I enter every round as open-minded as possible, be it a congressional debate, policy, or public forum, although I will say that I typically prefer a qualitative to a quantitative approach to building arguments. When approaching policy and public forum, I will flow every speech the entire round but it is up to debaters to help me weigh the arguments that flow to the end of the round by giving me voters.

Policy Debate

I love and appreciate seeing creativity in argumentation. I just need to see a specific and clear link to the case. I also love seeing personality shine through in the debate round, leading to unique rounds, but be careful of wandering into the territory of disrespectful behavior, bullying, or unprofessionalism.

I have no issue with speed but, as a judge, I like to flow everything and really appreciate clear taglines. Slow down a bit as you read these and I'm good with speed elsewhere.

I don't count flashing as part of prep, but prep for flashing (organizing files, trying to find the right speech, deleting other files, etc) are. It shouldn't take more than about 30 seconds to flash. Going on 5 minutes is a bit excessive.

I am relatively new to critical debate. I am not opposed to it, but I am not well versed, so be sure to really explain any kritiks and how they impact the debate. Counterplans, disadvantages, topicality, and solvency/advantage debates are great. Again, I flow this so give me good taglines.

LD Philosophy

I have judged and even briefly coached LD but was never formally trained in LD so I approach every round as a blank slate. Because of my CX background, I have a preference for evidenced debate but I want you to debate it out. Spell it out for me with clear taglines. When we get to the end of the route, give me voters and the paradigm I should view the round in.

Again, I love a unique round and personality but I have no tolerance for debaters competing without respect for one another.

I debated at Princeton, TX and I'm a CXer by trade, though I've been judging often for the last five years since I've graduated so I know my way around all the other formats. I am a "games" judge so I accept anything and everything so long as I've been given proper reasoning. If nothing fancy goes on I default to a policymaker position. "Conservative" and "Progressive" styles are equally valid in my book.

My three top level principles:

• Framework is King: I cannot evaluate something like American Hegemony vs Human Rights without being given a philosophical underpinning on what's a higher concern. Framework is not an end unto itself, but to be used as a tool for establishing priority of impacts. I highly recommend both sides run something on this.
• Competition over Truth: As a judge, I want to intervene with my own knowledge and logic as minimally as possible because that's your job as the debater. As long as you get the technical performance down 80% I can be flexible on the remaining part.
• Evidence Quality over Quantity: I'm less interested in the number of cards read and more in the reasoning of how they come up with the conclusion in the tagline. I'll only intervene here when there is disagreement on what's written. I understand there are cases when a good argument for the situation cannot be prepared in a card so I accept analytics within reasonability. On areas of significant clash I give it to the side that delves deeper into the warrants. When the competing claims slide over each other, I may end up evaluating it as a wash.

One more request: when you invoke innovation, please elaborate what you mean by that. It's the biggest, most annoying buzzword in all of speech and debate.

Onto the line by line:

Speed - I can accept it as long as it's intelligible. If you get to the point where you're wheezing substantially I'll tell you to clear up. Slow down on taglines and authors. If you spread on analysis and they aren't written down on the file, then I can't guarantee I'll have them down on the flow.

Topicality - I take a layman interpretation on what ought to be topical so my threshold is rather high. That said, the affirmative must still have a good technical performance in their answer.

Theory - It's okay with me, though I think it's of a lower priority than material issues and mostly evaluate it as a tiebreaker.

Turns - Link turns, impact turns, and case turns are all very powerful, but please substantiate what's going on materially. There's nothing more confusing than when both sides claim they subsume the other.

Counterplans - The viability of a CP lies in the net benefit that's established. Mutually exclusive plans are the clearest for clash and competition. I accept PICs but there better be a good reason that the aff can't perm. Unless otherwise specified or kicked, I view CPs as part of the negative's world advocacy that can be held against them. Running multiple CPs or CP and K may obfuscate the neg's advocacy, but it's up to the aff to point that out.

Case - If offense is lacking or well defended I often let the affirmative access the try or die argument. I'm not strict on case architecture on either side, but stock issues will always be fundamental and we can't forget that.

Disadvantages - On economic related impacts, the way to break beyond surface level claims is to actually tangle with competing economic theories. Is the Keynesian, Neoclassical, or the Marxist school most accurate on the scenario regarding recessions? I don't know, you tell me. On politics, I think you're obligated to read political capital theory or else it's easy to defuse with thumpers, but I don't accept that you can fiat out of it. Generally I value strong and specific links when it comes to the impact calc.

Kritiks - I can follow along with the theory, though if you start using buzzwords and jargon you'd better be able to elaborate on that. If you run a K you should understand it well on a conceptual level. Like disads, specific links and contextualization to the aff are very important. On the aff side, I'm willing to follow along with K's bad theory, counter-kritiks, and really all bets are off here.

Send the email chain to yashkhaleque2@gmail.com, I'm also available for questions and case advice.