Introduction

Draft. Not for Publication.
Not for Quotation. All Rights Reserved.

In a crowded auditorium at Temple University, a Temple economist and a Swarthmore psychologist square off on the question: “Is capitalism good for the poor?” The debate proves provocative, so much so that a local public affairs radio station invites the academics to air their differences on Radio Times, its award-winning talk show. Tapes of that talk show will later be dissected by students training to assume the roles of discussion moderators and panelists. “What would your first question to the economist have been?”, they are asked. Then, “what did you think of the moderator’s question?” Then, “how would you have answered it if you were the economist?” And so on, for round after round of Q & A.

Welcome to the Temple Issues Forum (TIF) and to its student arm, the TIF Debate and Discussion Club (TIF D&D). Launched as a faculty initiative in 1998, TIF is mainly in the business of public affairs programming. TIF Debate and Discussion Club (TIF D&D) is a registered student activity with two distinct branches. PDD, the Public Debate and Discussion Group, gets training in public debate and discussion and stages forum events of its own.. TDT, the Temple Debate Team, represents a return of competitive debate to Temple after a twenty year hiatus. A listing of TIF events is provided in Appendix A. A record of TIF video productions as well as PDD events is provided in Appendix B. Details about most TIF and PDD events can be found on the TIF website: www.temple.edu/tif.

TIF originated as a campus-wide activity but then became known to a regional audience by way of co-productions with WHYY (91 FM) of “Radio Times Live at Temple.” With recent conference presentations featuring video highlights of TIF’s all-day 9/13 forum on the 9/11 terrorist attacks, news of TIF has spread, and some universities -- among them Colorado, Univ. of Illinois at Chicago, and Utah -- are considering ways to adopt the TIF model while adapting it to their own special needs.

TIF and TIF D&D seem to me to be both exportable and expandable. That is a claim I will defend in the final section of this paper. Characterizing the TIF model is the task of the first section of this paper. The middle section is about the TIF Debate and Discussion Club, and particularly its PDD branch.