Eleven months until Belgrade Euros start – and here’s some news about it in the media! Also found: More statements concerning the ESL final motion of the European Universities Debating Championsips (EUDC or Euros). And the Israeli press is delighted about team Tel Aviv winning that very final.

The Serbian broadcaster RTS (Radio-televizija Srbije) is celebrating the fact that Euros are going to stop by Belgrade next year. The mention that Open Communications will be the hosts of EUDC and that Milan Vignjević and Marko Ćirović made it to semis at this year’s EUDC:

“Na ovogodišnjem prvenstvu, koje je juče završeno u Galveju u Irskoj, jednoglasno je podržana kandidatura za organizaciju narednog takmičenja u Beogradu. Studenti iz Srbije i članovi “Otvorene komunikacije” Milan Vignjević i Marko Ćirović na takmičenju u Galveju stigli su do polufinala.”

Another Serbian broadcaster, Radio Srbija, is sure that the renommé of the University of Belgrade will grow in European academic circles. Plus, the international competition will promote a culture of dialogue in Serbia’s public life:

“Ovu ideju su jednoglasno podržale kolege iz Evropskog univerzitetskog debatnog saveta. Debatna mreža ‘Otvorena komunikacija’ ističe da će ovaj događaj doprineti prepoznatljivosti Beogradskog univerziteta u evropskim akademskim krugovima i izražava nadu da će takmičenje uticati na poboljšanje kulture dijaloga u javnom životu u Srbiji.”

Shengwu Li, one of the deputy chief adjudicators, argues in ten points why he thought the motion was a good one. The motion of the final in the category English as a Second Language (ESL) was attacked in the aftermath of the tournament – mostly by Dutch debaters. Shengwu points out that ESL debaters are simply handicapped by the fact that they are not native speakers:

“This motion is too challenging to be set as an ESL final. The distinction between ESL and ENL teams is drawn according to language background, not intelligence or conceptual fluency.  ESL final motions should not be the kiddy pool of debating, too shallow to allow participants to ever injure themselves through dangerous maneuvers.”

Daniël Schut, himself a runner-up to Worlds (ESL) and again a Dutch debater, makes clear on the blog TwentySeven (featured by the Dutch debating association, the Nederlandse Debatbond) that it cannot be the intention of the discussion to mark motions as disgrace. Rather he analyses if metaphysics may be discussed in BPS where P stands for Parliamentary.

“The Galway EUDC 2011 final motion for the ESL-competition has generated a little bit of a stir online. Some have gone so far as to call it ‘a disgrace’ and managed to turn it into an ESL-issue. That’s just plain wrong. I am fully convinced that the highly capable CA-team set this motion with the best intentions and I am also convinced that any debater, whether they’re ESL or not,  should be expected to be able to debate on this topic. That being said, I do believe that we probably shouldn’t set metaphysical motions in the context of parliamentary debating, if the word parliamentary is to have any meaning at all.

[…] Even though philosphers are still discussing what counts as evidence for knowing something to be true, when we look at our everyday lives we could at least agree that the social practice of ‘reasoning’ your positions with ‘evidence’ usually means justifying a statement with other statements that the person whom you’re trying to persuade (your auditorium) a priori assumes to probably be true.

But this notion creates an unfairness in debating as a competitive sport. If reasoning as a social practice is justifying positions by using statements your auditorium a priori holds to be true, this implies that apparently debating is nothing more than ‘pandering to the crowd’ – a race to reach the ‘common ground’ of a priori assumptions first. The unfairness is this: we don’t know beforehand what a priori assumptions our judging panel has, and even if we would know this, the draw decides what position we have to argue, so we could, by bad luck, end up debating a position that is just unfortunate enough to be less acceptable given those a priori assumptions.”

Even metaphysics shall be debated – such a motion cannot per se be excludded from debate, thinks Sam Block, chief adjudicator of DLSU Worlds to be held in Manila, Philippines around New Year’s Eve. He also shares his opinion on the ESL final motion on the Dutch blog TwentySeven.

Rather, my claim will only be that its metaphysical-ness should not debar it from being reasonable, and that we should not approach debates with the assumptions of ‘public reason’.

More broadly, I’m arguing that we should do a wide variety of different topics, and that any general trend towards more politics/economics/IR at the exclusion of broader also-interesting ideas is unfortunate. I also feel strongly that debating should be about the arguments that teams make, not about any preconceptions of the adjudicator. To this end, I’ll briefly sketch Daniel’s position as I understand it.

Omer und Sella Nevo, two brothers from Tel Aviv, are in on the Israeli website The Pulse. According to the magazine, they’ve done a considerable job when they broke to quarters in both categories, the open break as well as the ESL break. Finally, the defeated teams from Romania, the Netherlands and their fellow debaters from Tel Aviv in the ESL final.

עומר וסלע זכו להישג משמעותי כאשר הגיעו לשלב רבע הגמר של התחרות במסלול של דוברי אנגלית כשפת אם, במקביל להתברגותם ברבע הגמר במסלול לדוברי אנגלית כשפה שנייה. לאחר שהפסידו ברבע הגמר של המסלול לדוברי אנגלית כשפת אם, הם התחרו כדוברי אנגלית כשפה שנייה, והגיעו לגמר.

The European Universities Debating Championships (EUDC or Euros) have been held annually since 1999. It was started in Rotterdam where 32 teams of two competed for the title. For the records: In Amsterdam, 192 teams competed for the very same title in 2010, in Galway it was 180 teams. Format has ever since been British Parliamentary Style(BPS), language of debate is English. Debaters from all over Europe as well as from Israel and Qatar take part in Euros and compete with each other in two categories: the open break (mostly for native speakers) and “English as a Second Language” (ESL).There is a good chance a team may break in the two categories as happened to be the case with Tel Aviv A this year: They broke first in the ESL break and sixth in the open break.

Current champions are Ben Woolgar and Hugh Burns (Oxford), ESL champions are Sella and Omer Nevo, two brothers from Tel Aviv University. This year’s Euros were held in Galway, located at the western coast of Ireland, from 7 to 13 August. Chief adjudicator was Ruth Faller (Ireland), her deputies wereShengwu Li (Singapore), Simone van Elk (The Netherlands), Steven Nolan (Ireland) and Yoni Cohen Idov (Israel). Isabelle Loewe from Debattierclub Bonn and Tony Murphy (Ireland) served as equity officers. Galway’s tabmaster was Harry McEvansoneya, an Irish as well. During the Euros, the EUDC Council assembled and decide for instance about the host of next year’s championship. Belgrade (Serbia) was assigned hosting the European Universities Debating Championships 2012.