Martin,+Josh


 * Coach:** N/A (past: Sonoma Academy, El Cerrito HS)
 * HS:** St. Vincent de Paul '13
 * College:** UC Berkeley '17, Harvard University ‘??
 * Last Updated:** 1/30/18

Yes, I would like to be on the email chain: joshuamartin@g.harvard.edu

I’m currently working on my PhD in linguistics, and not actively coaching a team right now. My experience with the education topic is camp, and then about one tournament during the season. So I generally know how education policy works, but might not be clued in to your arguments about the most common affs on T, etc.

I debated in high school, and debated in college for a while, so I have plenty of experience with pretty much all styles of policy debate on all levels. In high school I pretty much exclusively read K affs, in college we vacillated between big-stick heg and courts affs, and soft-left structural violence affs. I've coached flex teams and total K teams and total policy teams. For what it’s worth, I probably lean more and more towards enjoying straight-up policy debates the more I judge. Same stuff everyone says: debate like you want to debate, make good arguments, clash with your opponents, explain things and impact them, tell me why you winning or losing an argument does or does not influence my decision, and have fun. Otherwise, here’s some random thoughts:

- I’m probably at least 60/40 towards voting negative in the default, stereotypical framework debate. Predictability and debatability sound like pretty important things to me. Aff teams do better here when they manage to disconnect the negative's interpretation from the massive decisionmaking and political engagement impacts that they usually claim. I think like most everyone I’d rather here some clever unique strategy, but I dislike the dichotomy that framework isn’t a “substantive” argument and that the negative “didn’t engage the aff” by reading it, and it’s usually the most strategic option. - I’m generally unpersuaded by arguments along the lines of “the permutation/framework/etc. is violence/stealing our advocacy/etc.”, arguments that the negative doesn’t have to disprove the affirmative, purely nihilistic alternatives, and K speeches that consist entirely of buzzwords where you expect me to fill in what I already know about your concepts. I’m not afraid to give decisions which consist mostly of “I have no idea what you were talking about most of the time” if you just repeated the words “rhizome” or “foundational antagonism” at me, even if I know what you were trying to mean. - I think zero risk and terminal impact defense are probably true, or at least possible. I care about impact calculus a lot, and you should do it, and also offer theories for why your method of impact calculus is a good one. - Evidence comparison, and calling out your opponent’s terrible, terrible evidence for what it is, is both extremely important and probably the best way to rack up your speaker points. - My favorite debates to judge are: huge in-depth case throwdowns, extremely techy aff-specific counterplan debates, K on K violence that is grounded in true disputes in the literature rather than arbitrary links of omission, impact turn debates (on the case or against a DA/K), and well-executed topicality debates. My least favorite debates to judge are: theoretically questionable process CPs, bad framework debates, "here are my 18 impact cards tagged Extinction" DA debates, bad word PICs and silly reps Ks, and poorly-executed topicality or theory debates. I am relatively neutral to politics debates, but I also think their technical and constantly updating nature means they have the highest potential to be truly excellent examples of good debating.