Kahn,+Jeff

= Jeff Kahn = = Strath Haven High School (PA) = updated 1/17


 * What you want to know quickly:**
 * I debated in high school (Pennsbury '02) and have coached since. Currently at Strath Haven
 * My teams defend the USfg and read a lot of disads. We sometimes read Ks and affs with critical influences, but mostly operate in the heg and politics and T worlds when it's up to us
 * __If you are aff without the state, or neg without a link to the 1AC, strike me. I will almost certainly vote for framework__
 * Win my ballot with line-by-line and full explanations of arguments, not blips of tags and authors and asking me to be the 3rd rebuttal
 * Prep ends when you eject your flash drive

Competed for Pennsbury 1998-2002 Coached for Pennsbury 2002-2006 Judged in Northern VA or for Pennsbury at national tournaments 2006-2011 Coached (LD) for Park View (VA) 2009-2011 Currently, head coach (all events) at Strath Haven (PA) 2011-present Tournament Director of Pennsbury Falcon Invitational; Chair of Policy Debate Tab at NCFL Grand Nationals; tab staff at Yale, Bronx, Villiger, Lexington, etc, and local CFL and NSDA leagues
 * Debate background:**

Since I tab at most tournaments nowadays, I do not judge rounds without my own teams very often. However, I am involved in our arguments and strategies, so I'm well versed in the topic and have not fallen out of the rhythms of debate. I probably haven't read your evidence, and I probably won't after the round, but I'll know what to do with it.

__1. The role of the ballot must be stable and predictable and lead to research-based clash__. The aff must endorse a topical action by the government. For all of the flaws in the structure of debate and the debate community, this is the only way to have a productive debate. You cannot create a role of the ballot based on the thing you want to talk about if that thing is not part of the topic; you cannot create a role of the ballot where your opponent is forced to defend that racism is good or that racism does not exist; you cannot create a role of the ballot where the winner is determined by performance, not argumentation. And, to be fair to the aff, the neg cannot create a role of the ballot where aff loses because they talked about the topic and not about something else.
 * (Policy) Philosophy ** :

I am not interested in an affirmative that does not engage with, or actively rejects, the resolution. I am not interested in a negative that does not engage with the affirmative. This does not have to exclude any forms of knowledge or scholarship; if you have narratives/poems/songs/etc that interact with the topic, then let's hear them and evaluate them. However, if you argue about exclusion while excluding your opponents, you don't want me with a ballot. If you claim that your performance is all that matters and do not defend your in round language or in/out of round impact, then you REALLY don't want me with a ballot. If the role of the ballot is to identify a good performance, then I better be holding Speech ballots.

I understand that this paradigm excludes certain arguments. In a world where my teams can lose rounds simply because they read a plan text, or because we did not receive notice that to win a K debate you must have three perms, or because "well, the tag says Brazil even if the evidence doesn't, so that's a risk of a link" is a valid RFD, I have stopped feeling bad about excluding arguments from my paradigm. I do not believe my paradigm excludes any type of debaters other than debaters who have chosen not to engage in topical debate. I do not believe that debaters of a certain color/gender/orientation/etc are unable to win rounds debating in this framework, any more than my teams who live in a policy-poor area, have little school support, and are stuck with just me as their coach. I don't believe that it excludes discussion of racism (etc), just that it grounds those discussions in the topic so both sides can prepare and participate on equal footing.

The marginalization of debaters (and people) of color, as well as other minority or unprivileged groups, is very real. Bad decisions my debaters have experienced over the years do not compare to real problems in the world. But the solution to racism in debate is not to assume my white debaters are racist or drop them because of their skin color - the PF topic on reparations convinced me that reparations are necessary in the real world, but extracting them from teenagers in debate rounds is not the proper approach. That said, I'll stop the round and drop you if you are actively racist or violent towards your opponents.

__ 2. I am a policymaker at heart __. I want to evaluate the cost/benefit of plan passage vs. status quo/CP/alt. Discourse certainly matters, but a) I'm biased on a framework question to using fiat or at least weighing the 1AC as an advocacy of a policy, and b) a discursive link had better be a real significant choice of the affirmative with real implications if that's all you are going for. "Using the word exploration is imperialist" isn't going to get very far with me. Links of omission are not links.

I can shift to other paradigms, however, I have never been able to get into abstract philosophy, especially at the speed of a policy round. I understand how critical arguments work and enjoy them when grounded in the topic/aff, and when the alternative would do something. Just as the plan must defend a change in the status quo, so must the alt - otherwise you've got a non-unique philosophical disad.

__ 3. Fairness matters. __ I believe that the policymaking paradigm only makes sense in a world where each side has a fair chance at winning the debate, so I will happily look to procedural/T/theory arguments before resolving the substantive debate. I will not evaluate an RVI or that some moral/kritikal impact "outweighs" the T debate. I will listen to any other aff reason not to vote on T.

I like T and theory debates. The team that muddles those flows will incur my wrath in speaker points. Don't just read a block in response to a block, do some actual debating, OK? I definitely have a lower-than-average threshold to voting on a well-explained T argument since no one seems to like it anymore (my last decision in 2013-14 was that "abolish the embargo" was not topical in round 9 of NSDAs. I'm proud of that.)

__ 4. Debate should be a debate __. Clash is important. It is your job to clash with your opponent, and a big problem if you structurally avoid clash. But clash is not enough! You also have to resolve the issues of clash. The 2NR and 2AR should provide all interpretation for me and write my ballot, with me left simply to choose which side is more persuasive or carries the key point. My goal is to make every decision fair and predictable - the more thinking I have to do, the more likely you are to think I have failed to reach that standard. Line-by-line is key, but it also must come to an end in the last rebuttals, not just continue for me to give another speech for one side or another.

"I have a card" is not a persuasive argument; nor is a tag-line extension. Warrants are good. The more warrants you provide, the fewer guesses I have to make, and the fewer arguments I have to connect for you, the more predictable my decision will be. I want to know what your evidence says and why it matters in the round. You do not, for example, get a risk of a link simply by saying it is a link. Your tag is not a warrant! Warrantless arguments aren't worth a whole lot. Defensive arguments are good, especially when connected to impact calculus. If your opponent reads a disad without warranted or logical evidence, feel free to tell me that rather than trying to make some cards apply to it. Of course, I'm also a politics hack, so it's not like I reject shaky disads out of hand - but defense can win rounds.

I really don't want to intervene, but to avoid intervention debaters have to finish the round. If you have arguments on different flows that work together, connect them for me! I do not want to read your evidence and figure out what you should have said. I do not want to add my own interpretations of your arguments for you - I want you to do all the thinking for me.

__5. Speed__. Speed for argument depth is good, speed for speed's sake is bad. I hate voting on the dropped #14 or watching the 1AR get outspread with 8 blippy disads. Clarity is important. My threshold is that you should slow down on tags and theory so I can write it down, and so long as I can hear English words in the body of the card, you should be fine. I will yell if I can't understand you. If you don't get clearer, the arguments I can't hear will get less weight at the end of the round, if they make it on the flow at all. That said, my top team reads at least 5 off each round - I'm not anti-speed.

6. Also, I think debate is supposed to be both fun and educational. I am an educator and a coach; I'm happy to be at the tournament. But I also value sleep and my family, so make sure what you do in round is worth all the time we are putting into being there. Imagine that I brought some new novice debaters to watch the round with me. If you are bashing debate or advocating for suicide or other things I wouldn't want 9th graders new to my program to hear, you aren't going to have a happy judge. Don't take yourselves too seriously, but don't waste my time.

I am more than happy to elaborate on this paradigm or answer any questions in round.

LD Paradigm
My LD program is young and so my LD judging experience is spread out over many years and mostly local. As I have seen it, there are three styles of LD.

1) Traditional, value-centric LD. I'm good with this kind of debate so long as you are not assuming a lot of philosophy background. See items 4-6 in my Policy philosophy above.

2) Policy-lite LD, with lots of talk of solvency and harms. I'm good with this, too, as I have a Policy background. Be sure that you are actually addressing the resolution and that you aren't just throwing out a bunch of Policy buzzwords, since I'll actually know what they mean and how to evaluate them. Honestly, I don't really want to attend an LD round and have a Policy debate break out, but some topics lend themselves to this style and that's fine. Attempting to defend only some subset of the resolution (or a tiny counterplan) isn't going to go well in this event. See items 3-6 in my Policy philosophy above.

3) High philosophy LD. I'm not a fan. Much as in my Policy paradigm, you need to engage the resolution, and I've never been a big critical literature student so if you are speeding through abstract polysyllabic words, I'm not going to follow you.

In any LD round, I will be happy to vote on a real theory argument, but unhappy to vote on theory blips. I watched a round at the 2017 TOC where the neg went for "colleges are buildings, buildings can't act, so the resolution is nonsense vote neg." That explanation probably had more words than the NC actually did, and that's a garbage argument that barely deserves the label "blip" and barely merits a 1AR response.

**PF Paradigm** I come from a Policy background, but know that PF is a different event. That used to not be a compliment, but now it is!

I flow like a policy debater and will fall on the "tech" side of the spectrum of PF judges, but I do not expect you to spread or want a completely line-by-line debate - drops are not death in this event. The Summary and Final Focus speeches should be just that - a summary or a final focus. This means you must choose which arguments are most important in the round and tell me why they mean you win; you should not try to address every issue in these speeches. The trend to say "we have evidence so we're right" is really bad, since the quality of the evidence is so hard to judge. Make arguments and give warrants, not just assertions. PF can be shallow because of the time format, but also because of debaters' choices - you can give depth of analysis, you just can't do it on every single point. Pick out the big ones, tell me why they are the big ones, and tell me why you are right. Then tell me why that means you win.

You can assume that I have a workable topic knowledge by the time I get a ballot in my hands. I may not know your cards by name, but I'll have read up on the topic. Thus, I'll be competent enough to understand your explanations, not an expert who will be insulted by explanation.