TAU team wins prestigious international debate
Fourth win for an Israeli debate team in one year
A Tel Aviv University (TAU) debate team won the European Round Robin (ERR) this past week, an exclusive university-level debate competition in Warsaw, Poland.
Tom Manor and Noam Dahan were the winning pair at the competition, which took 16 of the best debate teams from around the world and had them argue for and against motions in the most challenging dilemmas of the modern world. The debate took place at the College of Europe in Natolin, and most of the competitors were European champions or world champions at some point.
Manor and Dahan had previously won the world championship themselves in the English Second Language (ESL) category, as well as the European championship twice, once in the ESL category and once in the English Native Language category.
Another Israeli team that competed in the ERR were Roy Schulman and Elaye Karstadt from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The duo won the world championships in the EFL category this past January in Capetown, South Africa. Yet another TAU team consisting of Amichay Even Chen and Ido Kotler came to compete after winning the last European championship in Serbia in the ESL category.
Sella Nevo, the TAU debate team coach, also competed alongside Steven Rajavinothan from England. Nevo and Rajavinothan made it to the final round with Manor and Dahan.
The official format of the competition, out of dozens of debate formats, is called British Parliamentary style. Four teams – consisting of two debaters each – compete by debating opposite positions of an argument, one duo supporting the given subject (called a “motion”) and the other duo opposing it. The Motion and position are given to each team a mere 15 minutes before they are required, one by one, to stand at the podium and argue their stance, taking turns between each member of each team for seven minutes.
“Round Robin” refers to the competition style in which each group faces off against every other group exactly one time throughout the five rounds, at the end of which the four best-scoring teams face off in the final round.
The results of this past competition, as well as its most recent accomplishments, ranks the Israeli Debate League as one of the best in the world.