International Debaters Descend on Moscow

HSE Open 2015, an international tournament, was held by the HSE Debating Society in March. Participants included a number of highly experienced Russian debaters as well as a large number of international teams from Turkey, the U.S., the Netherlands and Germany. The tournament created an opportunity for participants to broaden their horizons and overcome stereotypes. International judges proposed a range of motions on topics such as subsidizing divorce, racially segregated prisons, economic sanctions as a war crime, subsidies to poets, and the possibility of teaching religion at school. Read Square, an online student magazine, spoke with one of the judges, as well as a participant in the event.

Yael Bezalel

Yael Bezalel, a debate trainer from Israel’s Technion Institute, came to the HSE Open 2015 debating championship as a Deputy Chief Adjudicator (DCA).

— We are very pleased to see you at HSE. What was the reason for you to come to Moscow to judge the championship?

— I’m always very curious to meet new debaters. This is my second visit to Moscow and I find it very welcoming. Moscow feels a bit like home because there is a huge population of Russian Jews in Israel, and I’m used to hearing Russian and to some aspects of the behaviour and culture.

— Do you believe that there are some taboo motions that shouldn’t be raised at a debating championship? How did you choose motions for a Russian championship?

— I set different standards for practicing debating at weekly sessions and for debating at the championships. At the weekly sessions, people can choose not to participate in a round, but here there can’t be any motions that are taboo because it is good for debating skills and it is good to broaden your views on every issue. At tournaments and championships, I do believe that it is not fair to set a motion that might trigger students to feel extremely unhappy or become hurt and make people regret the fact that they came to the championship. For this championship, we picked motions that are somehow linked to issues that will be approached equally by local and international guests. People should be provoked about things that they might not discuss in general. It is a delicate art when you choose between provoking and exciting and putting people in an extremely uncomfortable situation.

— There are a lot of ways for students to develop their skills and discover new opportunities such as business cases and research conferences. How might debating help students find their path in the future?

— Debating exposes you to a wider variety of people and opinions. What a debater experiences is a very transdisciplinary approach towards issues in business, politics, ethics, and in social institutions like health, education and so forth. This is quite unlikely to happen if you are going to a scientific conference where everybody studies very similar professions or majors, which makes for an often more limited scope. In debating, you are confronted with so many topics and such different people that you gain many different perspectives. As a result, you become a better decision maker and a more profound thinker. In my opinion, this caters towards a real pressing demand in the job market, which is broad and open-minded thinking. It is this ‘thinking out of the box’ tool that debate gives which surpasses any other method I know. Debating also helps people become more tolerant of differing views, and also develops business skills in terms of negotiation, marketing and leadership.

— ‘Debating is just a waste of time — you can’t influence the situation since the economy rules human behaviour.’ What would be your response to this statement that I heard at a business case championship?

— Even from a very utilitarian point of view, just the fact that a person has better communication skills and is more persuasive, inspecting a situation from different perspectives provides an opportunity to exercise your mental activity. For a person who might be interested in a career in politics, spending one or two years in a debating society is absolutely not a waste of time. 

The statement you quoted fails in every framework that you test it. People are influenced by economic factors but the impact of human relations and ethical principles is much higher. People are affected by cultural and sociological aspects in so many ways. Let’s consider the case when people are in poverty. Some of them become beggars or criminals, but some of them become entrepreneurs with their own businesses.  Even when two countries have the same GDP level, citizens’ behaviour differs considerably. The economy is important but we are so much more than that.

— What advice would you give to students who want to take part in debating championships? What is more important – the presentation of a case or the content of the case in general?

I don’t care if you are good at it, I want you to learn something new and develop your personal skills even if you go to every tournament and see yourself at the bottom of the rankings. It is an essential life skill to be persuasive. Don’t look at it as a sport, but rather as a very fun process of learning. It is hard because you have to speak for seven minutes without anybody interrupting you. You will hardly get this opportunity in real life. At a debating championship the content of your speech is the only thing that will be written down by the judge. But it is mostly about logical lines and your ability to present the material. In real life you have to work on your style. One comes with the other.

Xinyue Weitra

Debater Xinyue Weitra was greatly impressed by the quality of the HSE Open, although it wasn’t her first time debating in Moscow. A Chinese debater who has travelled to more than nine countries and regions to participate in competitive debating for over two years, she has some impressions to share.

In terms of the format of debating, Russian tournaments are the same as most of the European tournaments; they are all in British Parliamentary format, last for no more than two days unless they are big  regional tournaments like the European Universities Debating Championship (EUDC), and have teams that break into semi-finals (eight teams breaking) after the preliminary rounds.

Although the theoretical framework of debating may remain the same when you debate in different parts of the world, the topics may vary. Thanks to the core adjudication team, the motions for the HSE Open were amazing and inspiring. They covered a wide range from the conservative world to the liberalized West, with some focusing on Russian society. This is always the case when debaters travel and debate in different countries. They need to be prepared for current popular topics related to the country. I’m currently on a one-year exchange program in the UK and therefore have been debating in various UK tournaments like Queen Mary IV and LSE Open where people have debated topics like NHS service and immigration problems. However, when I debate in China, we seldom talk about topics directly related to China but more of the hot topics in the world like the Islamic State, Malaysia Airlines and the use of credit cards.

All the debater friends I met at the HSE Open are friendly and helpful; they made both of my debating trips to Russia the most pleasant of all my trips! While Russia and China share a similar level of English education in universities and schools (Russian and Chinese debaters are often qualified in the English-as-a-foreign-language category at WUDC), I feel that Russian debaters are harder working than Chinese debaters are in general. I met friends from MGIMO who watch debating videos very often and always read the latest issue of The Economist, and I feel stronger ties in those debating clubs when the older generation of debaters is willing to team up with younger ones. These are all reasons why Russian debaters have done better and better in recent years, and I hope that Chinese debaters can learn from it.

As a representative of Beijing, I couldn’t feel more honoured to have joined this year’s HSE Open and I hope there will be more interaction between Chinese and Russian debaters in the future. We will work to make this happen!

The HSE Debating Society holds weekly sessions on Wednesday at 7:00pm. Feel free to join and to propose your idea.

 Source: Read Square. If you wish to join the editorial team, email Yulia Kazakova, the editor-in-chief.