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I first met Professor Karlyn Jane Gorski in the early winter months of 2024 in an introductory public policy course called Policy Implementation. Despite the depressing environment outside, she brought warmth and energy to the classroom with her bright smile and corny jokes. She kept us engaged with guest lecturers and personal stories that applied to the policy theories we were learning about. One example that stuck with me was her connection of pen flipping that debaters practice to look confident while speaking, and cultural capital, a policy concept meaning the attitudes, skills, and styles that allow groups to effectively navigate complex institutions and shifting expectations. I was fortunate enough to interview my former professor about her introduction to debate and the extensive research she conducted following her years as a debater.
Article by Chloe Chiles Troutman
Surprisingly, Gorski’s entrance into debate was no choice of her own. At her Pennsylvania middle school, Gorski was in her school’s gifted program, but claims she wasn’t a very good student and was disengaged from school. Laughing as she recalls this story, that’s when one of her teachers went to the debate coach and asked him to “Take her. Do something.” She would then start her journey nervously through impromptu speaking, before transitioning to LD in high school and becoming a National Catholic Forensics League champion.
Although her wins as an “underdog” with Pokemon covered binders from an unknown high school with a funny name (Perky Newman Valley) were very memorable, she credits her biggest loss as the catalyst for her favorite year of debating. Her junior year of high school, Gorski made it to the Tournament of Champions and proceeded to lose every round she had. There were seven rounds and she lost six before judges gave her a bye in the last round. She was so upset and despondent, especially since this was only a couple weeks after winning the NCFL championship. With only her mother to comfort her, she had no teammates or coach to support her, because she came from a small debate program and her coach had retired early in her high school career. However, a debate coach from a school in the DC area had seen her debate before and offered her a spot as an adoptee on their team. She would participate in Skype calls to practice with them, room with them during tournaments, and she finally had other teammates to practice debating and analyzing cases with. She had to Google herself to find the results of this awful tournament she had forgotten, because the only thing she remembered from that year was the amazing senior year she had because of the support and community she had gained.
She still cites these years as essential to building skills that have launched her into careers as a sociologist, education policy researcher, debater, debate coach, and an assistant instructional professor of public policy at the University of Chicago. After debating in middle and high school, Gorski made an immediate transition to debate coaching. At 18, she was coaching 16 and 17 year olds, which she credits with providing her “formative experiences as an instructor” and that’s “...really how I learned how to do what I do.” Following this she received her BA in Public Policy from the University of Chicago and her thesis focused on refugee students in Chicago Public Schools. Then she returned to where she studied abroad and taught at a school in India for a year before coming back to Chicago to tutor students in math at Harlan High School on the south side.
However, this was not the end of her work with students or debate. As a Masters student, she spent a year with two different debate teams in Chicago Public Schools, “trying to understand what students were getting out of the activity; what it meant to them.” The students she researched were on policy debate teams, a type of debate she had never done before. Her inexperience with policy debate aided in playing up her position as an outsider. She was able to learn from students why their debate program was special to them and how their programs/outcomes may have been different from her own experience. She recalls that “I got to suss out what were some of the things that students were like, this is what makes it feel really welcoming, this is what makes us a family, this is home.”
Gorski still thinks about the big ideas her research produced in the context of her work as an assistant professor, such as the notion of being receptive to feedback. In office hours when she works through assignments with students, she sees “massive differences” between the students who are comfortable with finding clarity in their work versus students who are defensive and unwilling to accept feedback. It reminds her of kids from debate “going up to the judges and pestering people to be like, what could I have done better? It’s not easy to do that, but it’s a really important skill.” When talking about the lasting influence debate has had on her life, she finds that “Thinking about giving feedback, receiving feedback, having healthy and constructive conflict and areas of disagreement, troubleshooting, understanding that things are going to be iterative, like the first time that you read a new case or debating a new topic, it’s going to be really messy but you know it’s going to get better, and you’re going to learn, and it’s going to improve. That’s genuinely stuff that I use every single day.”
"...the first time that you read a new case or debating a new topic, it’s going to be really messy but you know it’s going to get better, and you’re going to learn, and it’s going to improve. That's genuinely stuff that I use every single day."
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