Debate Bro Rhetoric and its Role in Civil Discourse
For FAIR’s Substack, Erec Smith writes about why rhetorical education should be holistic, not one-dimensional.
Rhetoric, understood through Kairos, includes both civility (in both senses of the word) and incivility as potentially valid in certain contexts. For organizations like Debate University and Braver Angels, their common error is isolating one rhetorical mode—e.g., humiliation and compassion, respectively—and presenting it as intrinsically right and worthy of solitary focus. Rhetorical training should encompass a wide range of persuasive strategies, including both vitriol and empathy. Again, Kairos does not necessarily determine right or wrong, but appropriate and inappropriate. Thus, I promote a holistic and kairotic pedagogy of rhetoric for effective communication in civil—that is, public and participatory—society.
When School Boards Act Like the PTA
For the American Enterprise Institute, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about the institutional capture of America’s school boards.
For all the attention paid to angry board meetings and “book bans,” the more serious and enduring crisis is institutional capture. If the American public school system is to regain trust, it needs boards willing to act less like boosters and more like fiduciaries of the public interest. That starts with designing elections that encourage real competition. Ideas that have been proposed include “on-cycle” contests on Election Day in November, recruiting candidates outside the education establishment, and even making school board elections partisan affairs—adding candidates’ political affiliation to the ballot has been shown to increase voter turnout. After the election, it means training board members to understand student learning—not just budgets and buses.
1 BLM Critic vs. 6 BLM Supporters (ft. John Wood Jr.)
National ambassador for BraverAngels and FAIR Advisor John Wood Jr. thoughtfully takes on 6 BLM Supporters on topics including: did BLM protest make cities less safe? Did BLM exaggerate how widespread police brutality against African Americans is?
The trouble with ‘dignity’
For Expression, Dylynn Lasky and Bobby Ramkissoon write about a new standard that threatens free speech for students.
Once disagreement itself is framed as a denial of dignity, even empirical or policy debates about healthcare, sports, or law are reclassified as “harassment” rather than legitimate discussion. The zone of the impermissible grows, and the culture of caution grows with it.
Faculty and students, uncertain where the invisible boundary lies, retreat into self-censorship. They learn to treat disagreement as danger and discomfort as moral injury. The less precise the rule, the wider its reach. The wider its reach, the more timid the discourse. Administrative control breeds emotional fragility, and emotional fragility, in turn, justifies greater administrative control. It’s a feedback loop of moral protectionism.
The History of Slavery Should Not Be Partisan
For The Free Press, Coleman Hughes writes about why if we want to heal racial divisions, we need more facts—not fewer.
The Trump administration has accurately diagnosed a problem area in American culture. But its attempt to fix it should not focus on minimizing the ugly facts of American slavery. Instead, it should focus on broadening the scope of facts that we allow into the conversation. In this way, Americans can have a more complete, more accurate, and less racially divisive picture of our own history—without compromising the truth.
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