On Tuesday night, the Hearn Speech and Debate Society and the Ricci-Xu Young Scholars Program jointly hosted the inaugural Ricci Forum on technology and the U.S.-China relationship. A three-person guest panel of academic and policy experts were invited to judge a parliamentary-style debate between two pairs of Hearn debaters on the following resolution: “This house regrets the recent technological decoupling between the United States and China.”

Taking the proposition side were seniors Danny Bajada ’24 and Mark Quaglia ’24, while William Carragher ’24 and Michael Cameron ’24 represented the opposition. The spirited debate centered on the role of emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence in the current geopolitical arena. 

The debate’s judging panel featured Dr. Susan Shirk, former deputy assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific affairs and director emeritus of the University of California San Diego’s 21st Century China Center; Dr. Zongyuan Liu, Maurice R. Greenberg fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations; and Peter Vanderslice ’16, research advisor at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. At the conclusion of the debate, each of the three panelists offered brief but rich commentary on the arguments proposed by the two teams. 

The Ricci Forum is the creation of senior Kai-Shan Kwek-Rupp ’24, who emceed the event. He initially conceived of the Ricci Forum — named for Matteo Ricci, SJ, a pioneer of intellectual exchange with China — a year ago with the intention to create a space for open and honest conversation about China among his peers. 

The importance of dialogue as the basis for learning is a core principle of the Ricci-Xu Young Scholars Program, a cultural leadership and exchange program that brings together students from Regis, Dominican Academy, and Nanjing Foreign Language School in China for regular conversations.