather than debate. Debates have winners and losers; discussion, ideally, leaves everyone better off.

For example, I teach about political parties. Ill sometimes give students some readings and lecture materials on how party leaders seek to control nominations. And then well talk about questions of how democratic parties should be. Should it be easier for someone like Bernie Sanders to compete in Democratic primaries? What about Donald Trump competing in Republican primaries? Are party leaders doing their job when they pressure people out of congressional contests or are they making the whole system less democratic?

This is honestly more like a structured discussion than a debate. But these sorts of questions and debates help students dig into the readings more and may challenge some of their prior beliefs. There are no obviously right or wrong answers, but I want students to engage with the material and think through some of the merits and problems with competing views.

This is generally not the form of debate that is being pushed, however. Instead, groups like Steamboat and Turning Point bring a liberal and a conservative to campus to debate hot-button issues like social justice and identity politics, whether college campuses are free-speech zones, socialism versus capitalism, and more. People attend these events and cheer for their side and boo the other side, but very little learning occurs. Basically, its a sporting event. And thats fine, but it doesnt really enhance the intellectual life of a campus, and it doesnt deepen students knowledge.

Similarly, many campuses have debate teams, and students prepare arguments and rebuttals on various topics and travel to other schools to compete against other students. And thats fine, too it can be a useful skillset, and students can do research and develop a great deal of expertise on a topic in their preparation. But its largely a team sport that students who enjoy that activity select into. It doesnt necessarily translate into a broader classroom teaching technique.

Again, a lot of the push for more debate on campus comes from the right, who seem to feel that conservative intellectual ideas are being somehow canceled on university campuses. Its certainly true that college students and professors tend to lean left relative to the rest of the population. But that doesnt mean that conservative ideas get no hearing. I cant speak broadly for the discipline, but quite a few of my colleagues teach the ideas of Buckley, Schlafly, Friedman, Smith, Hayek, Reagan, and others not to indoctrinate students either for or against those ideas but because understanding those ideas is essential to understanding American political discourse and development. Students then get opportunities to interpret modern political events in light of what these writers had to say. This is how learning happens.

What we generally do not do is just turn over our classrooms to students who have a piece to speak. Thats a recipe for chaos. Campuses are not an incubator for all forms of speech, no matter how inane or offensive. And if you say things that demean your fellow students or suggest that they do not belong there, you may encounter criticism for that.

Our primary task as educators is to ensure that students are learning the material we have assembled for our courses. Well pursue a variety of techniques to get them there, including lectures, group discussions, written assignments, presentations, and, yes, sometimes forms of debate. But debate absent structured learning is, at best, a form of entertainment. And you dont need college for that.

Seth Masket is a professor of political science and director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver. He is the author of Learning from Loss: The Democrats 2016-2020.

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Masket: The problem with campus debate - The Denver Post