Debate has been a lot of things to me, but perhaps the most (or only) valuable thing about it has been the relationships I have made with people who are also attracted to, driven by, and influence debate. Some of these people love debate and give a lot more to it than they get from it, and their contributions to debate really highlight the latent and significant educational power debate has.

Last week I learned that Brad Smith passed away. Brad was a fixture in University of Rochester debate; I believe I met him very early on in my first week of work as an assistant debate coach there in 2001. Brad’s official job was research librarian, but you wouldn’t know that. It seemed his job – or maybe his role or passion – was supporting debate at the University of Rochester. This photo was him attending the tournament that was named in his honor by previous Debate Director Sam Nelson.

Brad’s debate encounter started later in life for him. As a research librarian, he met Sam and wondered what sort of strange research this guy was doing. Unfamiliar with debating, he decided to sit in on Sam’s class and attend the team practices from time to time to see what debate was all about. He was instantly struck – inspired, or moved in some way – with a vision of the role of debate, the library, research, and education that gave him a mission and a perspective on things that he would pursue for the rest of his time there.

Brad was not an argument innovator, nor was he a compelling speaker. He wasn’t a strategist of any kind. He was someone who loved researching, loved learning, and loved information. He was passionate about finding answers to questions, which is probably what he saw as best about debate – how it pushes those of us with a background in it to constantly be on the lookout for the next amazing piece of evidence. Debate can be seen as the ultimate library patron; someone who never gets tired of asking begged questions that lead to further investigations.

Brad was really nice to me. If I was in the library when he was, and I could find him we would chat – every spring he made it a point to take out the coaches who were still around after the term ended to lunch at this Ethiopian restaurant he loved. He was always interested in talking about whatever we were interested in talking about. As someone who read a lot, and was curious about a great many things, he could keep the conversation going.

At one of these lunches he told me about his childhood, growing up as a native Manhattan resident, watching them build the United Nations from his childhood apartment window. You can’t really find a better symbolic story than that for someone who would be found by debate much later, excited to contribute.

I often think about people like Brad, people who don’t have the opportunity to debate as young people, in school or college or whatever, and whether or not that’s regrettable. I think the obvious answer is that every young person should have the chance to debate, and programs should be expanded to provide these opportunities. But obvious answers should always give us pause. Maybe debate’s incredible influence, power, and goodness is not fully realized by merely expanding it in the schools, to school-aged people. As usual, we don’t really ask debate what it wants, even when debate is trying to speak to us, and getting what it wants all the time.

Debate is something that humans do, it’s where humans are, and it might be too limiting to conceptualize debate as a school activity, meant for schools, and meant primarily for young people to figure out how to learn and think. It might be that we leave out an entire practice of epistemology when we conceptualize debate as a powerful and fun tool to the end of learning instead of thinking of it as learning itself.

The debate community is unfortunately limited due to the concept that members of it are simply the competitors, and most of them leave when their university or high school time expires. What about reaching out with a debate program to the other communities that compose the university, or see the university as a part of their composition?

I got to know Brad through the more open conception of a debate program that Sam practiced, and that I modeled what I did in debate after. But more importantly, Brad’s encounter with debate was one that excited him – anyone could see it when he talked about debating; when he sat in the debate class term after term. This excitement I think we all have felt about debate. The last, and continuing contribution that Brad will make to debating is to keep us thinking about who gets to feel that way and how. How are we defining participation and membership in our debate programs? What is a community?

Thanks Brad for your enthusiasm, excitement, and deep interest in debate, a model for those who respect this powerful rhetorical and educational practice that is so hard to define.