The King’s Debate Society Goes to Greece

Debate comes home.

That was the slogan of the 2016 World’s Universities Debating Championships in Thessaloniki, Greece. There were debaters from all over the world—from Western academic bastions like Harvard and Oxford to students from the world’s greatest cities, including St. Petersburg, Mexico City, and Tokyo. There were debaters from exotic locales like Jamaica and Malaysia. For some debaters—like those from Afghanistan and Tunisia—the right to freely speak and debate is both new and cherished. Over 800 students competed in a week of debating, traveling to Greece, where Socrates and Aristotle once birthed dialectic, rhetoric and academic debate.

Both Lucy LeFever ‘16 and Jonah Ortiz ‘17 (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics majors at King’s) could appreciate that debate was indeed coming home.

In the nine preliminary rounds, LeFever and Ortiz debated a wide range of topics, from whether or not the use of private military contractors is morally justified to whether art should be publically or privately owned. The team from King’s remained competitive throughout the entire tournament, always remaining in contention for the elimination rounds and at times being ranked among the top teams. They more than held their own against stiff competition, beating teams from Cambridge, King’s College London, and St. Andrews; earlier, LeFever and Ortiz beat the team from Harvard that went on to become this year’s world champions.

Worlds was the final tournament for LeFever and Ortiz, who have been partners over the last three years. They were one of the most successful teams King’s has ever had: they had the best international performance of any King’s team, won their first tournament together, and remain the only team in King’s history to win an entire tournament.

“I’ve debated for ten years now,” Ortiz said, “and I’ve never enjoyed a tournament as much as I have as this one. The sheer diversity of teams makes it unlike any other debate competition I’ve ever been a part of. At King’s Debate Society, we like to think that the way we influence strategic institutions is by advancing truth in the marketplace of ideas, and there are few marketplaces of ideas like the World Championships. In one round, in one of the top rooms at the tournament, Lucy and I had a chance to defend the notion that people are born with rights because of their worth and dignity, rather than because the state granted them. We found ourselves referencing concepts discussed in our PPE classes in building our case. At the start of the round the other teams, from Cambridge, Monash, and King’s London, simply couldn’t conceive of rights as something beyond social norms. By the end of it, that question was the heart of the debate. I like to tell people that debate can take your education beyond the walls of the classroom: I think in Greece we managed to do just that.”

Coach Josiah Peterson commented, “At the point where Jonah and Lucy were going confidently into every round against top teams from the U.K., Australia, and the American IV’s (the typical teams that make it to the final round), knowing they had the right case and knew how to defend it, I knew King’s Debate was succeeding in training students to advocate truth in the marketplace of ideas. While their competitive efforts ultimately fell just shy of bringing home a trophy, I’ve never been more proud of our team. I just wish we had them around longer. Most teams at the World Championship that do well are there on their third or fourth championships whereas our students usually only get one shot.”

A whole season of debating awaits The King’s Debate Society. In early 2016, the team will be attending the Novice National Championships, the Northeastern Regional Championships, the North American Championships, and finally the U.S. Universities National Championships in Atlanta. King’s will also be hosting their fifth annual tournament on March 5-6.  Beyond this year, King’s looks forward to sending a team to the next world championships in 2017, held at The Hague in Amsterdam.