While the Bible urges humanity to seek goodness and justice for one another, it seems that for some, the nature of that justice is up for debate. In a shocking turn of events, a US college debate association competition required students, some of whom were Jewish, to defend Palestinian violence against Israelis, The Jerusalem Post reported. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called the debate topic “outrageous” and demanded a public apology.

The US Universities Debating Championship (USUDC) at Morehouse College in Atlanta took place last weekend. On Sunday, the resolution set for debate was “This House Believes that Palestinian Violence Against Israeli Civilians Is Justified”.

The topic announcement, which took place 15 minutes before the debate was set to commence, was met with mixed reactions. According to Tablet Magazine, Jordan Trafton, a student judge from Claremont McKenna College, was surprised by the seeming indifference of participants.

“I look around and nobody is doing anything, and I’m so shocked,” he said. “This is Morehouse, a historically black college where everyone is up in arms about social justice.”

Despite Trafton’s observations, however, not everyone was so sanguine. Jessica Weiss, a second-year student at Willamette University who attended the tournament, explained to The Tower why it took time for the shock to register.

“Once the topic is released, debaters are probably not going to react immediately, because they are on a timed clock,” she said. “Once my partner and I got the topic, we immediately started walking to [our assigned] room in a rush. I was shocked, a lot of people were shocked. We were opposing the topic, so it wasn’t as bad for me, but I was still emotionally affected by it. I was tearing up and my partner was trying to calm me down.

“I cried during most of the preparation time,” Weiss said. “It was sourced from my personal experiences being [in Israel]. But I’ve debated many controversial topics before, and I just kept telling myself this is just another one.” Weiss was not alone; witnesses reported hearing sounds of sobbing throughout the preparations.

While debate competitions often deal with controversial and sensitive topics, including human rights violations such as targeting civilians, this appears to be the first time debaters have been asked in a major competition to justify violence against a specific population group. In fact, students who attempted to generalize the topic were penalized by judges for not addressing the statement directly.

The Claremont McKenna team coach urged organizers to cancel the round, but they refused. At that point, Trafton made the same request from the stage, causing him to be disqualified from judging the round. The other judges from his college, four in all, walked out in protest.

In the chaos that ensued, the equity officer, responsible for ensuring the competition is neither “threatening” nor “intimidating” to participants, agreed that the topic was problematic and participation in the round should be made optional, but it was too late to inform all competitors of the decision. After the round’s conclusion, Weiss said, some 30 people submitted “equity violation” notices to the equity officer, including a Palestinian-American on the Willamette team.

“It is outrageous and deeply offensive that students participating in the debating championship, some of whom were Jewish, were essentially forced to choose between losing points in the national championship or advocating for violence against Israeli civilians,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO of the New York-based ADL, wrote in a press release.

“It is hard to imagine that the organizers would ever have asked students to defend al-Qaida’s attacks against the US on 9/11, and this shouldn’t be any different,” he said, adding that “whoever devised the question exercised extremely poor judgment.”

It took the US Universities Debate Association (USUDA) five days to respond to the controversy. The group issued a statement on Friday, saying it was “saddened that this event, which is supposed to be a celebration of our nation’s greatest tradition – that of intellectual and respectful engagement with civic controversy – became the subject of controversy itself. We are also saddened that several of our members and colleagues were negatively impacted.”

However, the association also absolved itself of responsibility for the events that unfolded that day, claiming its members were the most aggrieved by what transpired.

Claiming it had “no advance knowledge…and…no legitimate power to stop the motion from being run”, the statement went on to say, “‘The USUDA does not administer the USUDC tournament…The adjudication team that sets the motions for the USUDC are not selected by the USUDA; they are selected by the host institution. It is the adjudication core’s responsibility to ensure the tournament motions are appropriate for academic debate.”