Diversity and the Public Space: A Response to Stepp

Professor Stepp is right to begin her study with David Zarefsky's Speech Communication Association presidential address. This address should be required reading for forensics students and read remedially by forensic educators. Zarefsky's address, "The Postmodern Public: Revitalizing the Commitment to the Public Forum," envisioned the roles that the disciplines of Speech and Forensics could play in revitalizing public space. Two points drawn from Zarefsky's address place Stepp's study in perspective. First, Zarefsky notes: The area of our field which most directly bears on public affairs, the study of argumentation and debate, we too often have treated as an intellectual backwater of programs staffed by paraprofessionals and undeserving of our support. And our colleagues in this area have defined their own professional concerns with such insularity that they deprive the rest of us their insight into the conduct of public controversy. (311) If Zarefsky is right, and I think he is, the "intellectual backwater" of debate has little support from the speech profession, nor can we say that debate educators or students are interested in the mission of reinvigorating the public sphere. Forensics and intercollegiate debate have become insulated activities, and Stepp's research describes one expression of this provincialism. While defenders of the debate status quo, who tend to be our younger colleagues, use representative anecdotes of successful women debaters to suggest that intercollegiate debate is a diverse culture, such claims crumble when juxtaposed with Stepp's careful longitudinal research of the debate system. Her research should put to rest any notion that intercollegiate debate is an open activity, for her study indicates that women and minorities are significantly underrepresented and face significant barriers to participation. Zarefsky makes a second point that serves to frame a friendly quarrel I have with Stepp's analysis of what might be done to encourage diversity in intercollegiate debate. In addressing the complaint made by Nancy Fraser and others that argument and the public sphere are essentially male creations designed to perpetuate the patriarchy, Zarefsky observed: The growing involvement of women in recent decades has brought once "private" issues into the public sphere, ranging from child care and pay equity to domestic violence and sexual harassment. These once were trivialized as "women's issues." No longer. We have far to go, of course. But the record to date, in my opinion, should convince feminists not to reject the ideal of the public sphere but, rather, to pursue it more vigorously. (312) If we believe that Zarefsky is right, then we should resist attempts by some scholars like Fraser, Sally Gearhart, and others to abandon the public space and argument for the private sphere and non-competitive dialogue. We must not forgo any ethical form of evidence, thinking, logic, or perspective in teaching students how to argue in the public sphere. In her admirable attempt to discern the reasons why the debate culture is not open, Stepp observes that tournament debating is characterized by "tubs of evidence, information processing, linear thinking, deductive thinking, control, objectivity, and independence. These characteristics are associated with masculine role stereotypes." Quoting Rebecca Bjork and Carrie Crenshaw, Stepp argues that women debaters find themselves in a culture of symbolic violence. She then suggests that there is a "feminist view that humans are storytellers and we make our decisions by choosing the most appropriate story instead of refuting arguments." Although academic debate may overemphasize external evidence, deductive logic, and objectivity, I fear Stepp verges on conflating verbal aggression with several legitimate forms of reasoning, and that the ability to command some control, objectivity, and independence are essential habits and skills necessary for effective advocacy. …