Meet the Faculty: Samuel Nelson

Sam is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Forensics at ILR. He teaches classes on Advocacy and Debate and Rhetoric of the Labor Movement.

Why do you believe it's important for students to understand what you teach?

If you want to make a difference in the world, you have to know how to make a good argument. You can want things, but unless you know how to convince people that your ideas are good or that you should be listened to, they're just going to be ideas. You need to be able to package and present them in a way that others will agree with you, and that's persuasion.

What interests you most about your specific field?

One of the benefits of teaching advocacy and debate is you teach people to be a little bit more open-minded, because you can't really be good at either unless you're truly listening to other people. There’s a saying in debate that you don't really understand your own argument until you understand those who disagree with you, and I love that part of it.

What do you hope to accomplish with your outreach activities?

We've had outreach programs in lots of different countries. I've taken students to South Africa to help universities start debate programs there, as well as to India, Vietnam, and China. I’m also working with the Senior Debate Association, as they're trying to start a debate league through public libraries across the United States for senior citizens. We've already had a pilot project at Brooklyn Public Library that was very successful and now we're expanding to other cities. Another example is that we go into prisons and we teach debate to both adult and juvenile incarcerated people.

What piece of advice would you like to offer your students?

You should do what you want to do in life as opposed to what somebody else wants you to do. I've seen a lot of students let their parents decide what they do or they choose a career based on money even if they don’t like the field. That's always a mistake. One thing Cornell teaches you, and that I like to think my students learn about in my classes and organizations, is the most important thing you can learn in college is to think for yourself.