Students for a Democratic Society and Penn Political Union engaged in a formal debate Monday night, arguing over the merits of the Central Intelligence Agency and its role in promoting global security.
PPU organized the debate in the wake of a protest against the CIA that was organized by SDS, which resulted in administrators shutting down an April 1 talk with CIA director John Brennan. After protestors continued to disrupt the talk, dean of Penn Law School Theodore Ruger read Penn’s freedom of expression policy. Ruger then accused them of trying to silence speech.
However, PPU claimed that it held this event not to debate whether the SDS was prudent in protesting the talk, but rather to recognize their criticisms and provide a space for open dialogue on the issue.
College sophomore Cornell Overfield and College junior Olivia Webb, of the Whig and Libertarian Caucuses of PPU respectively, defended the proposition that “the CIA helps ensure global security.” They were opposed by College freshmen and SDS members John Matthews and Daniel Pitt.
Overfield and Webb defended the CIA’s covert actions by highlighting its limitations as an agency that merely carries out policy decided by the executive and legislative branches. They also praised its role as a service for collecting and analyzing intelligence, advising on policy and in some instances allowing for small-scale covert actions rather than more direct military involvement.
“Whatever the tragic death tolls of CIA action in Latin America and Iran [are], they pale in significance to the billions of lives saved by CIA intelligence gathered during the course of the Cold War to prevent full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Soviet Union,” Overfield said.
Matthews and Pitt, meanwhile, criticized the CIA, describing it as an “agent of state terrorism.” Matthew argued that its involvement in South America subverted global security by allowing “rapes of El Salvadorian nuns,” causing “drug trade that fueled the U.S. crack epidemic” and building “the cartel system in Mexico [that] created the current gang system in the US.” They argued that the CIA was more in line with projecting U.S. power, no matter whether their enemies were democratically elected governments or their allies cocaine monopolies.
Pitt questioned the effectiveness of the CIA at stopping terrorist attacks on the U.S.
“Within this decade, you are literally more likely to be hit by lightning while being eaten by a shark than you are to be killed by an Al Qaeda attack.”
Before the debate, College senior and Government and Politics Association co-founder Varun Menon compared the day’s debate to one held by GPA three years ago after Indian politician — now Prime Minister — Narendra Modi was uninvited from giving the keynote speech at a Penn conference.
“The debate ... did lead to a greater understanding and respect and toleration between the two sides,” he said. “It was something real.”
Engineering freshman Robert Zajac said he was pleased with the debate.
“I think it was a step in the right direction to encouraging discourse between both parties. We weren’t really getting anywhere with shouting and disruption. So this is great, this is why we’re at Penn,” he shared after the debate.
