 | Jed Glickstein |
Freshman Jed Glickstein surmises that his acceptance to Yale was based, in large part, on his talent for arguing.
In his high school years, Glickstein proved himself to be a persuasive powerhouse by winning a number of major debate competitions, culminating in a first-place win last June in one of the nation's most prestigious contests: the National Forensic League's (NFL) Lincoln-Douglas debate.
That championship victory earned him an invitation from the television program "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" to write a summary of the first presidential debate between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. Glickstein's critique was posted in the online newsletter "NewsHour Extra," which is geared toward a student audience.
As one of the country's top student debaters, Glickstein also attracted the attention of National Public Radio.
Several days before the first presidential debate, he was invited to talk about the contest on the program "Day to Day" with the show's host Alex Chadwick.
Glickstein has relished these opportunities to share his thoughts on the presidential debates. Since the candidates' political campaigns went into full swing over a year ago, the Yale freshman has kept abreast of them by reading political and policy-oriented magazines and journals, watching television news and news programs featuring political analysis, and visiting favorite websites for updates and other information. He says he spends a couple of hours each day engaged in these activities.
The Yale undergraduate traces his interest in critical argument back to his elementary school days. In fifth grade, he recalls, he bought a book on philosophy that was admittedly way above his intellectual level at the time, but which nevertheless satisfied his blossoming interest in logic.
In his freshman year, Glickstein joined the newly formed debate team at his high school in Edina, Minnesota. In the next four years, the club earned a reputation as one of the best in the country. Also on the team was Glickstein's friend John McNeil, who won the national Tournament of Champions debate competition just a month before Glickstein became the NFL national tournament champion. Edina High School is the first school to win both the Tournament of Champions and the Lincoln-Douglas competition in the same year.
"Once I joined the Edina team, I just got hooked on debating," remembers Glickstein. "It provided an opportunity to exercise intellectual abilities that you don't use a lot in school."
He especially likes debating because "the smartest people don't always win," he says. "It helps to be smart, but debate is more about strategy, word choice, presentation and appealing to your judge without being smarmy," Glickstein explains. "It is very tactical, which is what I find fun about it."
A good debater, he says, must also be able to "step outside the argument to understand that even though you may be masterful with the minutiae of the debate, it doesn't matter if you are not winning your case as a whole."
Actually, he says, debating is not so much about "winning the argument" as it is "persuading the judge."
"Debate is really a performance of sorts," notes the freshman.
Glickstein is particularly skilled at the Lincoln-Douglas format of debate, which is named for the famous debates between senatorial candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in the 1850s. This is a one-on-one contest that consists of speeches, cross-examination and rebuttal. Glickstein notes that in Lincoln-Douglas contests, the debater is responsible for arguing both sides of the resolution on any topic.
For the national championship, Glickstein's topic was: "Civil disobedience in a democracy is morally justified."
"It was really grueling," says the Yale student, who likens the competitive debate process to walking on a tightrope.
"We had just graduated from high school, and my friend had just won the Tournament of Champions, and we [the debate team] had been celebrating that, so I didn't start to prepare until the day before my tournament," he adds. "It was a whole new topic to research, and we spent the whole day in a hotel room writing cases."
Glickstein says he felt additional pressure because he had been co-champion (with teammate and Edina High debate team co-captain McNeil) of several major tournaments, and he wanted to live up to the high expectations that had been set for members of the Edina team.
In addition to his debating championship, Glickstein also won other top contests in high school. He took first place in the 2002 Minnesota Music Educators Association High School Composition Contest for Piano or Organ Solo. (Glickstein played the piano for about seven years, and studied the trumpet as well.) He also won the top prize in the Advanced Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis 2003-2004 Essay Contest. He was a National Merit finalist and a Presidential Scholar candidate.
Glickstein spent last summer teaching at the Victory Briefs Institute, a nationally prominent debate camp, but he has taken a hiatus from competitive debating since coming to Yale, where he is enrolled in the Directed Studies Program. He has, however, judged some Yale debate tournaments involving high school students and likes to sit in on some of the Yale Political Union debates.
The freshman was also busy watching and assessing the presidential debates, and it is his opinion that John Kerry won all three.
Glickstein was more surprised by what Bush and Kerry didn't do in the debates than by what they did.
"For the most part, I think that neither candidate strayed from his talking points that much," the freshman says. "What I found odd was the way each one allowed himself to be seriously mischaracterized by the other candidate, without taking advantage of opportunities to prove that characterization false."
Glickstein credits both candidates for doing well as debaters in terms of their basic rhetorical styles, and for being relatively civil to each other, although he felt that the competitive aspect of the debates was limited by their rigorous structure. From his perspective, neither candidate made any major gaffes.
In addition to keeping up on the presidential campaign, Glickstein says that he is enjoying political conversations and casual debates with friends, whether liberal, conservative or centrist.
"It's a lot less stressful -- and much more friendly -- when I am talking politics or discussing other issues with friends," he says. "I think in those situations I know how to turn the competitive debater in me off. I know how to agree, a little bit at least."
-- By Susan Gonzalez
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