RECOGNITION
WINNER
Dr. Brendan Stern is the Executive Director of the Center for Democracy in Deaf America and the 2025 NSDA Activating Equity Award recipient.
OPINION
DEBATE, NOT SILENCE: Why Confronting Controversial Ideas is Essential to Equity by Dr. Brendan Stern
E
xperts predict that emerging gene therapies could soon eliminate deafness. Most people may see it as a positive development, but others fear for the future of deaf people. Activists, ethicists, policymakers, and deaf people are now grappling with how to respond. For me, it is a clarion call for debate. As the executive director of the Center for Democracy in Deaf America (CDDA) and the head coach of Gallaudet University’s debate team, I have a deep-rooted commitment to curating disagreement rooted in education, experience, and, admittedly, a bi-weekly paycheck. So, when our debaters visited Georgetown University’s Philodemic Society in the spring of 2024, it should not be surprising that we settled on the question: Should deafness be cured? In the Deaf community, objections arose immediately. Some Gallaudet alumni and faculty argued that deaf people should not be subjected to a debate with “hearing people” over the potential erasure of their minority identity. Others contended the topic was too controversial for something as competitive as debate. They claimed the event should have taken the form of a collaborative dialogue instead—a process generally described as “fluid, respectful, and cooperative listening aimed at reaching common understanding.”
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Their complaints were concerning, but not surprising. After all, Deaf America is a microcosm of the country, where people are increasingly condemning the competition of contentious ideas and instead favoring cooperation, agreement, or even deference—especially when they are not directly impacted. To be sure, collaborative dialogues are powerful ways to engage in collective problemsolving. This is why dialogues about curing deafness have been and will continue to be hosted. However, if a collaborative dialogue about curing deafness was the only acceptable alternative for the critics of the competitive debate, it is worth asking why they feel we must choose between the two.
Collaborative dialogues and competitive debates should be seen as complementary approaches to problemsolving. While dialogues offer many advantages, they also have limitations that debates help address—and vice versa. For instance, collaborative dialogues lack the unique advantages of the adversarial process, which is crucial for uncovering complexities through the rigorous challenge and defense of diverse perspectives. Dialogues aim for common understanding but often provide
little incentive to critically engage with opposing views. By contrast, victory in competitive debate is only possible through thoughtful analysis and effective rebuttal. Driven by the natural desire to excel, debaters embrace the hard work of healthy disagreement. They dig deep, question authority, and sharpen critical thinking to both affirm and oppose arguments.
By doing so, debate is the great clarifier. In the pursuit of victory, debaters sand the bark off contentious issues, chipping away at the illogic, the irrelevant, the untrue, the misframed, the misunderstood, and the prejudiced like wood carvers shaping a block of oak. As debaters compete with ambition, they cultivate a deeper understanding of the profound disagreements that define us and the possible paths forward. This depth would be impossible through collaborative dialogues alone. Deaf people deserve this sort of intellectual clarity on the question of curing deafness— not despite its controversial nature, but precisely because it’s so contentious and therefore so important. For those who specifically objected to the idea of the world’s first and only deaf college debate team