University of Wyoming debate coach and Director of Forensics Matt Stannard will teach at the Iraq Debate Academy and Mesopotamia Debating Tournament Dec. 13-17 in Duhok, Kurdistan, Republic of Iraq.
He is among eight faculty members selected to teach at the workshop,
including debate scholars and coaches from Slovenia, Wales, Iraq and the
United States.
The workshop, sponsored by the governor of Duhok, was organized by
Muhammad A. Ammad, director of Iraq Debate, and Alfred Snider, director
of forensics at the University of Vermont, both of whom have worked with
Stannard at debate workshops in the past: Ammad as a student debater at
the Asian Debate Institute in Seoul, Korea, and Snider as a longtime
debate institute director.
Stannard says the reason for holding such an event is explained on
the tournament Web site: "These are challenging times, and the skills of
oral disputation, reasoned debate, logical decision making and conflict
resolution through open discussion are badly needed, not only in Iraqi
society but throughout southwest Asia and, indeed, the world."
Stannard's travel to the Middle East is sponsored by the UW Foundation,
President Tom Buchanan, the Department of Communication and Journalism
and the College of Arts and Sciences, the Leadership and Learning Center
and private donors.
This is not the first time UW debate has participated in international
debate education or competition. Stannard says that during the Cold War,
in the late 1960s, UW coach B. Wayne Callaway took his debaters to
Canada to debate students from the Soviet Union. UW debaters have
participated in several annual U.S.-Irish debates and have debated
abroad occasionally, and Stannard taught summer debate programs in
Seoul, Korea, in 2006 and 2008.