We were fortunate to have our participation in college debate span almost the entire decade of the 1970's, starting at Harvard in the fall of 1970 and concluding our active involvement as coaches at the NDT in April, 1979. Our involvement in debate shaped our lives during this decade more than any other single influence, as we are certain it did for many others, which is why we gather together to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of intercollegiate debating's preeminent institution, the NDT.

Debate in the 1970's accelerated a movement that had begun in the 1960's where the emphasis in competition became less on rhetoric and more on policy. Stripped of its rhetorical focus, debate had always involved an issue of public policy, i.e., the topic. Yet in the 1970's, the public policy being debated became the focal point of the activity. As substance took prominence over form, the nature of the activity changed.

At an abstract level, 1970's NDT debate saw the refinement of two schools of thought in how the activity evaluated affirmative and negative presentations. One school, perhaps best identified with David Zarefsky and his Northwestern colleagues, viewed debate as "hypothesis testing," wherein the topic was seen as a statement of scientific hypothesis, the affirmative case presented a set of facts and research results to support the hypothesis and the negative presented facts and research to deny the hypothesis. At the end of a debate, the judges were charged with determining whether the research and argument supported the truth or falsity of the hypothesis, with a presumption of falsity. The other school, perhaps best identified with Jim Unger and his Georgetown colleagues, viewed debate as a contest between competing policy systems, one presented by the affirmative within the bounds of the topic's limitations and the other presented by the negative, limited only by it not being within the bounds of the topic's limitations. At the end of the debate, judges were to choose a winner based upon which policy system had been proven to be "better" on a comparative basis, without reference to notions of truth or falsity.

Both schools of thought, at times equally prevalent among the judging community, led to the development of debate based upon rigorous research and multiple arguments. The most obvious outgrowth of this type of debating was the "spread". No matter if a debater was trying to prove his or her policy as better than the other side's or simply trying to prove with the weight of the evidence that the topic, as tested, was true, the more arguments and evidence a debater could present, the more likely it seemed he or she could prevail. As a result, the rate of speaking increased dramatically during the decade, at least as measured by the words per minute spoken in the final round of the NDT.

Looking back, we view the development of spread debating as, on balance, a positive development. The real world is rarely limited to a choice of a few arguments, and the training debate provided in researching multiple arguments led us to explore multiple avenues of understanding and solving business problems. Further, we credit spread debating with instilling a higher level of self-confidence than anything else. Once you have known the fear, as a freshman, of facing the spread of Perkins and Beales or Loveland and McGuire in the lonely and tight confines of a 1AR, there is no business situation you cannot face with confidence, be it the development of an entirely new business concept, telling the CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation that his strategy is wrong, or taking on a mountain of debt to finance an idea at which others may scoff.

Nonetheless, we do not view the development of the spread as completely positive. Two natural outgrowths of the trend toward spread were: i) debaters taking a long time between speeches to prepare to rebut a large number of arguments, and ii) so much evidence being read so fast that judges ended up requesting copies of the evidence from the debaters after a round so they could read it. Few would argue that either of these outgrowths were beneficial to the activity or the learning process it was intended to foster, so the decade saw both formal and informal attempts to rein them in, first with the imposition of "prep time" limits at, we believe, the 1973 NDT, and later with a voluntary movement among some judges to refrain from reading evidence. If they couldn't hear it in the context of the presentation, then that was the debater's fault, not the judge's. We have found that the real world neither affords the luxury of unlimited prep time nor permits the failure to communicate ideas and evidence to the audience within the confines of the presentation forum.

A number of other developments in 1970's debate flowed from the intellectual curiosity unleashed by the focus on policy. Once the validity of making multiple arguments was accepted, it did not take much of a leap to develop the "alternative justification" affirmative case, wherein the affirmative put forth more than one policy prescription to be either tested for truth or compared to the negative's policies. In turn, negative teams developed strategies around multiple contingent counterplans. The whole notion of "inherency" lost much of its meaning as negative teams cheerfully abandoned an ever-less-important presumption in favor of the status quo for policy prescriptions that often dwarfed the significance of the affirmative's.

The process reached its limit with another of the decade's developments, the study counterplan. Here, the negative, usually after arguing directly against the affirmative's policy position, would counterpropose that, even if the affirmative might be right, the country certainly shouldn't rush into adopting the affirmative plan, but rather should undertake more study of the situation before proceeding. Ironically, comparative policy debaters ended up arguing for more testing of the affirmative's hypothesis.

Topics under debate broadened endlessly, as topic writers strove to maintain the interest of the debate community for a full year by stipulating only restraints as broad as "national energy policy." Even when such topics suggested "natural" affirmative cases, these were quickly covered by negatives with "briefs" or "blocks" which became ever more popular, sophisticated, and rapidly delivered. Affirmative teams quickly learned to explore the topic's periphery with a higher proportion of "squirrels" admitted to the topic by occasionally very creative use of obscure dictionary definitions. Not surprisingly, topicality disputes grounded in abstruse lexicographic analysis became common. The "spirit of the resolution," already feeble at the decade's beginning, was effectively exorcised by its end.

As a result, effectively debating the resolution required an ever-increasing volume of evidence and policy sophistication. Debate teams became a serious hidden liability to many airlines as students flying on bargain-basement tickets blithely checked thousands of pounds of sample cases laden with files.

There was a dark side to this topic diversification. In order to effectively compete, debate teams had to begin very early in the year amassing mountains of data. Moreover, even the most dedicated debater needed a large, active research team behind him or her. On the other hand, there were genuine positive aspects to these trends. Teamwork became crucial to any active program, not just a matter of lip-service. We learned the value of collegiality and unselfishness. Many of us remember the give-and-take of spirited, completely uncompromising discourse among trusted colleagues and respected coach-mentors as the most enriching experience of our intellectual lives; and the fast friendships of these years continue to this day.

The intellectual ferment in 1970's debate certainly led to excess, even silliness. At times it may have seemed that college debate had become merely an exercise in stacking up bodies, as teams discovered that "even a slim chance" of global disaster could outweigh more prosaic policy concerns. Almost any debate, no matter the ostensible subject, could turn into a discussion of Malthusian population dynamics, global warming/cooling or nuclear war, which quickly replaced "social spending" as the disadvantages of choice. Yet, as we have come to appreciate even more in business than we did in college, superior institutions are self-equilibrating institutions. As the decade closed, despite the prevalence of body count debate, Harvard still found itself able to win an NDT title by arguing that the process of policy decision making in America counted at least as much, if not more, than the policies and their prospective body counts. Debate showed an ability to right itself, an ability we assume it retains to this day. We should also not lose sight of the fact that many policies advocated by debaters in the 1970's actually became public policy many years later, so the intellectual strength of policy debate has been validated in real terms. Debaters advocated air rights markets, comprehensive telecommunications policy, and mandatory airbags long before such policies came to a majority of Congress' attention. While we still wonder why High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactors never captured the public's enthusiastic support, we take great pride in having participated in an activity that led important policy discussion rather than followed it.

Overall, we saw a rise of intuitive thought to a level equal to the deductive reasoning that had long been the backbone of debating. Aristotelian logic and Toulmin's model were taught in every debate theory course or seminar we ever attended. Conclusions were to be deduced from a set of facts which debaters were charged with proving. Yet, in the 1970's, debaters increasingly relied upon intuitive reasoning, wherein steps in the deductive process are simply skipped, so that more creative arguments, or solutions to problems, can be advanced. This led to a vast increase in the types of policy positions that were advocated by both affirmative and negative teams, including the above described body count arguments. This development more than any other has served us, and we hope many other debaters, well, for it is the hallmark of the entrepreneur to see things others do not, through intuition rather than pure deduction.

As we look back to describe debate and the NDT in the 1970's, we realize that the decade was one of intellectual ferment and innovation, some good and some bad. We took with us from participation in the activity not only the traditional values of public speaking and self-confidence but also a unbounded sense of intellectual curiosity which led us to challenge accepted ways of doing things, constantly experimenting to find solutions in business the way we did in debate. From our observation of many friends and colleagues with and against whom we debated or coached in the decade, as well as our reading of the reports in the NDT newsletters, we are confident that everyone who participated in debate in the 1970's took with them important tools to deal with life and to contribute to society. For this reason, we salute all who have played a role in developing and sustaining the National Debate Tournament for five decades and we wish them well as the NDT sets its sights on the next fifty years.

Biographical Data

Charles Garvin and Greg Rosenbaum enrolled at Harvard in the fall of 1970. In the spring of 1971, they teamed to win the Northwestern National Novice Championship. In 1974, they won the NDT Championship, capping a year in which they compiled a 108-13 record. Again teamed in 1979, they coached Harvard's Mike King and John Bredehoft to an NDT title.

Charles Garvin graduated from Harvard in 1974, spent two years studying at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and then returned to Harvard Law School, where he earned a J.D. in 1979. He joined the Boston Consulting Group following graduation, where he became a partner in this international business strategy consulting firm. In 1984, he co-founded the Beta Group, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, which he left in 1986 to become CEO of a portfolio company, Personics Corporation. In 1991, Charles co-founded Telescan Systems, Inc., a manufacturer of interactive merchandising systems for music and video stores, which he currently serves as Chairman. He has also been a principal of Palisades Associates, Inc., where, together with Greg Rosenbaum, he has participated in merchant banking activities.

Greg Rosenbaum graduated from Harvard in 1974 and received a Master in Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1978. He joined the Boston Consulting Group following graduation, where he advised Fortune 500 companies on issues of business strategy. In 1982, he joined The Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corporation, one of the original leveraged buyout firms, as a Vice President. In 1989, he founded Palisades Associates, Inc., a merchant banking firm which sponsors acquisitions in industries undergoing, or expected to undergo, consolidation. Companies in which Palisades currently invests have sales of approximately $500 million annually. Greg is a member of the Board of Directors of Amco Corporation, Expressions Furniture, Inc., McLaren/Hart Environmental Engineering Services, Inc., Richey Electronics, Inc., and Varlen Corporation.