Subject for Debate

When the Speech Association of America picks the annual topic for intercollegiate debates, it likes the subject to be as lively as possible. But this year's topic --"Resolved, That the United States should extend diplomatic recognition to the Communist government of China"--has proved to be livelier than usual. Last week that debate was leading to another: How controversial should a debate be?

In Nebraska, four state teachers colleges banned the topic outright. Students, said President Herbert Gushing of the Kearney, Neb. College, should not be allowed to "spend half their time arguing the Communist side." The commanding officers of Annapolis and West Point apparently agreed. To argue the affirmative, said the Navy, would make the Academy's young men "liable to misrepresentation, as well as providing the Reds a tremendous propaganda device." At Duke University, one debater reported that he had received a letter from his Congressman. "I certainly hope," warned Representative Edward Robeson, "that you will not undertake to debate the positive position of this subject, as quotations from your statements may embarrass you for the rest of your life."

The Princeton University debating panel called the various bans "an ominous imitation of the methods of the Kremlin." Added President Harry Gideonse of Brooklyn College: "You cannot waterproof the minds of the young against ideas which world politics rains down on them every day." But were the academies perhaps a special case, and if so, should the nation's future officers really be so protected against controversy? Last week Brown University challenged West Point to a debate on why the cadets should not debate the debate originally scheduled.

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