Column: At this high school debate, the differences that matter are points of view – The Herald-Times

Lee Feinstein| Guest columnist

This piece may be disturbing to some readers. It offers limited hope, optimism, and earnest language, with brief scenes of unity.

I found myself on the phone recently with a former senior official, whose political background, personal and generational history could not be more different from mine. We, nonetheless, found ourselves invigorous agreement as the former official said, For the first time in my life I am worried about the future of our democracy. It is the well-meaning sentiment that has brought conservatives and liberals together in a series of open letters on the need to join together to defend liberal democracy.

Glad as I am to take part in such private expressions of solidarity and to see published statements signed by people representing different political views, none of this gives me much optimism. The global democratic recession has evolved into a global anti-democratic wave.

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For hope, I look elsewhere: to a suburban high school in central Indiana, as one of several dozen amateur judges at one of the first in-person debate tournaments since lockdown.

The student debaters are instructed to adhere to a judicious mask mandate: Wear them when youre not eating. Take them off, if you want, when its your turn to debate. The students and their parents react without a shrug. No complaining. No studied outrage. Just agreement to follow a reasonable request to keep everyone safe.

The debaters arrive at 8 a.m.from large and medium cities, and from suburbs, and small towns, from across the state. The teachers and coaches are a casually diverse and interactive bunch: white, black, and brown, as are their students. Some of the debaters have been in the Midwest for many years. Others are more recent arrivals to the United States. The state calls itself the countrys crossroads. Dare to think of it not as flyover country, but as Americas third coast.

In the debate rooms, young people face off against each other. To the students and the debate judges, the racial and gender differences are unremarked, and unremarkable.

Its not that the students dont have different points of view. If you listen carefully, you can detect political leans to conservativism, left activism, libertarianism, and mainstream politics. But there are no bubbles or algorithms in the debate room. Students are assigned to a side and are prepared to argue both for and against the stipulated resolution; in this case: Resolved: A just society ought to recognize an unconditional right to strike.

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Students slice the syntactical salami thin. One debater defends his assigned position, saying reckless actions by strikers would not be enabled in the affirmative. `Unconditional is not the same as `unlawful, he says.

Another debater for the Aff defends her chosen value criterion of utilitarianism. Moves toward equalizing power, she says, would provide the most benefit to the most people. Another says corporate gigantism makes recognition of a fundamental right to strike imperative now.

The debaters support their arguments in one direction or the other with historical cases. The U.S. postal strike in 1970 during the Nixon Administration, for example, yielded to postal workers the right to collective bargaining for the first time, but not the right to strike. COVID-19 was used as an argument for and against recognizing the right of health care workers to organize.

Some of the students injected global perspectives into the debate: an unconditional recognition of the right to strike is necessary to protect workers in countries with minimum wages even lower than in the United States, says one debater. She points to Egypt and Iran as examples maybe with some direct knowledge from discussions around the dinner table. Her opponent says granting an unconditional right to strike disincentivizes work and is impractical for the worlds poor.

The students adopt contending values and value criteria. Their values are justice or personal security. Their value criteria range from Lockes social contract to Kants ideas about human dignity, to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

At the end of the debate, the students set aside whatever emotion may have built up during cross examinations and rebuttals, with: Good debate, or Nice job, shaking off the enforced certainties of their debate roles, and the world around them.

Resolved: The future of democracy in this country is being decided at places like this central Indiana high school, which defies stereotypes of the Midwest in its ethnic and gender diversity, in the rejection of political polarization, and in the common striving of its students and teachers to navigate the world as best they can at this precarious time.

Lee Feinstein, a former State Department official and ambassador,is founding dean of the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, and proud dad of a high school debater.

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Column: At this high school debate, the differences that matter are points of view - The Herald-Times