Recently, a guest editorial at the New York Times has caused a stir — and a fair bit of pearl clutching — on college campuses around the country. A University of Virginia Student, who came to campus “eager to debate” was surprised, it appears from the text, that her views received pushback in class from her peers. This, she claims, results in “self-censorship.” In addition to the regular rigamarole surrounding “free speech” on campus, the article has curiously spawned a fair amount of critique about “debate” as a concept, and why people might choose to participate in it.

Debate has, especially on the campus Left, been derided as a poor format for the exchange and growth of ideas. At worst, it’s written off as a wholly performative process, given to displays of whiteness and masculinity, and at best, it is considered an ineffective mode for sharing beliefs and growing them as a community. As the current chair of the Party of the Left, a campus debate organization devoted to the development of difficult — and perhaps even dangerous! — ideas, I have always found this particular disdain towards debate to be unproductive and misses the point of why we want to have them with our friends, and maybe even our enemies.

It’s easy to talk about politics. I do it on Twitter every day, I do it with my friends, and I call my parents to talk about politics with them. It’s simple, it’s quotidian, and it keeps me grounded in the world. What is much harder, however, is to take a topic, to stand up in front of my friends on the floor of the Party of the Left and speak from my heart about something I deeply believe. It is hard to know that my every word is going to be scrutinized and examined and, when I’m done speaking, eventually questioned. But I know as Chair that I have cultivated a space in which it is safe to do that with my peers because we have built up the trust we need in order to critically examine our principles as a collective intellectual project.

Classroom discussions and seminars are nice — and I have been in plenty of pleasant ones — but they are not, as this Times op-ed suggested, the place for debate. They are for examining texts and connecting them with our own bodies of knowledge and our personal experiences. We can resist each other’s viewpoints, but a classroom comment will never be enough space to dive deeply into the core principles of our system of beliefs. When I watch my friends give more lengthy speeches, I get to learn how our understandings of parenting, class struggle, the Directed Studies curriculum, or any number of other specific topics reflect our interpretation of the world around us. Our debate floor gives us a chance to let ourselves and our ideas about the world be vulnerable not to the scrutiny of the grader’s pen, but to the other ideas that comprise the Left and the people that form it. When it comes time to ask the members of my Party questions on their speeches, I get to do so not with the intent of taking them down — or perhaps to use a more traditional turn of phrase, “owning” them — but with the understanding that my friends’ ideas matter to me, and that I am joining them in getting a chance to better flesh them out.

If I have learned anything from the Party of the Left, it is that we grow as thinkers in the spaces in which we disagree. And I will never deny that it is easy to disagree with each other in productive ways. To do so, to have the humility to let yourself and your ideas be examined is hard, but I believe that is ultimately what good debate is all about. I have spoken at other organizations’ debates where my ideas are welcome, and in some where they certainly aren’t. But even when I am surrounded by people that I know disagree with me and my Black socialist ideals, I trust that belief in the project of debate as one of many tools that help us grow and that the other people in the room understand that they may yet have something to learn from me. 

Not every debate will be good, and not every debate will directly change people’s minds. Although I think debates have fundamentally changed my worldview in more ways than I can count, the project of debate is bigger than just the words said on our floor. It’s about community, and it’s about trust in each other to grow as thinkers and activists. The great Senator Paul Wellstone once said that “Our politics are our deepest form of expression: they mirror our past experiences and reflect our dreams and aspirations for the future.” The Party of the Left carries this as our principle because we know that ideas are beautiful things, and that they are meant to be shared and cultivated with friends.

Sidney Aimé Carlson White is a senior in Jonathan Edwards College. He is the thirty-third Chair of the Party of the Left. Contact him at sid.carlsonwhite@yale.edu.